To Repeat: Designate the UNRWA a Terrorist Organization

The Harris campaign, the Biden-Harris administration, the left-wing British government, and, naturally, the United Nations and other Hamas sympathizers in the “international community” are up in arms because Israel’s Knesset has passed legislation recognizing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) as what it is: an adjunct of Hamas — the Palestinian jihadist branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been designated a terrorist organization under U.S. law for nearly 30 years.

To repeat what I wrote nearly a year ago, it is time for the United States to side with our ally Israel and against our enemy Hamas by designating the UNRWA a foreign terrorist organization and prosecuting either its individual members or the organization collectively for providing material support to a designated terrorist organization — a federal crime so heinous that Congress has prescribed a sentence of life imprisonment in cases in which the material support has caused death, as UNRWA’s support of Hamas has. (See section 2339B of the federal penal code.)

The new Israeli laws would ban UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory and bar Israeli government agencies from having contact with the organization. The legislation could have the effect of shutting down UNRWA operations in East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank (i.e., Judea and Samaria).

Good.

In the column linked above, I put it this way:

Rather than “relief and works,” what UNRWA provides, thanks to its underwriting by Americans and citizens of other nations, is rabid antisemitic indoctrination, rockets, and jihadists — for both Hamas (the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The revelations about UNRWA’s complicity in the October 7 atrocities are nothing new. UNRWA’s willful support of terrorism has been open and notorious for decades, notwithstanding the determination not to notice by the State Department under various American administrations (Trump’s honorably excepted). [As I’ve recounted in another column, Trump cut off the immense aid that the Obama-Biden administration was giving UNRWA – $400 million from American taxpayers per annum, despite UNRWA’s operational alliance with Hamas – aid that the Biden-Harris administration restarted – only to be humiliatingly induced to shut it down after Hamas’s October 7 atrocities, in which UNRWA was complicit.]

In making the determination to designate UNRWA as what it is, a sponsor of terrorism, the fact that it is an arm of the despicable U.N. should be of no moment. In 2019, our government designated the nation of Iran’s principal military arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as a foreign terrorist organization. And on significantly less evidence of hands-on jihadist activity than exists with respect to UNRWA, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was designated by our government as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist government in 2001 because of its financial support of Hamas.

There is no denying that what UNRWA has done for Hamas meets the statutory definition of providing material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. That is as serious as it gets under our criminal law, to say nothing of the fact — which remains a fact no matter how much the media–Democratic complex seeks to bury it — that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (another designated foreign terrorist organization bolstered by UNRWA) killed more than 40 Americans on October 7, 2023, in addition to taking several more hostage — a number of whom have been killed, while four who are believed to be alive are still being held by Hamas to this day. (Note: Upon investigation, the Israeli government determined that at least 30 UNRWA employees facilitated the abduction of hostages and the looting of Israeli communities.)

On this record, it is outrageous for the Biden-Harris administration to be shielding UNRWA from the entirely rational measures the Israeli legislature seeks to take in the midst of defending the Jewish state against a war of annihilation waged by UNRWA’s allies. If the administration, to mollify its anti-Israel base, insists on continuing to pour aid into the Palestinian territories — notwithstanding that the war ensues because Palestinian majorities deny Israel’s right to exist — then that is a reason to find a new vehicle for distributing aid. It is not a justification for continuing to lavishly fund an adjunct of a designated terrorist organization that is in clear violation of American anti-terrorism law.