🤥 UNRWA employees took part in attacks on October 7 and therefore the whole organization should be defunded.

Israel has killed 130 UNRWA staff employees in Gaza since Oct. 7. But Western states have taken no action to suspend arms sales to Israel despite the UN suffering the highest number of deaths in history. Make it make sense.

UNRWA is a refugee agency set up to provide humanitarian services like primary medical care, education and food assistance for Palestinians who were ousted from their homes when Israel was created in 1948. The agency is the only lifeline for 2 million Palestinians currently in Gaza who depend on it to survive. Countries cutting off aid while Palestinians are fighting for their lives against an Israeli bombing campaign, siege and forced starvation, could be in violation of the Genocide Convention.

The announcement by the U.S. and its allies to cut funding comes at the request of Israel which claims 12 UNRWA staff are tied to Hamas. With a history of Israel making up such allegations throughout its military aggression on Gaza, it’s ironic that this comes mere hours after the International Court of Justice declared that Israel is on trial for genocide, ordering protection for Palestinians.

The announcement by the U.S. and its allies to cut funding comes at the request of Israel which claims 12 UNRWA staff are tied to Hamas. With a history of Israel making up such allegations throughout its military aggression on Gaza, it’s ironic that this comes mere hours after the International Court of Justice declared that Israel is on trial for genocide, ordering protection for Palestinians.

For decades Israeli government officials and think tanks have pushed to destroy UNRWA. The current attack is a calculated political decision with severe humanitarian consequences. Destroying UNRWA will not only prevent the agency from providing relief efforts to 5 million Palestine refugees. It will completely undermine the UN-mandated “right of return” principle which ensures that Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their homeland.

The alleged actions of 12 employees (nine of whom were summarily fired) of an organization that employs 13,000 people in Gaza and does necessary and important life saving work does not mean that the organization in its entirety sanctioned nor approved of their actions. This is further evidence of collective punishment being utilized against Palestinians as their practice or their internationally recognized right to resistance.

What is ironic though is even as international bodies and humanitarian organizations conclusively agree on Israel’s war crimes in its ongoing onslaught against Palestinians, none of the countries who withdrew funding from UNRWA withdrew their support (financial or otherwise) for Israel.

Cutting off funding, even if “temporary” is a brutal act of collective punishment that only enables and expedites the Israeli government’s genocidal actions in Gaza.

The UN has opened an investigation into and severed ties with the employees who allegedly took part in the October 7 attacks. Rash decisions and reactionary measures, such as cutting off funding at a time when Palestinians in Gaza are being completely deprived of aid, should not take place until the investigation is complete.

Funding cuts to UNRWA, along with the Israeli government and civilians blocking aid from entering Gaza, mean that famine is now inevitable. While other agencies might be able to bring in aid into the Strip, they all rely on UNRWA infrastructure to disseminate it. The number of international laws and conventions being violated (all because of the alleged actions of 12 individuals) are astounding.

If the alleged actions of 12 individuals is enough to defund the entity that does necessary and important life saving work, then we also need to shut down the Israeli Knesset, UK Parliament and US Congress.

Shutting down an entire support structure that aids innocent civilians, primarily children, is an extension of the genocidal intent already exhibited in Israel’s decimation of all necessities of life such as homes, power, water, food, communication, hospitals and medicine.

People don’t know that UNRWA was founded because the United Nation’s condition for Israel’s recognition after 1948 was to allow for the return of Palestinian refugees. Israel didn’t agree, and so the world paid the expenses of the “relief and work for refugees.” So the money for UNRWA is not a favor. It’s the rights of the people whose tragedy was caused by this unfair world.