How could UNRWA possibly have known all these years that this Hamas figure had anything to do with Hamas?

...Gunness pledged that “if any new allegations come to light, we will look into them immediately and thoroughly.” He says nothing about "allegations" that have been around for a decade or more.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
06 March '17..

A report today from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reveals what's known about a senior engineer in the engineering department of UNRWA's Gaza Strip operation.

His name is Muhammad Daoud Ismail al-Jamassi. He's in the news because he was elected to a leadership position in Hamas' elections last month. We initially wrote about him this morning ["06-Mar-17: Does UNRWA know yet that another of its key people is a Hamas insider?"]

Another long-term employee of UNRWA in Gaza, Dr. Suhail Ahmed Hassan al-Hindi, was suspended from his UNRWA position last week because he too was elected to the Hamas polit-bureau...

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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UNRWA forced to suspend employee elected to senior Hamas role after defending him - by Elder of Ziyon

...Given the history of UNRWA with al-Hindi, don't bet that this suspension will last any longer than his last one. Gunness is being exposed as a liar yet again in front of our very eyes.

Elder of Ziyon..
26 February '17..

Two weeks ago, Hamas held elections in Gaza.

One of the people elected to a senior role was Dr .Suhail Hindi, who was head of UNRWA's Gaza teachers' union and has been known to be affiliated with Hamas for years. When UNRWA tried to fire him in 2011 after that little fact was publicized, the Gaza teachers all went on strike (he was the head of the union, remember) - and UNRWA caved, allowing Hindi to keep his job as a principal.

After being elected to a Hamas position this time, Hindu still wanted to keep his UNRWA principal's job. So, with an almost unbelievable amount of nerve, he vehemently denied that he was elected to anything, even though his name was published as one of the members of the winning slate.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Hamas' new Gaza leadership: Educating towards a desperately worse future - by Arnold Roth

...As misconceived, camouflaged and fraudulent as UNRWA's role in the disaster happening daily in Gaza's education system is, UNRWA does not deserve all the blame for the horror. Other contributors, including UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development deserve long-overdue attention for the unforgivable and complicit silence and apathy that serve as their indictment.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
26 February '17..

One of the ugliest dimensions of the conflict between the Arabs and Israel is the tight, bear-hug relationship that exists between the oddest of United Nations agencies - UNRWA - and the Islamist terrorist group Hamas. There's fresh and disturbing evidence today for those willing to look, as opposed to those who systematically look away, preferring not to know.

The United Nations has a major stake in taking care of the world's refugees. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is based in Geneva and has won two Nobel Peace Prizes (1954 and 1981). Its origins were not so auspicious. It began life as a creature of UN General Assembly Resolution 319 (IV) in December 1949 with a mandate to operate for three years. That was later broadened by additional UNGA resolutions until today. Its mission is

to provide, on a non-political and humanitarian basis, international protection to refugees and to seek permanent solutions for them... [source]

A person would have to be especially mean to object to goals like those. Giving support on a humanitarian, non-political basis - what could be more appropriate? Providing them with protection, and especially for their children - the most helpless of the helpless - is often the thing that fragile, dispossessed people most lack. And seeking a solution? Well - obviously.

Which brings us to the Palestinian Arabs who, uniquely among all people of the world classified as refugees, are not served at all by UNHCR.

Is this a screaming injustice? No. That's because they, and only they, among all the world's unhappy people with a deep grievance, have a "refugee" agency all their own.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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One question for Mr. Gunness: Who asked you?

...There is nothing in Chris Gunness’s past which qualifies him to give us advice on how to protect ourselves or to act as judge in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But if we’re already speaking Chris, I have few more questions.

MK Yair Lapid..
Opinion/JPost..
07 July '16..
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/UNRWA-Who-asked-you-459797

UNRWA spokesman, Chris Gunness harshly criticized our decision to demolish the homes of two terrorists who last December stabbed two Israelis to death at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City.

I have one question for Mr. Gunness: Who asked you? UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Its role is clearly defined. It is supposed to help Palestinians find work and if they can’t find work then to assist them with food and medication.

That’s it. It doesn’t have another role. There is nothing in UNRWA’s mandate which justifies intervention in Israel’s security matters.

There is nothing in Chris Gunness’s past which qualifies him to give us advice on how to protect ourselves or to act as judge in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But if we’re already speaking Chris, I have few more questions: Why doesn’t the State of Israel appear on maps in UNRWA schools? If you condemn violence, why were you silent when it became clear that an UNRWA building was used as a hiding place for a terrorist tunnel used to kill three Israeli soldiers? Why are you silent when gays are persecuted and church’s burned down in Gaza? Why are the Palestinians the only people in the world who can inherit the status of refugee from their parents? Why can someone be born in Qatar, live in a villa in Paris, hold a Spanish passport and still be considered a Palestinian refugee? Why is it that among the 23,000 UNRWA employees there are so many Hamas people (I didn’t say that Chris – as you know the commissioner- general of your organization said so himself)?

In fact, why is it that only the Palestinians have a refugee agency of their own? What do they deserve that the 21.5 million refugees from Tibet, Darfur, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere don’t? How is it that, since UNRWA was founded in 1950, the number of refugees has multiplied from 750,000 to over 5 million (!) without a single Palestinian being expelled? Is UNRWA creating refugees?

And I also have a question to the citizens of the United States: Do you know that your taxpayer dollars fund this insanity?

UNRWA to BBC: “Use the Words ‘Israeli Occupation’ in Coverage of Christmas in Bethlehem”

...Notably, Gunness did not ask BBC to use the words “murder, persecution and ethnic cleansing of Christians in Palestinian areas and throughout the Middle East,”

Hillel Neuer..
Times of Israel..
25 December '15..





I urge U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power to condemn the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for breaching its neutrality promise under the 2015 UNRWA-U.S. Framework for Cooperation after spokesman Chris Gunness today urged the BBC to politicize its news coverage of Christmas by using the words “Israeli occupation.”

 

Chris Gunness‏@ChrisGunness

Demand @BBCNews use the words #IsraeliOccupation in its coverage of #Christmas in #Bethlehem. Amazing lack of context needs correction RT

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1:28 AM - 25 Dec 2015

Notably, Gunness did not ask BBC to use the words “murder, persecution and ethnic cleansing of Christians in Palestinian areas and throughout the Middle East,” as documented before the UN in compelling testimony by Father Gabriel Naddaf, who noted that “Israel is the only Mideast country not persecuting Christians.” Those words do not interest UNRWA or Gunness.

Ambassador Power should also condemn UNRWA for violating UN resolution 46/182 (1991), by which UNRWA is obliged to provide humanitarian services in accordance with the principles of “neutrality and impartiality.”

And if children's minds and welfare mean something to you....

...So Chris Gunness, when you're ready to have a constructive discussion about healing the minds and souls of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arab children (that's not meant to sound funny), please touch base [thisongoingwar@gmail.com]. And no, to be frank and based on past experience, we're not waiting.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
06 August '15..

This post is about making a radical change to the education that Palestinian Arab children get in their schools. A change for the better, but then - as most people know - that's not saying much.

We have posted here about UNRWA dozens of times over the years (here's a link). Why? Because its existence is a fundamental pre-requisite for the hatred and passion for lethal violence that is daily injected into the blood and consciousness of generations of Palestinian Arab children.

This has been happening for nearly seventy years. As refugee support organizations, can there be one as spectacularly ineffective as UNRWA? As a terrorist training institution, can there be one as heart-breakingly effective as UNRWA?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 

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Clearly this region would be better off without UNRWA by Sarah Honig

...With so many layers of unabashed hypocrisy overlapping and contributing so cynically to the perpetuation of misery instead of assisting the cause of peace and prosperity, it’s time to regard UNRWA as a problem in and of itself. This region would be better off without UNRWA.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
10 August '14..

UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, has joined Hamas’s clamor for lifting the blockade on Gaza forthwith. This was the gist of what UNRWA’s Gaza spokesman Chris Gunness demanded. No surprise here. UNRWA never played a remotely constructive or impartial role in the Mideast.

Its self-preservation interests perhaps rule out neutrality and fairness to begin with, lest these actually lead to improvements that might obviate the sham pretext for keeping UNRWA around. UNRWA’s continued existence hinges on not solving this region’s problems.

Put differently, it’s in UNRWA’s distinct interest to keep the flames of conflict burning high.

The fact that its installations were incontrovertibly revealed to function as rocket arsenals is only one aspect of a greater travesty. The rockets were handed right back to Hamas in a number of instances and UNRWA appears complacent about the fact that its facilities were also used to launch rockets at Israel or to fire on Israeli troops (thereby inevitably drawing back fire to supposed safe-havens).

Many UNRWA personnel, moreover, are closely tied to Gaza’s powers-that-be and are no well-meaning do-gooders. Twenty-five of the 27-member UNRWA executive in Gaza are Hamas activists. This figure speaks volumes. UNRWA schools are infamous for facilitating Hamas indoctrination.

Gunness’s demand is also disingenuous for failing to mention cause and effect. It accuses Israel of “collective punishment of the 1.8 million Palestinians packed into Gaza.” To the uninitiated it sounds as if this is all a product of capricious Israeli malevolence.

There’s no mention of what it was that caused Israel to impose the blockade, nor of what happened within Israel proper when no such blockade was in force. The fact that Israel allows food, medications, electricity and water into Gaza at the very time in which Gaza rockets Israeli population centers is also missing from Gunness’s portrayal of the situation.

But this isn’t unexpected. UNRWA’s very mandate is an aberration. The UN established a special agency in 1949 for those deemed to be Palestinian refugees, as distinct from all of the world’s bona fide refugees. All other refugees, regardless of degree of plight and objective hardship, are looked after by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), while the privileged Palestinian category is singularly served by UNRWA.

UNRWA is calculatingly exploited to prevent refugee-offspring from losing their refugee status, thereby creating the greatest obstacle to the ostensibly desired peace. UNRWA helps keep alive and fan the ambition to inundate Israel with millions of so-called refugees, while paying lip-service to a two-state solution.

Dear Chris, What's Good for Arabs Should Be Good Too For Jews, Yes?

...Isn't there something wrong in permitting Arabs their narrative while demanding that Jews accept the right of Arabs to deny our narrative?

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
29 November '13..




In a story about an exhibit of photographs from UNRWA, we read:

Christopher Gunness, an agency spokesman, said...“Everyone has a right to understand, to study and feel a part of their history,” he said. “Are we supposed to engage in denial of the events of 1948? The refugee experience is an essential part of Palestinian identity.”

Fine. As long as the facts are facts.

Ceren - More U.N. Officials Step Up to Push Anti-Israel Smears and Pro-Hamas Propaganda

Omri Ceren..
Commentary/Contentions..
15 March '12..

UNRWA’s Chris Gunness has personally stepped up to fulfill his organization’s traditional role as a wartime propaganda outlet for Hamas, describing Israel’s self-defense operations as “sick sick sick.” The UN group routinely peddles anti-Israel falsehoods even during relatively quiet periods – e.g. their scapegoating Israel for UNRWA’s terror-promoting schools – but during conflicts their media manipulation becomes particularly shameless.

Now even non-UNRWA UN officials have taken to broadcasting false anti-Israel smears, per new information about a tweet that Alana first covered earlier this week. You’ll remember that Khulood Badawi tweeted a picture of an injured Palestinian girl, with a caption asserting that the girl had been hit in an Israeli air strike. The photo spread like wildfire, garnering 300 retweets and becoming the day’s top “#Gaza” tweet.

The entire thing was a fabrication. The photo wasn’t taken this week and the girl wasn’t hurt by Israeli munitions. The picture was actually snapped by Reuters in 2006, and the girl had fallen off a swing. Honest Reporting ran down the original.

Elder - UNRWA keeps lying

Elder of Ziyon
15 June '11




UNRWA's Chris Gunness tries to defend the indefensible in a YNet op-ed:

All refugee communities, whether those under the care of UNRWA or UNHCR, have their refugee status passed through the generations while their plight remains unresolved. Refugees in Kenya administered by UNHCR are a good example. In this regard, the accusation that UNRWA uniquely perpetuates the Palestine refugee problem is ignorant of international refugee law and practice.

I cannot find any UNHCR documentation on the status of children born to real refugees, so I cannot address that specifically. However, UNRWA's definition of refugee is far removed from the definition that the UN established and uses today for all other cases.

The UN defines a refugee as someone who

owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his [or her] nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him [or her]self of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his [or her] former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

UNRWA's definition is completely different:

...any person whose "normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict."


Palestine refugees are persons who fulfil the above definition and descendants of fathers fulfilling the definition.

There is nothing in the UN definition that explicitly includes children the way UNRWA does, even if in some limited circumstances they do so.

But there is a much more important difference. The 1951 Convention on Refugees has exacting and specific criteria on how someone can end his or her refugee status:

(Read full "UNRWA keeps lying")

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Israel just can’t do enough for UNRWA — and Hamas

Fresnozionism.org
21 June '10

Here’s another illustration that Israeli concessions are never, ever enough.

As a result of the Mavi Marmara incident, in which Israelis were forced to fight for their lives, Israel has agreed to loosen restrictions on materials being transferred to Gaza (I discussed the illogical aspect of this earlier). Now only weapons and “war-supporting material” are prohibited from passing through the crossings; dual-use items such as cement will be allowed in if they are used for Palestinian Authority approved projects under international supervision.

As Barry Rubin has pointed out, although this does not represent a big modification in behavior for Israel, the significance of the internationally mandated change is that Israel gives up

[t]he entire strategy of trying to reduce Gaza’s economy and the rewards that Hamas can give its supporters. In other words, while Hamas’ military capacity is kept as low as possible it can politically consolidate and stay in power for decades.

What this tells us is that the international establishment (the agreement was negotiated by Tony Blair) admits that Hamas is here to stay, not quite legitimate but still immune from Israeli pressure — even peaceful pressure.

But that’s not enough. Along comes Chris Gunness of UNRWA, the ‘temporary’ agency set up in 1949 to help refugees from the 1948 war (theoretically, Jews who were ethnically cleansed from East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria should be included) and which has worked tirelessly to encourage the growth of the ‘refugee’ population — along comes Gunness and tells us that he’s not satisfied:

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