Give the UN Diplomatic Immunity for Terror? - by Jonathan Tobin

...The UN has been a cesspool of corruption and anti-Semitism for so long that to speak of salvaging its reputation is a fool’s errand. Yet this incident shows how little the world body actually cares for the welfare of ordinary Palestinians, who are being shortchanged of desperately needed assistance to bolster their Islamist rulers’ military infrastructure.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
29 August '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/uncategorized/2139125-give-the-united-nations-immunity-for-terror/

Since ancient times, nations have granted immunity to diplomats from arrest or mistreatment. Without such immunity, diplomacy is virtually impossible and breaches of this tradition—such as the 1979 assault on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the hostage crisis that followed—are not only heinous crimes but also proof of the breakdown of the rule of law anywhere such conduct is tolerated. But this important principle has sometimes been expanded to shield diplomats from the consequences of ordinary illegal behavior. As any resident of New York City knows, diplomatic license plates are a license to park illegally and not pay the tickets they are assessed. But for the United Nations, the concept of immunity has now taken a completely new meaning: any employee of the world body, even those without any diplomatic status whatsoever, are entitled to aid terrorist groups with impunity.

That’s the position the UN is taking on the case of Waheed Borsh, a Palestinian engineer who works for the United Nations Development Program, an agency tasked with assisting building projects in poor countries. Borsh has worked for the UNDP since 2003, a group that has become even more important since the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas that resulted in the destruction of many homes in Gaza. But rather than carry out the UN’s mandate to rebuild civilian infrastructure and homes, Borsh was discovered to have been transferred 300 tons of building materials to the Qassam Brigades—Hamas’s military arm—in order to build a naval jetty from which it conducts operations and smuggling. Borsh also used his influence to ensure that the rebuilding of homes of Hamas officials was a UNDP priority. This meant that thanks to Borsh, the UNDP was subsidizing a terrorist group’s activities.

The UN said it was “greatly concerned” by the allegations and has “zero tolerance” for wrongdoing–a stance belied by the way all of its agencies have allowed themselves to be co-opted by Hamas in Gaza. But it nevertheless asserted this past week in a letter that Borsh should be released from Israeli custody because he should be considered to have diplomatic immunity.

The technical legality of this assertion is dubious. If any local employee of the United Nations, let alone, one of an embassy or consulate anywhere, is considered to have the immunity tradition accords actual diplomats the entire concept is called into question. It’s bad enough when real diplomats commit crimes and then are allowed to return home, albeit in disgrace. More common is when diplomats involved in spying—an activity not wholly unrelated to the business of foreign policy.

But while those with diplomatic passports must be accorded a fair amount of latitude for countries to feel free to exchange representatives, giving employees of UN agencies a free pass for blatantly illegal conduct is absurd. Even more outrageous is the notion that those who aid terrorist organizations should be treated with kid gloves.

When the aid workers are aiding Hamas - by Hillel Neuer

...If the UN and NGOs fail to correct their ways, taxpayers in the US, Canada and Europe should do it for them, by demanding a permanent freeze to the funding of terror.

Accused Hamas agent Mohammed El-Halabi,
the Gaza director of the giant Christian aid
group World Vision, appears in court, August 4.
The UN featured him on its website as a
"humanitaran hero."

Hillel C. Neuer..
UN Watch Briefing..
Vol. 603 | August 18, 2016..

The op-ed below by UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer appears in the latest edition of The Jerusalem Report.

The arrest of Palestinian humanitarian officials in Gaza from two separate international organizations - charged with siphoning aid resources to support Hamas terrorism - along with allegations about at least two other entities raises troubling questions about the culture within the United Nations and non-governmental agencies that allowed such crimes to take place.

First there was the announcement by Israel’s Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on August 4 that Mohammed El-Halabi, director of the Gaza branch of World Vision — a billion-dollar Christian aid agency — was indicted for systematically diverting tens of millions of dollars in aid money to Hamas.

According to the Shin Bet, El-Halabi admitted to being a lifetime Hamas member who was dispatched in 2005 to infiltrate World Vision.

El-Halabi had a good chance of being accepted because he had already worked for UNDP, the UN Development Agency — where he also helped Hamas — and because his father, Khalil al-Halabi, holds a senior post at UNRWA in Gaza which he, too, uses to support Hamas.

Once in World Vision, El-Halabi employed a sophisticated apparatus for transferring funds and resources to Hamas. Over several years, El-Halabi helped Hamas construct terror tunnels, pay their salaries, and build military bases.

In addition, according to the charge sheet, in 2014 Halabi recruited a Palestinian aid worker from Save the Children, a major NGO based in the UK, to join Hamas’ military wing.

After the revelations, Australia and Germany froze their funding to World Vision, and the organization suspended its Gaza operations. Save the Children, for its part, is “making inquiries into this matter.”

Foreign Donors, Aid Diversion and Hamas - by Elliott Abrams

...The only way to solve this problem is for donors to withhold funding unless and until the independence of their programs can be assured. Yes, the people of Gaza would suffer, but they would know why: because Hamas is more interested in its own terrorist actions than in the welfare of Gazans. Aid donors have turned a blind eye for far too long.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
10 August '16..
Link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2016/08/10/foreign-aid-for-hamas/

I’ve written about a half dozen times in the past about UNRWA, the UN agency that deals with Palestinians: here in 2014 and here in 2015, for example. Simply put, UNRWA has long had employees who were sympathetic to Hamas, and who engaged in acts of anti-Semitism, but it has overlooked their actions and indeed often protected them. That appears to be the culture of the place.

In the last week we’ve learned something new: that employees of other leading charitable and development agencies like World Vision and the UN Development Program (UNDP) may also be diverting funds to Hamas. Israel has detained employees of both World Vision and UNDP. Australia has frozen contributions to World Vision’s Gaza programs until the entire matter can be sorted out, and the German offices of World Vision have frozen their own programs in Gaza.

Here’s the UNDP story:

Israel said Tuesday it had charged a United Nations staffer with helping the Islamist movement Hamas, the second indictment involving aid workers in Gaza in a week. Engineer Waheed Borsh, who has worked for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) since 2003, was arrested on July 16 and charged in a civilian court in Israel on Tuesday, a government statement said. The UNDP said it was “greatly concerned” by the allegations while Hamas, which has run the Gaza Strip since 2007, denied any involvement. The government said 38-year-old Borsh, from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, had been recruited by “a senior member of the Hamas terrorist organisation to redirect his work for UNDP to serve Hamas’s military interests”. It said he had confessed to a number of accusations, including diverting rubble from a UNDP project in the coastal strip to a Hamas operation to build a jetty for its naval force. He is also alleged to have last year persuaded UNDP managers to focus home rebuilding efforts in areas where Hamas members lived, after pressure from the group.

And here is the World Vision story:

The Gaza head of the U.S.-based humanitarian aid organization World Vision funneled as much as $7 million a year over the past 10 years to Hamas’s terror activities, Israel’s domestic security agency said Thursday. The Shin Bet said the aid group’s Gaza director, Mohammed el-Halabi, is an active figure in Hamas’s military wing. He was indicted by Israeli authorities Thursday, accused of diverting some 60 percent of World Vision’s annual budget for Gaza to Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that rules the coastal enclave. He was charged with transferring money and working with a terror group. Hamas is viewed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union. Israel has fought three wars with Hamas since 2009. In addition to the $7 million a year in funds transferred to Hamas coffers, Shin Bet said, Halabi also handed over to Hamas piles of cash — an additional $1.5 million a year. The Israelis also said he gave Hamas $800,000 taken from a United Kingdom donation to help build a Hamas military base. The money was designated for civilian projects in the Gaza Strip, Israeli authorities said.

The accused are innocent until proved guilty, although they are said to have confessed. What we can now see clearly is that none of these organizations–UNDP, World Vision, or UNRWA–was ever going to find the facts, fire people, clean out the Hamas agents, and solve these problems. That will require the intervention of donors, and those steps in Germany and Australia are remarkable only in that they have not been followed universally. “Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) called the allegations ‘deeply troubling’ and said in a statement that it was ‘urgently seeking more information from World Vision and the Israeli authorities. ‘We are suspending the provision of further funding to World Vision for programs in the Palestinian Territories until the investigation is complete,’ it said.” Quite right–but what about all the other donors?