The United Nations can’t even tell when it is employing terrorists. How, then, can it be expected to use American taxpayer dollars effectively?
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was discovered to be employing yet another terrorist. This wasn’t just any terrorist, though — it was Fateh Sherif Abu el Amin, a Hamas commander in Lebanon. He had been fully employed up until March, when UNRWA put him on administrative leave without pay. Hamas announced on Monday that Abu el Amin was killed by an Israeli strike in Lebanon.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini now wants to make sure that this doesn’t reflect poorly on his organization. He claims UNRWA had no clue that Abu el Amin was a commander for a terrorist group and that the real problem we should be concerned about now is not that UNRWA keeps employing terrorists, but that Israel is attacking UNRWA’s reputation. “Anyone who works for the U.N. and engages in terror, terror-like activity is unacceptable and outrageous and an insult to all U.N. staff members around the world,” Lazzarini said.
Somehow, it just slipped under the nose of the entire agency that it was employing a Hamas commander, just like it slipped under the nose of Lazzarini and the rest of UNRWA that it was employing multiple terrorists who ended up taking part in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel.
Then again, you can imagine UNRWA probably just isn’t looking too hard at its staff in the Middle East lest it discover just how many terrorists it actually employs. In 2004, then-Commissioner-General Peter Hansen admitted UNRWA knew it was employing terrorists. “Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll,” Hansen said, “and I don’t see that as a crime.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
UNRWA may not be a “terrorist body,” as Israel is (understandably) considering designating it, but there is no doubt that UNRWA is a terrorist enabler. That is true through the organization perpetuating the Palestinian “refugee crisis” in order to justify its continued existence. It is true through UNRWA’s headquarters housing an underground Hamas military compound (about which, again, UNRWA claims to somehow have had no idea). And it is true through the fact that it has once again been revealed that UNRWA was employing terrorists.
The U.N. should not get a single cent from America’s taxpayers for its litany of failures, and the chief failure among it is the employment of terrorists who killed and captured Americans as members of Hamas. Democrats are too cowardly to do anything here, but there is no doubt a Republican Congress and a Republican president should bring the hammer down on the U.N. and UNRWA.