{"id":253726,"date":"2024-02-05T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=253726"},"modified":"2024-02-03T03:43:29","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T03:43:29","slug":"cutting-aid-to-refugees-us-advances-israels-war-on-palestinian-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/02\/cutting-aid-to-refugees-us-advances-israels-war-on-palestinian-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Aid to Refugees, US Advances Israel\u2019s War on Palestinian Existence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Palestinian families fleeing from the central Gaza Strip to Rafah on Jan 2024.
(Photo: Naaman Omar\/APA Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

While rushing weapons to the Israeli government’s assault on Gaza, the Biden administration embraces Israeli allegations about UNRWA without bothering to investigate them.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1 Feb 2024<\/em> – In early November, as the Biden administration faced growing outcry over its partnership with Israel\u2019s mass murder campaign in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken turned to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, for an attempted face-saving photo opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke with UNRWA staff in Gaza,\u201d Blinken wrote on Twitter<\/a>, sharing a photo of himself in a virtual meeting with four agency workers. \u201cI heard about the extraordinary lifesaving work they are doing in the face of extremely difficult conditions. We are working to expedite assistance to them so that they can get it to the Palestinian people.\u201d<\/p>\n

While claiming to expedite aid to UNRWA, Blinken\u2019s State Department has in fact helped enforce Israel\u2019s blockade of the Gaza death camp, all while expediting US weapons shipments<\/a> for a relentless bombing campaign that has left it largely destroyed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration\u2019s commitment to Israeli savagery is so extreme that not even the \u201cextraordinary lifesaving work\u201d of UNRWA, which provides essential services to millions of Palestinians in Gaza and other regions, can be spared. The US, along with Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, Australia and Finland, has suspended aid to UNRWA in response to Israeli claims that 12 of the agency\u2019s 13,000 employees took part in the Hamas-led Oct. 7th<\/sup> attack.<\/p>\n

The Israeli government unveiled its allegations against UNRWA on Friday just as the International Court of Justice found plausible grounds to accuse of Israel of genocide in Gaza, and ordered it to cease blocking aid. By embracing Israel\u2019s allegations against UNRWA, the White House and its allies not only helped deflect attention from the ICJ ruling, but make clear that Israel has their blessing to ignore it.<\/p>\n

According to the Washington Post<\/a>, the Biden administration\u2019s decision to suspend UNRWA\u2019s funding was made so quickly that it came \u201cin a matter of hours\u201d after receiving a so-called \u201cdossier\u201d from Israeli intelligence. The US rushed to support Israel\u2019s allegations despite acknowledging that it hadn\u2019t bothered to scrutinize them. \u201cWe haven\u2019t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves,\u201d Secretary Blinken told reporters. \u201cBut they are highly, highly credible.\u201d Blinken did not explain how he has developed the ability to vouch for \u201chighly, highly credible\u201d allegations that he has not investigated.<\/p>\n

The \u201ccredibility\u201d of the allegations was soon illuminated by Israeli officials, who admitted that \u201ca lot\u201d of their so-called \u201cintelligence\u201d about UNRWA was \u201ca result of interrogations of militants,\u201d Axios reported<\/a>. Anyone familiar with Israeli practice understands that such \u201cinterrogations<\/a>\u201d are a euphemism for torture<\/a>. Perhaps for that reason, a New York Times article<\/a> laundering the Israeli claims omitted any mention of the interrogations that produced them.<\/p>\n

Rather than inform its audience that Israel\u2019s \u201cintelligence\u201d about UNRWA came via army interrogators that routinely practice torture, the Times reported that Israel relied on intercepted phone calls and text messages from Gaza. Just like brutalizing detainees, this also is standard Israeli practice: when establishment outlets like the Times were laundering Israeli claims \u2013 now long-forgotten \u2013 about a supposed Hamas command center under Al-Shifa<\/a> and alleged militant activity at other hospitals, US and Israeli intelligence officials also claimed to have obtained the \u201cintercepted communications\u201d of Hamas fighters. Israel even released supposed \u201crecordings<\/a>\u201d of calls between Hamas fighters<\/a> that were widely mocked as transparent forgeries.<\/p>\n

Days after the Times\u2019 report, the Wall Street Journal<\/a> followed up with an article even more subservient to the Israeli narrative. According to Israeli intelligence, the Journal declared, \u201caround 10% of all of [UNRWA\u2019s] Gaza staff have ties to Islamist militant groups,\u201d including \u201c23% of Unrwa\u2019s male employees… indicating a higher politicization of the agency than the population at large.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Journal did not detail the evidence for its Israeli sources\u2019 extraordinary figures, nor explain what these UNRWA workers\u2019 supposed militant \u201cties\u201d entail. By contrast, the story\u2019s lead reporter, Carrie Keller-Lynn, has amply documented ties to politicization and militancy — specifically, that of the Israeli army. Before becoming a journalist, Keller-Lynn served in the Israeli Defense Forces and even boasted<\/a> that a close friend \u201cliterally created social media for the IDF.\u201d She has also worked<\/a> as a research assistant for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the Hoover Institution, a leading neoconservative think tank. In since-deleted Twitter activity, Keller-Lynn was found to have liked posts<\/a> mocking the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The mere act of scrutinizing Israel and its media stenographers\u2019 allegations obscures a more fundamental point: even if every torture-derived claim about a small group of UNRWA workers were true, nothing can justify cutting off a lifeline for millions of Palestinian refugees, even if they weren\u2019t currently enduring a genocide. After all, no one alleges that UNRWA was aware of or involved in its employees\u2019 alleged actions. As Sky News reports<\/a>, based on a review of Israel\u2019s purported evidence, \u201cIsraeli intelligence documents make several claims that Sky News has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suspension of aid also could not be any more hypocritical: while immediately cutting off UNRWA funding based on evidence-free allegations about a tiny number of employees, the Biden administration has refused to cut off any of its massive weapons shipments to an Israeli government whose leaders openly incite genocide<\/a> as its military carries one out.<\/p>\n

The White House insists<\/a> that its funding pause is a \u201ctemporary\u201d measure until UNRWA can \u201cbegin to restore donor confidence.\u201d But just as he has openly rejected the Biden administration\u2019s stated commitment<\/a> to a Palestinian state, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also clear that he aims to shutter UNRWA for good. \u201cThe time has come for the international community and the U.N. itself to understand that UNRWA\u2019s mission must be ended,\u201d Netanyahu declared on Wednesday<\/a>. \u201cUNRWA is perpetuating itself. It seeks to preserve the issue of Palestinian refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, in punishing UNRWA, the US is servicing a long-time Israeli goal of destroying Palestinian nationalism.<\/p>\n

As Jonathan Cook writes<\/a>, UNRWA \u201chas provided a lifeline\u201d to Palestinians in Gaza by offering food and jobs \u201cin a place where unemployment rates are among the highest in the world.\u201d UNRWA has also maintained vital infrastructure that makes \u201clife in Gaza more bearable, when Israel\u2019s goal has long been to make the enclave uninhabitable.\u201d UNRWA\u2019s schools, \u201cstaffed by local Palestinians, teach the children their own history, about where their grandparents once lived, and of Israel\u2019s campaign of dispossession and ethnic cleansing against them.\u201d UNRWA \u201cis the sole agency unifying Palestinians wherever they live, even when they are separated by national borders and Israel\u2019s fragmentation of the territory it controls,\u201d \u2013 thereby helping to preserve Palestinian national identity and the attendant hope for self-determination, an aspiration that Israel seeks to crush. And not least, \u201cUNRWA keeps alive the moral case for a Palestinian right of return \u2013 a principle recognised in international law but long ago abandoned by western states.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Israeli government openly identifies UNRWA as an obstacle to its hopes of ethnically cleansing Gaza and destroying the Palestinian struggle for freedom. \u201cIt will be impossible to win the war if we do not destroy UNRWA, and this destruction must begin immediately,\u201d former Israeli Foreign Ministry official Noga Arbell told a Knesset hearing earlier this month<\/a>. \u201cThey must be abandoned. Or they must go to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

In late December, a classified Israeli Foreign Ministry report detailed<\/a> a multi-stage plan to permanently shutter UNRWA\u2019s operations in Gaza after the current assault comes to an end. The report complained that Israel\u2019s main patron, the US, sees UNRWA \u201cas a positive player in the humanitarian efforts in the Strip.\u201d In embracing Israel\u2019s allegations, the Biden administration has clearly shifted its thinking. It undoubtedly helped Israel\u2019s cause that the United Nations\u2019 top court has just advanced a genocide case in which the US is clearly implicated. For White House officials anxious about their recognized complicity in genocide, what better distraction than changing the subject to an allegedly compromised United Nations agency which serves the very population that the US is helping to exterminate.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration\u2019s transition from using UNRWA for image-laundering photo opportunities to cutting off its funding also exemplifies its embrace of Trump administration policies that it previously renounced. Long before Biden cut funding to the Palestinian refugee agency, Donald Trump did it first<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On his way out of government service in January 2021, Trump’s openly anti-Palestinian ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, reflected on his legacy<\/a>: \u201cThere\u2019s no going back on what we\u2019ve been able to do. I\u2019m frankly somewhere between addicted and intoxicated with what I\u2019ve been able to do, and how much joy it gives me. We\u2019ve changed the narrative dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Friedman has come down from his prior intoxication, he can undoubtedly experience new joy today. His successors are not only abetting Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza, but targeting the main agency that helps keep surviving Palestinian refugees, and their hopes for a decent future, alive.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Aaron Mat\u00e9 is a journalist with<\/em> The Grayzone, where he hosts<\/em> \u201cPushback.\u201d He is also a contributor to<\/em> Real Clear Investigations and the temporary co-host of<\/em> \u201cUseful Idiots.\u201d In 2019, Mat\u00e9 won the\u00a0Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for Russiagate coverage in<\/em> The Nation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aaronmate.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 Feb 2024 – While rushing weapons to the Israeli government’s assault on Gaza, the Biden administration embraces Israeli allegations about UNRWA without bothering to investigate them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":251975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2996,2197,1854,87,865,88,427,3220,70,965],"class_list":["post-253726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-antony-blinken","tag-biden","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-un-agency-for-palestinian-refugees-unrwa","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253728,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253726\/revisions\/253728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}