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53984
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: So many deliberate distraction operations at play...
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Jeremy scahill, journalist, co-founder of the Intercept: "So many deliberate distraction operations at play: The leadership of the Democratic Party is pushing the narrative that the *real* problem with the Gaza war is Netanyahu. Pro-Israel charlatans have concocted a false narrative about rampant anti-semitism on US campuses and succeeded in making this fake emergency a major media focus. All while mass graves are being uncovered in Gaza, the slaughter of Palestinian civilians continues with US weapons and support, and a full-scale invasion of Rafah looms. Meanwhile, the utterly false allegations Israel made about UNRWA that were promoted and endorsed by the Biden administration (even as Blinken admitted the U.S. had done zero independent investigation) have been unmasked as a sham. But there will be no accountability for these lies. The damage done will just be written off as a footnote in history. The same is true for the U.S. promoting Israel's demonstrably false allegations about a major Hamas command facility underneath al Shifa Hospital. The U.S. also said it had its own independent evidence yet never produced it. That siege of al Shifa last year set the precedent for Israel to systematically attack and destroy Gaza's hospitals and kill scores of doctors, nurses and other health care workers." https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1783135211997237739 |
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[53985]
53985
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Review of UN agency helping Palestinian refugees found Israel did not
URL: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-unrwa-united-nations-28a63ddef23efdc4b050b0bcbdb587ff
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Review of UN agency helping Palestinian refugees found Israel did not express concern about staff BY EDITH M. LEDERER April 22, 2024 UNITED NATIONS (AP) — An independent review of the neutrality of the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees found that Israel never expressed concern about anyone on the staff lists it has received annually since 2011. The review was carried out after Israel alleged that a dozen employees of the agency known as UNRWA had participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks. In a wide-ranging 48-page report released Monday, the independent panel said UNRWA has “robust” procedures to uphold the U.N. principle of neutrality, but it cited serious gaps in implementation, including staff publicly expressing political views, textbooks used in schools the agency runs with “problematic content” and staff unions disrupting operations. It makes 50 recommendations to improve UNRWA’s neutrality. The Israeli Foreign Ministry informed the panel that until March 2024 the staff lists did not include Palestinian identification numbers, the report said. Apparently based on those numbers, “Israel made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations,” the panel said. “However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this” to the refugee agency. Colonna stressed that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed the independent review panel to review UNRWA’s neutrality — not to investigate Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA staffers participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. Guterres ordered the U.N. internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, known as OIOS, to conduct a separate investigation into those Israeli allegations. “It is a separate mission. And it is not in our mandate,” Colonna said. She also said it is not surprising that Israel did not provide evidence of its allegations to the refugee agency “because it doesn’t owe this evidence during the investigation to UNRWA but to the OIOS.” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Monday the U,N. hopes to have an update from OIOS “in the coming days.” He said its investigators have been in contact with Israeli security services. Israel’s allegations led to the suspension of contributions to UNRWA by the United States and more than a dozen other countries. That amounted to a pause in funding worth about $450 million, according to Monday’s report, but a number of countries have resumed contributions. Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday called on donor countries to avoid sending money to the organization. “The Colonna report ignores the severity of the problem, and offers cosmetic solutions that do not deal with the enormous scope of Hamas’ infiltration of UNRWA,” ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said. “This is not what a genuine and thorough review looks like. This is what an effort to avoid the problem and not address it head on looks like.” Colonna urged the Israeli government not to discount the independent review. “Of course you will find it is insufficient, but please take it on board. Whatever we recommend, if implemented, will bring good,” she said. The report stresses the critical importance of UNRWA, calling it “irreplaceable and indispensable to Palestinians’ human and economic development” in the absence of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.” ADVERTISEMENT Dujarric welcomed this commitment to UNRWA and said the report “lays out clear recommendations, which the secretary-general accepts.” The U.N. hopes to see the return of donors as well as new donors following the report’s release, he said. Among the recommendations are steps to tackle politicization of UNRWA staff and its staff unions. The report recommends that staff lists with ID numbers be provided to host countries, which would then tell UNRWA the results of their screening and “any red flags.” The report also calls for stronger oversight of UNRWA’s leadership and operations, “zero-tolerance” of antisemitism or discrimination in textbooks used in its schools, and greater international involvement in supporting the agency as it addresses neutrality issues. UNRWA’s Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said safeguarding the agency’s neutrality is critical to its work and it is developing a plan to implement the report’s recommendations. With Israel calling for the breakup of the agency, Lazzarini told the U.N. Security Council last week that dismantling UNRWA would deepen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and speed up the onset of famine. International experts have warned of imminent famine in northern Gaza and said half the territory’s 2.3 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation if the Israeli-Hamas war intensifies. The review was conducted over nine weeks by Colonna and three Scandinavian research organizations: the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights. Colonna said the group spoke with more than 200 people, including UNRWA staff in Gaza, and had direct contacts with representatives of 47 countries and organizations. by Taboola |
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