{"id":1521854,"date":"2024-02-27T08:34:58","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T08:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/02\/biden-administration-unrwa-defunding-intelligence\/"},"modified":"2024-02-27T08:34:58","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T08:34:58","slug":"the-war-on-unrwa-is-israels-awful-absurd-war-in-microcosm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/27\/the-war-on-unrwa-is-israels-awful-absurd-war-in-microcosm\/","title":{"rendered":"The War on UNRWA Is Israel\u2019s Awful, Absurd War in Microcosm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

The US and more than a dozen other countries cut off aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza based on charges US intelligence has \u201clow confidence\u201d in. It\u2019s as cruel and absurd as this entire war.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n A view of the destruction as a result of Israeli attacks at the headquarters of UNRWA in Gaza City, Gaza, on February 21, 2024. (Dawoud Abo Alkas \/ Anadolu via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Another day, another instance of Israeli government allegations used to justify a US-led push to escalate the mass slaughter in Gaza turning out to be as thin as many had first predicted.<\/p>\n

Last week, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported<\/a> that the US National Intelligence Council \u2014 a group of eighteen policy experts and analysts that evaluate pressing national security concerns for US intelligence agencies \u2014 only had \u201clow confidence\u201d in Israeli claims that about a dozen staffers at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) took part in the October 7 attacks. What that means, according to the paper, is that they believe the claims are \u201cplausible\u201d but can\u2019t say anything more than that, because they haven\u2019t independently verified them and their Israeli counterparts haven\u2019t showed them the underlying evidence. Still, Washington found it \u201ccredible,\u201d a nameless US official assured the paper.<\/p>\n

There were, in fact, good reasons to be skeptical about the claims from the start, beyond the Israeli government\u2019s propensity to push dubious nonsense<\/a> and outright lies<\/a>. We already knew from a leak that Israeli officials were planning<\/a> these exact allegations months ago as part of an effort to push out UNRWA, an agency they\u2019d long hated. They revealed these claims on the exact same day<\/a> the International Court of Justice (ICJ) made its ruling that Israel was plausibly carrying out a genocide<\/a>. And a senior Israeli official admitted<\/a> that \u201ca lot of the intelligence is a result of interrogations of militants,\u201d where abuse and torture<\/a> of Palestinian detainees are rife.<\/p>\n

But this Journal<\/em> report is, in fact, only the most recent time we\u2019ve heard how remarkably thin Israel\u2019s charges against UNRWA are. A few days after Israel made the allegations \u2014 and when the United States and others had already paused the agency\u2019s funding \u2014 Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted<\/a> that \u201cwe haven\u2019t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But they are highly, highly credible,\u201d before mentioning they were still to be \u201cfully borne out.\u201d<\/p>\n

A week later, the UK\u2019s Channel 4<\/em> got its hands on a six-page summary of the dossier Israel had used to make its accusations and reported<\/a> that it \u201cprovides no evidence to support its explosive new claim,\u201d reporting backed up<\/a> by other outlets that had viewed the document.<\/p>\n

Even though there was no evidence for the Israeli government\u2019s charges; even though the UN immediately fired the accused workers and launched an investigation; and even though if it turned out to be true, it would mean only 0.09 percent of the thirteen thousand UNRWA employees in Gaza would have been guilty \u2014 the Biden administration immediately cut US funding for UNRWA.<\/p>\n

The United States was the agency\u2019s single largest donor, providing roughly a third of its funding; cutting support thus left the agency looking at a looming financial cliff. Since then, the allegations were used to justify a provision in Biden\u2019s failed border deal that blocked<\/a> further US aid to UNRWA, and a subsequent Republican bill to permanently defund<\/a> the agency.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just the United States, though. The Israeli allegations, given legitimacy by the US government, were also the basis for eight other countries<\/a> \u2014 all US allies or close partners \u2014 to suspend or put under \u201creview\u201d their UNRWA funding, too, representing roughly 60 percent of its total pledged donations. More countries<\/a> followed<\/a> their lead in the days after, taking<\/a> the count to fifteen, while the European Commission announced<\/a> it would decide whether or not to keep funding the agency past February based on the UN\u2019s internal investigation, which is set to be done in March.<\/p>\n

Though the Biden administration tried to play down<\/a> the significance of the cutoff, arguing that all but $300,000 of its budgeted aid had already been sent to the agency, the decision has had an immediate effect on the agency\u2019s funding. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell<\/a>, and a UN spokesperson<\/a> have all said the agency would see a major budget crunch and would even have to start cutting back services as early as the end of February, with Lazzarini warning<\/a> that its humanitarian operations in Gaza were \u201ccollapsing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In just the last few days, UNRWA has had to pause<\/a> aid deliveries to northern Gaza, while the director of its operations in Lebanon has warned<\/a> they \u201cwould come to a halt during March,\u201d meaning the end of this week, due to the \u201csevere impact\u201d of recent budget cuts. One family medicine doctor who worked for an UNRWA clinic recently reported<\/a> the agency had ended its contract with him for the end of this month \u201clikely due to recent major funding cuts,\u201d and that this \u201capplies across the board to all people employed on a daily wage.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s outrageous about this is not just the fact that long before this war, UNRWA effectively fulfilled the role of a basic, functioning municipal government in Gaza, providing core services<\/a> like schooling, health care, sanitation, and food to its impoverished and malnourished population. It\u2019s the fact that no other entity<\/a> can do what UNRWA does in the territory, and these cuts have come at the exact time that, thanks to Israel\u2019s actions, hunger and disease are exploding there \u2014 which is why numerous voices have condemned<\/a> the cuts as \u201ccollective punishment,\u201d and why one Gazan called them<\/a> \u201ca death sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making all this especially perverse is that the cuts were started on the same day that the ICJ not only ruled Israel\u2019s war is plausibly a genocide, but declared<\/a> that Israel had to \u201ctake immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid\u201d in Gaza. Instead, the United States and a variety of friendly governments decided they would use the occasion to do the exact opposite, and in the process worsen the state of widespread deprivation there.<\/p>\n

All the while, the Biden administration has continued to send military aid to Israel without any compunction, even though, far from having 0.09 percent of its representatives accused<\/em> of taking part in a massacre, Israel\u2019s entire state and military apparatus<\/em> is undeniably involved<\/em> in a far bigger<\/a> and now-monthslong massacre, with many of its top officials making outwardly genocidal statements<\/a> about their intentions.<\/p>\n

The layers upon layers of perversity, absurdity, and hypocrisy to this story are hard to fathom. In other words, it\u2019s the perfect microcosm of this entire war and US policy toward it.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another day, another instance of Israeli government allegations used to justify a US-led push to escalate the mass slaughter in Gaza turning out to be as thin as many had first predicted. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US National Intelligence Council \u2014 a group of eighteen policy experts and analysts that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1445,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1521854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1521856,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521854\/revisions\/1521856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1521854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1521854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1521854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}