The problem is the UNRWA. Read this and you will understand that the goal of the UN is to villify Israel, create propaganda against Israel and fuel the flames of Palestinian anger.
On the surface, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) seems a humanitarian group helping Palestinian refugees. In reality, it actually helps destroy the chance of Arab-Israeli peace, promotes terrorism, and holds Palestainians back from rebuilding their lives.
Unique in history, UNRWA’s job is to keep Palestinian refugees in suspended animation--and at low living standards--until they achieve the goal set for them by the PLO and Hamas: Israel’s extinction. In the meantime, their suffering and anger is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward violence and intransigence.
UNRWA schools become hotbeds of anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic indoctrination, recruiting offices for terrorist groups. UNRWA’s services are dominated by radicals who staff and subsidize radical groups while potentially intimidating anyone from voicing a different line. UNWRA facilities are used to store and transport weapons, actually serving as military bases.
In this process, UNRWA has broken all the rules that are supposed to govern humanitarian enterprises. Consequently, UNRWA is the exact opposite of other refugee relief operations. They seek to resettle refugees; UNRWA is dedicated to blocking resettlement. They help refugees to live normal lives so that they can move on with their existence; UNRWA’s role is to ensure their lives remain abnormal so they are filled with anger and a thirst for revenge that inspires violence and can only be quenched by a victorious return. They try to create stable conditions for refugees;UNRWA’s mission is to enable radical political activity and indoctrination by armed groups which ensures a continual state of near chaos.
The time has come, especially given the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, which also signals a Hamas takeover of the UNRWA facilities there, to reevaluate the role of UNRWA. If it is indeed very much a part of the problem--a barrier to resolving the refugees’ status and returning them to normal lives; a barrier to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict; and a source of violence--it should be dissolved and replaced by something better.
Three basic steps are required to do this. They would improve the refugees’ lives and strengthen moderate Palestinian forces.
First, UNRWA should be dissolved.
Second, all services it provides should be transferred to other agencies within the UN, notably the UNHCR, which has a long and productive experience in this area.
Third, responsibility for normal social services should be turned over to the Palestinian Authority. Most UNRWA staff should be transferred to it. Donors should use the maximum amount of oversight to ensure this be done effectively.
People often wonder why violence and instability persists and why the Arab-Israeli conflict is so seemingly impossible to resolve. One important part of the answer is that UNRWA perpetuates the problem. All those seeking real progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians need to take a close look at this unacceptable situation. All those with responsibility for the management of these issues need to work for a change of course.
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Read the whole thing. There was a time when I would have found this shocking but that time has passed.
Atrocities have been committed by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I look at it pragmatically.
I’ll agree with your conclusion, but I have a problem with your premise using the word “Atrocities.” An atrocity is an intentional act of violence by an enemy armed force committed on a civilian or prisoner. There is a huge difference between firing a rocket into a shopping mall full of civilians and a rocket aimed against an enemy target missing and hitting civilians. Collateral damage to Palestinian civilians is unfortunate and regretful, but it does not rise to the constant and intentional murder of Jewish civilians by Hamas. That is the true definition of an atrocity.
Atrocities have been committed by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I look at it pragmatically.
I’ll agree with your conclusion, but I have a problem with your premise using the word “Atrocities.” An atrocity is an intentional act of violence by an enemy armed force committed on a civilian or prisoner. There is a huge difference between firing a rocket into a shopping mall full of civilians and a rocket aimed against an enemy target missing and hitting civilians. Collateral damage to Palestinian civilians is unfortunate and regretful, but it does not rise to the constant and intentional murder of Jewish civilians by Hamas. That is the true definition of an atrocity.
Israel evacuates, entirely, the Gaza strip. The so-called “Palestinians” immediately do two things. First, they begin on day one, firing rockets into Israel from Gaza. Second, they demolish all the former Israeli homes to make room for their tenement housing projects.
After that, do the arabs try and establish a vialbe, functioning state? No. Not at all. They do nothing of the sort. The arabs living in the Gaza strip are simply welfare recipients. The live off the UN, the US, Israel and other western nations. Their own fellow Arabs in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, loathe them and give them next to nothing.
It says everything about the moral and intellectual decay of the west when Israel is forced to supply fuel and food to the very people who are firing rockets into Israel on a daily basis, killing, maiming and terrorizing Israeli civilians.
The left in America and the west is so morally bankrupt that it sickens me.
Atrocities have been committed by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I look at it pragmatically.
I’ll agree with your conclusion, but I have a problem with your premise using the word “Atrocities.” An atrocity is an intentional act of violence by an enemy armed force committed on a civilian or prisoner. There is a huge difference between firing a rocket into a shopping mall full of civilians and a rocket aimed against an enemy target missing and hitting civilians. Collateral damage to Palestinian civilians is unfortunate and regretful, but it does not rise to the constant and intentional murder of Jewish civilians by Hamas. That is the true definition of an atrocity.
Well, BigAl, atrocity here means the horrifying deaths of civilians, women and children, in both Israel and Palestine. When you see an Israeli airstrike kill women and children, are their deaths less appalling than the deaths of Israeli women and children? Not to me, but I rationalize the difference.
Yes, it’s collateral damage because Palestinian terrorists hide cowardly among the innocent, but I still see it as horrifying and appalling. I see any innocent deaths as atrocities. Yes, some are unfortunate and regretful, but atrocious just the same.
Atrocities have been committed by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I look at it pragmatically.
I’ll agree with your conclusion, but I have a problem with your premise using the word “Atrocities.” An atrocity is an intentional act of violence by an enemy armed force committed on a civilian or prisoner. There is a huge difference between firing a rocket into a shopping mall full of civilians and a rocket aimed against an enemy target missing and hitting civilians. Collateral damage to Palestinian civilians is unfortunate and regretful, but it does not rise to the constant and intentional murder of Jewish civilians by Hamas. That is the true definition of an atrocity.
The shame is that the cowards make victims on both sides of the border and then cry fowl.And the idiots buy in.
Well, BigAl, atrocity here means the horrifying deaths of civilians, women and children, in both Israel and Palestine. When you see an Israeli airstrike kill women and children, are their deaths less appalling than the deaths of Israeli women and children? Not to me, but I rationalize the difference.
Yes, it’s collateral damage because Palestinian terrorists hide cowardly among the innocent, but I still see it as horrifying and appalling. I see any innocent deaths as atrocities. Yes, some are unfortunate and regretful, but atrocious just the same.
The question now becomes why don’t they smuggle fuel instead of rockets to avoid a health crises
Damn John, you’re on fire with your pithy and on the mark comments.
And Roy is on the mark here too. Bitwize thinks he’s being cute, but everyone here knows his game. He didn’t come on here with a story about a blown up Israeli, he came on here started a thread about an alleged Israeli atrocity.
Why’s that bad? Because the leftists here NEVER put up posts about Al-Qaida being evil, the Iraqi insurgents being evil, or Hamas being evil. Well, unless they can work it into an attack on Bush: as in, Bush has failed to catch the evil Bin Laden.
It’s this constant criticism of the good guys and the incessant attempts at moral equivalence between the bad guys and the good guys that makes it nearly impossible to find any common ground with leftists.
The question now becomes why don’t they smuggle fuel instead of rockets to avoid a health crises
Damn John, you’re on fire with your pithy and on the mark comments.
And Roy is on the mark here too. Bitwize thinks he’s being cute, but everyone here knows his game. He didn’t come on here with a story about a blown up Israeli, he came on here started a thread about an alleged Israeli atrocity.
Why’s that bad? Because the leftists here NEVER put up posts about Al-Qaida being evil, the Iraqi insurgents being evil, or Hamas being evil. Well, unless they can work it into an attack on Bush: as in, Bush has failed to catch the evil Bin Laden.
It’s this constant criticism of the good guys and the incessant attempts at moral equivalence between the bad guys and the good guys that makes it nearly impossible to find any common ground with leftists.
Look I’m not happy with what happens in that part of the world. But I’m not unhappy with Israel defending it’s self. The reality is if Israel wanted to they could push Palestine into the ocean.
But they have shown remarkable restraint over a good many years.
But since it has been their roll in the Middle East to be perennial victims and it serves the purpose Palestine will live on the backs of other countries. All the while always seeming to have resources for weapons and an endless supply of support from other terrorist countries in the Middle East.
