Aid workers accused of taking part on 7/10 attack on Israel - appalling !

[Lanabigbanana]

https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/serious-allegations-against-unrwa-staff-gaza-strip

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-palestinian-refugee-agency-investigates-staff-suspected-role-israel-attacks-2024-01-26/

From the Guardian 5 hours ago;

"UK suspends UNRWA support after Israeli allegations The UK has temporarily paused future funding of UNRWA, saying it is “appalled by allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October attack against Israel”.
A statement sent to the Guardian by the UK’s foreign, commonwealth and development office said:
'The UK is appalled by allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October attack against Israel, a heinous act of terrorism that the UK government has repeatedly condemned.

The UK is temporarily pausing any future funding of UNRWA whilst we review these concerning allegations.'

We remain committed to getting humanitarian aid to the people in Gaza who desperately need it."

It looks like the penny has dropped for Israel and they have realised that if UNWRA folds then the onus is on them to step in and provide the millions of dollars worth of aid to Palestinians. The US usually listen to Israel so hopefully they will this time and all donations will be reinstated.

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2024/02/07/gaza-conflict-israel-pressing-us-and-others-to-continue-funding-unrwa-report/

Edit: I've just noticed the article is nearly a week old. Maybe Biden has had enough of listening to Israel after all.

That’s so ironic - would have been interesting to see Israel actually provide the assistance after blowing up infrastructure that would have supported this.
But, there’s people at risk of starvation and Israel cannot get aid into Gaza beyond their protestors - never mind distribute aid in the Rafah crossing where they’re bombing a million Gazans who have no where else to go!

Posted in another thread but thought it was relevant here too.

www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/unrwa-report-says-israel-coerced-some-agency-employees-falsely-admit-hamas-links-2024-03-08/

Of course UNWRA is going to try and save its organisation as it stands.

You can’t really refute some of the evidence that has been presented that some UNWRA employees took part in the October 7th massacre.
Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami, a social worker employed by UNWRA (appears in video footage) to load Jonathan Samerano’s body (who has already been killed) into the back of a vehicle.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/mother-whose-sons-body-was-seized-by-unrwa-staff-calls-on-un-head-to-meet-in-geneva/#:~:text=The%20mother%20of%20Jonathan%20Samerano,General%20Antonio%20Guterres%20in%20Geneva.

There are 12,000 UNWRA employees so do the math- there’s bound to be some Hamas members.

And while it’s not possible to refute the claim that a person who worked for UNWRA was identified in the video clip mentioned, this information is probably coming from the IDF so given the track record of the IDF , not especially credible.

Israel is trying to get UNWRA disbanded. The reason that UNWRA exists is because Palestinian became refugees when the UN created the state of Israel and they left their homes involuntarily. Israel does not want the Palestinians to be classed as refugees because that implicitly supports the Palestinian right of return. This agreement in 1948 said Palestinians could go back or would be compensated.The return of Palestinians to their former homelands would threaten the existence of Israel as a theocratic state because of the demographics involved- at best Israel would be a normal country like Sweden or Ireland. At worst it would be like Afghanistan or Iran.

So, @Homeeducation1 , with all due respect, I think that your comment is part of a campaign by pro-Israeli actors to discredit UNWRA as part of a wider political agenda and has little to do with sympathy for a grieving mother.

interesting use of word coercion in the Reuters headline to describe torture of Palestinians by Israel.

”The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.”

Not sure why- but threats to family seems worst, from my perspective as a mother.

And while it’s not possible to refute the claim that a person who worked for UNWRA was identified in the video clip mentioned, this information is probably coming from the IDF so given the track record of the IDF , not especially credible

The video footage is freely available on the internet - I've seen it on Twitter - so it's perfectly possible to see that the man in the video is the same person who was named by the IDF.

And that’s the best Israel can come with? After torture of UNWRA workers? After claims by Israel that led to defunding of UMWRA, which - alongside Israel’s blockade of aid - have contributed to starvation of innocent civilians? One man out of 12,000 UNWRA workers?

That a small minority of aid workers are members of Hamas, does not give reason to defund the whole organisation at such a crucial time, in terms of providing the people of Palestine who have done nothing wrong, with essential life enabling supplies and services.

The timing was very convenient, coming straight after the ICJ ruling that the case against Israel for genocide could go ahead.

Double standards apply to our governments willingness to continue to support Israel while they are being investigated for genocide by the ICJ.

UNWRA is defunded without evidence being assessed by an independent body, and with evidence being provided only by Israel, who have a political interest in seeing UNWRA defunded.

1982 book documents UNWRA collaboration with terrorism

I think it's been mentioned more than a few times before the ICJ ruling.

So why have Israel been waterboarding UNRWA employees and threatening their families instead of just handing over the evidence needed? Why have Canada, Sweden and the EU all reinstated funding? It seems really odd that Israel have all of the evidence they need to prove UNWRA 'collaborates' with Hamas yet choose to torture and beat workers instead of just releasing this evidence which according to you goes back to the 1980s. Can you think of reasons why Israel would choose this path instead of just presenting this decades worth if evidence to the countries that are donating to UNRWA? Not just that but why they chose to not object to a single UNRWA employee in 2023 when like always they are given the list of employees to check against this decades worth of evidence?

If we took any group of 12,000 public servants and looked at what they were doing in their off duty private life, it is likely that some would be engaging in criminal activities.

Since its foundation Israel has failed to make peace and progressively encroached on the agreed boundaries over and over for decades. It will always have a terrorist problem that is largely of its own making and this is regardless of who is running the Palestinian Territories , UNWRA or not. If you keep taking land you’ll have terrorists and regardless what day jobs they have.

Israel is coming back with more allegations now to deflect from the fact that it is responsible for starving children to death. It’s 4 months since the attacks and drip drip, claim after claim, with minimal evidence, to support the claims. This brief bit of footage the best they can do to justify mass punishment by starvation.

@stomachameleon
1982?..
Sure if we’re going back 4 decades, why don’t you borrow a copy of “Jewish Atrocities in the Holy Land “ in the interests of balence
https://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/pdf/palestine4/Jewish-Atrocities-in-the-Holy-Land.pdf

It's not just one. I'm referring to the PP's specific comment.

The evidence is irrefutable, but the context that goes along with the video is an unknown.

We see two men picking up one shot man out of three lying on the ground. One man is allegedly identified as an UNWRA worker(deceased on 10/7) and another man(deceased on 10/7) is unidentified but armed with a rifle. A blanket is spread in the back of a small SUV, they put the one shot man in the back on the blanket and then take one hat and one phone from the ground. The video ends with them driving a few metres away out of camera view- destination and direction unknown.

That is the evidence. What we do not know is

• Was Jonathon dead or injured when he was put in the back of the truck?
• Was one of the two men definitely the UNWRA worker they think?
• Was the unidentified armed man a terrorist or local Israeli with his own personal weapon?
• Where were they taking Jonathon? Towards Gaza? Or towards a hospital?
• Was this an attempted rescue or a kidnapping?
• If Jonathon was already dead, and it was a kidnapping attempt of a dead body, then why leave behind the other two bodies? There was room in the back of the truck for all three bodies.
• If the grabbing of one phone and one hat was thievery then why leave behind the other phones and valuables?

Everyone in the video died on 10/7, so it is not an easy thing to investigate. Until it is fully investigated, the video only supports that they were there and they took an injured man, dead or alive, away from the scene. It will take more investigation to establish the why they were there and what their intentions were.

People seem to forget that some of the victims of 7/10 were not Jewish, but were Israeli Muslim Bedouins, Israeli Christians and foreign nationals of other religions as were some of the heroes of 7/10 that rescued victims and risked their lives to fend off the terrorists. We cannot assume that Muslim on the scene = terrorist. One of the two infants (under age 1) killed by Hamas on 7/10 was a Muslim baby girl. The IDF has Israeli muslim soldiers serving in its ranks.

That's quite sick, do you actually believe any of that?

I mean, there is a lot of illegible writing by a photo of what appears to be the wall of a history classroom. The school could be teaching the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazi invasion of Palestine in 1942 to the children. I’d like to see more info than a blurry page of an unknown book with a photo.

There is a very credible documentary of interviews with elderly Jewish men describing having committed acts like this during the Nakbar.

And that justifies posting a horrible anti-Semitic document does it?

I took you question at face value - apologies

Is that directed at me? 😕

@qunari yes - apologies if that isn’t what you meant by you question

@Kindatired

"If we took any group of 12,000 public servants and looked at what they were doing in their off duty private life, it is likely that some would be engaging in criminal activities."

+++

I agree that out of 12,000 public servants some would be engaged in criminal activities but FFS we are talking about being part of a brutal terrorist organisation here not just "criminal activity".

we are talking about being part of a brutal terrorist organisation

Which yet hasn’t been proven to be true