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Biden admin announces $64m in aid to Palestinian UN agency, bringing total to $700m

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency again came under fire this month for promoting hatred against Jews.

By Debbie Reiss, World Israel News

The U.S. on Tuesday announced that it was granting another $64 million in aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, bringing the Biden administration’s total contribution to the UN Palestinian refugee agency to almost $700 million.

Earlier this month, UNRWA came under fire once again by EU officials over its “endless saga” of antisemitism.

The State Department’s Population, Refugees, and Migration Bureau was cited by the Haaretz newspaper as saying in a statement released Tuesday: “The United States is proud to announce nearly $64M for UNRWA providing health care, and emergency relief to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Palestinian children and families, bringing total support in 2022 to nearly $344M. We call on other donors to contribute.”

Former president Donald Trump cut off funds to the UN refugee agency for being “irredeemably flawed.”

Members of the European Union’s Parliament’s influential Foreign Affairs Committee slammed UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini over the agency’s endorsement of incitement, anti-Semitism, and glorification of terror in its schools and textbooks.

Lazzarini called the findings, which were published in a report by Israeli monitoring group IMPACT-se, “baseless and shameless.”

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However, Foreign Affairs committee member Reinhard Bütikofer, a leftwing politician from the European Green Party, slammed Lazzarini’s remarks.

“I do not agree that those criticisms are ‘baseless and shameless,’ and I’m weary of having to go back to the same conversation year after year. I think it is an easy task to make sure that no anti-Semitic material will ever be financed. So, please—work on the problem[s], instead of insulting those that raise them.”

Committee chair MEP David MccAlister, also slammed UNRWA’s ongoing antis-Semitism as an “endless saga” and called for “sustainable improvements” to its curricula.

The committee’s vice chair, MEP Željana Zovko, accused the UNRWA chief of believing “that we are all stupid” for thinking there was an issue with the textbooks.

The ongoing scrutiny, even from the European left, of the rabidly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel UN agency did not prevent the Biden administration from filling its coffers.