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Biden Administration supports anti-Israel UN organization with massive funding

The U.S. president renewed funding to UNRWA, which employs and covers for terrorists in Gaza while teaching Arab children to hate Israel.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Biden Administration has given massive amounts of aid to a blatantly anti-Israel UN organization working in Palestinian areas such as the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, even as the U.S. president supports the Jewish state both in action and in words during its current conflict with the Palestinian terrorists.

According to State Department figures, since coming into office, Biden has approved the transfer of $730 million to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), making the U.S. its largest backer.

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn charged on X (formerly Twitter) that such funding was a factor in enabling Hamas to upgrade its terror capabilities to the point that it could invade Israel on Saturday and murder hundreds of men, women, and children in their homes and at a music festival, forcing the Jewish state to declare war on the organization.

“Biden admin officials are now saying they didn’t think pouring millions of dollars into Hamas areas would fuel terrorism,” she said in one post. She called for all funding to Palestinians to be stopped, including both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which has only condemned the Israeli military response to the slaughter.

Former president Donald Trump had cut off UNRWA funding in 2018, calling it an “irredeemably flawed operation.” He based this assessment partially on the fact that it is was created to help a few hundred thousand Palestinian refugees from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence yet supports millions by now, as Palestinians of the fourth generation are still considered refugees, unlike in the rest of the world.

Its employment of confirmed Hamas terrorists, plus its dubious fiscal practices, also contributed to the decision, which had as its ultimate goal the closure or complete remaking of the organization.

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Israel had applauded the move, with one official explaining, “Consolidating the refugee status of Palestinians is one of the problems that perpetuates the conflict.”

President Biden had reversed the policy, despite the problems the previous administration pointed out. Other troubling issues include the documented, virulently anti-Semitic rhetoric found in textbooks for all grades that are taught in UNRWA’s network of schools in Arab countries such as Lebanon and Syria, as well as the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip.

The blatant hatred that thousands of Arab children are being taught has led a few European countries to cut funding to the agency.

UNRWA has also enabled Palestinian terrorism by allowing Hamas to station rocket launchers on its grounds and dig terror tunnels beneath its schools in the coastal enclave.

Jewish groups and Republican politicians have been trying to fight back against the funding since it was renewed, so far with no success.

Senator James Risch (R-ID) reintroduced his UNRWA Accountability and Transparency Act in the Senate in February, after it went nowhere the first time he tried to bring it to committee in 2021, when Biden sent over $230 million to the agency.

The bill demands that the American money spigot be turned off again, unless the State Department could certify “that neither UNRWA staff and partners nor its funding and facilities are affiliated with terrorism or disseminating certain rhetoric, such as calling for the destruction of Israel or describing Israelis as occupiers or settlers. Additionally, the State Department must certify that the UNRWA is (1) subject to comprehensive independent financial audits, and (2) not affiliated with any financial institutions complicit in money laundering or terror financing.”