The Unity Coalition for Israel is a coalition of 200 autonomous Jewish and Christian organizations with an active membership of 40 million, making it the largest network of pro-Israeli groups on the world.
This week UCI urged supporters to lobby US politicians to severe ties with the UN relief agency UNRWA. Citing a Washington Times article entitled "Cut off Relief Agency" Ileana Ros-Lehtinen the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee argues,
"For six decades, the United States has voluntarily contributed billions of dollars to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which was created strictly to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees.
In return for our generous investment, UNRWA subverts our laws, aids violent Islamist extremists, propagandizes against our ally Israel and in favor of Hamas, and works with banks targeted by the United States for money laundering and terrorist financing.
As our nation faces growing economic challenges, Congress must cut off funding to UNRWA and use our foreign aid to advance, rather than undermine, American interests and values."
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen may not be aware that on January 9th 2009 the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) used US weapons to shell a UNRWA school, killing over 40 people in and near the school grounds in Gaza. The IDF of course, first denied it happened, then it denied anyone was killed, then it denied the number killed, then it denied the identities of the dead.According to independent sources,the following week,
"on January 15, at least three IDF white phosphorus shells struck the main compound of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in central Gaza City, wounding three people and starting fires that gutted four buildings and destroyed more than US$3.7 million worth of medical supplies.
UNRWA officials told Human Rights Watch that they had been speaking with Israeli military officers throughout the morning, asking them to halt fire. According to the UN, about 700 civilians were sheltering in the UN compound at the time.
In the attacks on the UNRWA compound and another at the UN Beit Lahiya school, where 1,600 civilians were taking shelter, Human Rights Watch's investigation revealed no apparent military justification for using white phosphorus as an obscurant because Israeli forces were not on the ground in those areas at the time..."
So it perhaps not surprising that UCI is so callously wanting the US House of Representatives to cut off funding to UNWRA. Blaming the victims is not enough. Now they want to silence the international community too.
