UNRWA funding must be restored immediately!
APRIL 22, 2024
“Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency UNRWA are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has said,” the Guardian reports. “The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that UNRWA had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that ‘the Israeli government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns relating to any UNRWA staff based on these staff lists since 2011’.”
Israel’s allegations about the involvement of UNRWA staff in the 7th October Hamas attack led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Most of the donor nations – with the exception of the USA – have now resumed their funding, but Tory ministers had said they would wait for the Colonna report before making a decision.
Now the Colonna report is clear, there should be no further delay in Britain resuming funding. A Momentum spokesperson said: “The Tories should never have suspended funding to UNRWA and Labour should never have supported it either. As the people of Gaza suffer in famine, it is well past time for David Cameron to immediately restore the UK’s funding to UNRWA.”
Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Minister for international development, is now calling for support for the agency, warning that “time has run out for hundreds of thousands” of people in Gaza. This is a welcome U-turn from the Labour front bench, which initially supported the Tory government over the suspension of funding – all based on unsubstantiated allegations from Israel which has been accused of carrying out a genocidal onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza.
In recent days, 200 bodies have been found in a mass grave at a hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis. Much of the city is now in ruins after months of relentless Israeli bombardment.
More than six months into the Israeli onslaught, more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 13,000 children and 8,400 women. An additional 8,000 people are missing, and nearly 76,000 have been injured. Almost the entire population of around 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip has been displaced, and 62% of all homes have been damaged or reduced to rubble.
There will be a further mass demonstration for a ceasefire in London this Saturday, despite the antics of Gideon Falter of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, supporters of whom want to see such protests banned. Falter claimed he was prevented by police from crossing the road during a previous London march in support of Palestine.
The police were forced to apologise for their treatment of Falter. But it has now emerged that the officer in question was concerned after he had seen Falter acting in a way that led him to believe he was trying to provoke a confrontation with marchers. That fuller account showed “a totally different encounter to the one that Mr Falter has reported,” said a former Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent.
Former Labour minister Chris Mullin echoed the views of many when he tweeted: “Why can’t BBC news try interviewing some of the impressive Jews who were on the demonstration instead giving air time to a stunt by that Zionist trouble-maker Gideon Falter?”
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