White House national security spokesman John Kirby defended the Biden administration’s support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Thursday, as UNRWA faces accusations of allowing Hamas terrorists to use its facilities.
UNRWA is a unique agency created after the 1948 war, when Arab states failed to destroy the newly-independent State of Israel in a conflict that saw roughly 700,000 Palestinian leave their homes, many at the encouragement of Arab leaders. Experts say that UNRWA helps perpetuate conflict by supporting the idea that Palestinians who have lived for generations in other countries or in Palestinian-controlled areas are still “refugees” whose true home is Israel, which Palestinian terror organizations want to destroy.
In addition, UNRWA has been accused, over many years, of indoctrinating Palestinian children to hate Israel and Jews. Several UNRWA staff reportedly praised the Hamas terror attack of October 7, in which several graduates of UNRWA schools reportedly participated. A UNRWA teacher allegedly helped imprison an Israeli hostage, and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers routinely find weapons in UNRWA facilities. Recently, Hamas terrorists fired at IDF soldiers from a UNRWA school, and on Thursday the IDF reported that its soldiers found a booby-trapped UNRWA daycare facility in the West Bank, where UNRWA also operates.
Jake Turx, the White House correspondent for the Orthodox Jewish magazine Ami, posed a question to Kirby during Thursday’s White House briefing — with a preface noting that Wednesday was the first birthday of Kfir Bibas, an Israeli baby abducted by Hamas.
Baby Kfir and Bibas family hostages (Jewish Breaking News / Telegram)
Turx asked for the White House’s reaction to Hamas’s presence in UNRWA facilities. “Does this make them complicit in any way? How does the administration view this, and is there any way that you plan on adjusting your strategy, moving forward?
Kirby replied that UNRWA does “important work” in trying to “get food, water, [and] medicine” to Palestinians in Gaza. “You can’t hold them accountable for the depradations of Hamas,” he said. Turx then asked whether UNRWA should not, “at the very least, raise the alarm” about Hamas’s use of their facilities. When Kirby tried to deflect the question to the United Nations, Turx pointed out that the Biden administration gives UNRWA “a billion dollars.”
President Donald Trump ended funding to UNRWA in 2018, but Biden restored $700 million in funding — including the money Trump had withheld — as soon as Biden took office.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
