Israel has responded to the International Court of Justice’s urging that it take all steps necessary to prevent acts of genocide, ensure the provision of basic services and essential humanitarian aid, prevent the destruction of evidence and report on measures it has taken to address the findings with a bombshell of its own.
It has alleged that UN Relief and Works Agency workers were actively supporting Hamas and some of them had taken part in the atrocities on Israeli soil on October 7.
Twelve workers of the predominately local workforce of 13,000 were said to be involved.
The allegations initially made me wonder if this was yet another example of Israel seeing Hamas everywhere it looks.
Perhaps there is something in the allegation. But having 0.01% of your workforce being a member of a local organisation albeit one dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Israeli state did not seem to be very unusual. Particularly when you consider that the residents of Gaza have had to tolerate for so many decades.
And the head of the UNRWA took immediate steps to address the issue. The identified people were fired and the various agencies have been informed about what has happened.
Western nations also acted quickly. As well as opposing a ceasefire in Gaza and continuing to support Israel they also took steps to ensure that urgent aid required to stop Palestinians from starving to death was withheld.
And New Zealand to its shame has today decided to follow suit.
This morning Helen Clark praised the Government for not blindly following the United States and Australia and other nations into the withholding of aid.
From Radio New Zealand:
Former prime minister Helen Clark, who led the UN Development Programme which oversees UNRWA, told Morning Report it was the biggest platform for getting humanitarian aid into Gaza for a populations that is 85 percent displaced, with people on the verge on starvation and going without medical supplies.
“If you’re going to defund and destroy this platform, then the misery and suffering of the people under bombardment can only increase and you can only have more deaths.”
Clark said it was “most regrettable that countries have acted in this precipitous way to defund the organisation on the basis of allegations”.
She did not deny the allegations made were serious, but said defunding the agency without knowing the outcome of the investigation was not the right decision.
“I led an organisation that had tens of thousands of people on contracts at any one time. Could I say, hand on heart, people never did anything wrong? No I couldn’t. But what I could say was that any allegations would be fully investigated and results made publicly known.
“That’s exactly what the head of UNRWA has said, it’s what the Secretary General’s saying, that process is underway, but this is not a time to be just cutting off the funding because a small minority of UNRWA staff face allegations.”
In the meantime, people could starve to death or die because they did not receive the medication they needed, Clark said.
But justification for her praise was short lived as the Government decided to hold funding until a review is completed by Foreign Minister Winston Peters.
She has described any decision to withhold aid as callous and simply outrageous. She is correct. Some of the same nations that continue to supply the Israelis with weapons despite all that has happened are willing to immediately shut off urgently required humanitarian aid.
If only the same test was applied by Western Nations about the supply of munitions to Israel. They should halt the export of all munitions until it can be shown by Israel that they will not be used in the killing of innocent men women and children. Just to add a semblance of balance to what is happening in the Middle East.
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