Jew World Order

Palestinians who had taken shelter in a school run by UNRWA transport their belongings as they return to their neighborhoods hit by Israeli bombardment in Gaza City, on May 21, 2021. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)

UNRWA Funding

In April President Biden announced that he was restoring funding to UNRWA, the United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees. This was no small thing, but the context is obviously crucial. Why do many Palestinians need relief? Because their homes are either stolen or destroyed. Who steals and destroys their homes? Israel. Where does Israel obtain the resources to do this? The United States government.

Within a couple months of Biden restoring UNRWA funding, there were forced expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah, and Gaza was being attacked. Gaza public works and housing says that almost 17,000 residential and commercial units were destroyed. The UN says that 800,000 Palestinians are currently without clean water as a result of the bombings. “The biggest need is mental health,” said Gaza director of UNRWA said in a recent interview. “You cannot live through four wars and think it doesn’t affect you.”

Now Israel wants another billion from the United States on top of the $3.8 billion it already gets every year and the $735 million in weapons that the Biden administration just sold them. The Biden administration committed more assistance to Gaza’s reconstruction after the attacks, raising that amount to a little less than 9% of what Israel gets from U.S. taxpayers every year. In fact, UNRWA funding was actually higher under Obama.

Members of Congress are working on this shameful discrepancy by fighting for Palestinians to get nothing and Israel to get more. Missouri Rep. Michael Guest has introduced H.R.3706, a very straightforward piece of legislation. It would take the small amount of money earmarked to help Gaza rebuild and give it to Israel. This is the House companion to S.1751, which was introduced by Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty. It’s cosponsored by Cruz, Rubio, and Cotton.

These bills don’t have much support in congress yet, but the Biden administration is predictably caving into a number of adjacent narratives. Yesterday U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the House Judiciary Committee that Biden is going to reform the funding process for the relief agency and make sure every penny is scrutinized carefully.

“We are putting all of our weight behind monitoring everything that UNRWA does and monitoring the funding that the U.S. government provides to this organization,” she told legislators. “I met with the commissioner for UNRWA early in my tenure in New York and made clear in no uncertain terms that the U.S. will be watching everything they do very, very closely.”

She also praised UNRWA for halting the distribution of educational materials which were deemed anti-Israel. This is a longtime obsession of groups looking to block aid to Palestine. An Israel-based NGO called IMPACT monitors all textbooks for infractions. Concerning violations include use of the word “occupation” or referring to the existence of “Zionists.”

“Much more clarity is needed,” IMPACT CEO Marcus Sheff told Jewish Insider. “I think UNRWA is simply back to its years-long modus operandi of assuring donor countries it is dealing with the hate while precisely nothing changes in the UNRWA classrooms where the Palestinian textbooks are taught. After UNRWA printed its own hateful teaching materials last year, this unverifiable self-regulation ship has obviously sailed.”

Unverifiable self-regulation, what a concept. There are a number of existing laws which hypothetically prohibit the United States from providing military aid to countries with terrible human rights records. Of course these rules are altogether meaningless. The President has referred to the very concept of conditioning aid (not cutting aid, just conditioning it) as a “gigantic mistake.” The same month that Biden restored UNRWA funding, Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum introduced H.R.2590, the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. The legislation aims to actually hold Israel somewhat accountable for its actions.

A new Data for Progress poll found that 72% of Democratic voters support McCollum’s. However, the bill currently has just 27 cosponsors. That’s less than 13% of House Democrats. Dems might not sponsor legislation that seems quite as outlandish as the GOP’s when it comes to Israel, but they’re playing the same game and Palestinians continue to suffer as a result of it.

Block the Boat

Last week I spoke with AROC executive director Lara Kiswani about how Bay Area activists successfully blocked an Israeli cargo ship from unloading. The effort has moved to Seattle. Dock workers have refused to unload a ship from the ZIM company in solidarity with Palestinians. According to a petition in support of the action, the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest is pressuring Seattle public officials to force the workers to unload it.

We will definitely cover this story more in the coming weeks, but I wanted to highlight what Kiswani told me about how ZIM is connected to Israeli apartheid:

ZIM was actually an instrument used in the settler colonial project of the state of Israel. It brought over European settlers to Palestine in 1948. It also historically has exported weaponry from the state of Israel to various parts of the global south, but also to the United States. And in 2014, when we were blockading the ship, the same shipping line was bringing weaponry to ports across the United States to be used against black and brown communities.

And at the time, of course, there were the Ferguson uprisings as well. So there’s a direct connection between the Israeli ZIM ship and the settler colonial project of the state of Israel. It’s the largest shipping line from the state of Israel and it has an ongoing role in global militarism and policing, broadly speaking.

Odds & Ends

🇮🇱 Americans for Peace Now (APN) says it’s become the “first progressive Zionist organization” to support conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel. The group’s CEO Hadar Susskind (an IDF veteran) has a piece in Time Magazine breaking their reasoning down. “If the U.S. wants to nurture peace and support international law, we must explicitly ensure that our tax-payer dollars serve our foreign policy objectives, that they do not go towards human rights violations, and that there are specific consequences if they do,” he writes. What if our foreign policy objectives include human rights violations though?

🏛️ Voters are more likely to think Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent tweet about ICC accountability is antisemitic if they know she said it. Wow, what could possibly account for this development?

🥯 A bagel shop in Pittsburgh is under attack for sharing a social media post about how people can help Palestinians. Someone posted a sign outside the restaurant claiming “they support murder of Jews by standing with Hamas terrorists and Marxist racist BLM radicals.”

🇮🇱 Peter Miller has a piece about Senator Ron Wyden’s PEP legacy: “Senator Wyden may champion the rights of U.S. citizens against government surveillance, but Wyden leaves his progressive values behind when U.S. citizens use their free speech rights to take action for Palestinian human rights.”

🇵🇸 The Seattle Education Association (which represents about 5500 teachers and staff in Seattle public schools) voted to endorse BDS and their local End the Deadly Exchange Campaign.

🇺🇸 There’s reports that Venmo is blocking Palestinian-related transactions. Rep. Mark Pocan sent the company a letter demanding answers.

Stay safe out there,

Michael

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