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April 13th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank, August 13, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Abed Omar Qusini.
As news of President Biden’s decision to renew funding for UNRWA broke, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini was speaking at a UN event on “Delivering Critical Assistance for Palestine Refugees.” Ironically, Lazzarini’s speech demonstrated why keeping UNRWA on life support serves no end other than keeping peace a distant dream.
The event was organized by the “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” (CEIRPP). Created on the same day as the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution, CEIRPP has become one of the UN’s main anti-Israel propaganda bodies.
Readers may remember a recent example of the type of anti-Israel vitriol promoted by this committee when Marc Lamont Hill preached “give us what justice requires, and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea” in 2018. One might also recall when the infamously antisemitic Roger Waters was a guest of honor at the UN in 2012 and was given a microphone to compare Israelis to Nazi occupiers. Both statements were made at CEIRPP events.
Humanitarian agencies are known to steer clear of politics, which would distract from their mission. With CEIRPP’s contemptible history as a unique political platform created to demonize the Jewish State, why, then, would Lazzarini willingly participate in such an event?
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Simply put, because UNRWA’s mere existence — separate from the UN’s main humanitarian agencies — is political. The title of the event, “Delivering Critical Assistance,” and Lazzarini’s speech itself, illustrate this point. While pleading for more money, Lazzarini told the story of a young person:
[S]he explained to us how difficult it was to do e-learning, or distance learning, with her household of seven daughters, all of them needing a device. And all of [a sudden], she burst into tears and she said that ‘my dream has always been to be accepted at Oxford. But how do you want me to be accepted at Oxford if I do not have access to a device and do not have access to digital learning?’
While I truly empathize with this young woman, the story begs the question: in what way is this about “critical assistance”? When one thinks of critical humanitarian assistance, it conjures up images of delivering emergency food or medicine to desperate populations in warzones or famines. Instead, Lazzarini spoke of a social problem affecting people everywhere. Even here in the US, who doesn’t know of children who have struggled through distance learning and limited access to devices?
The literacy rate in the West Bank and Gaza is an impressive 97.2%. Compare that with neighboring Egypt, where the literacy rate is only 71.2%. The UN’s Human Development Index also ranks the “State of Palestine” higher than nearby countries like Egypt and Morocco, to say nothing of the region’s conflict-ridden states.
Are Yemeni and Syrian children who dream of Oxford less special than a Palestinian child? It warms my heart to hear of a young person who dreams of an elite education, but surely many across the world with the same dream face far more challenging barriers.
In this way, Lazzarini highlighted the absurdity of UNRWA.
Why is an entire agency needed just for the Palestinian people? The truth is that UNRWA’s continued existence is pure politics. There is no legitimate reason why any humanitarian crises, real or imagined, facing the Palestinians cannot be handled like any other crisis by the UN’s main humanitarian agencies like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The agency’s apologists claim it is necessary because the Palestinian situation is “unique.” But what humanitarian situation isn’t unique? What about Somalis who have been living through conflict, famines, and the hopelessness of a failed state for decades? Are they less deserving? What of the region’s Kurds and Yazidis who have, through the decades, faced Saddam’s chemical weapons, ISIS genocide, or the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Turkish-occupied Syria?
President Biden has regrettably chosen to reinforce a narrative of Palestinian exceptionalism. When the world treats the Palestinians as uniquely deserving of special humanitarian treatment, it’s no surprise their leadership demands special political treatment. Reinforcing the narrative that Palestinians deserve special definitions and agencies will only embolden Palestinian demands for exceptional peace terms, like the non-existent “right of return,” which would be laughed out of any peace negotiation in any other part of the world.
“UNRWA is part of the problem, and not part of the solution,” wrote Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf in their book “The War of Return.” Perhaps before wasting $150 million on a failed institution, President Biden should have spent $20 on their book.
The author is a lawyer who advocates for Israel.
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