
During my tenure as Canadian ambassador to Israel, I had occasion to meet with Pierre Krähenbühl, then commissioner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), to discuss issues of interest to Canada. He made no secret of his distaste for the policies of the Stephen Harper government, which had ended Canadian financial support for UNRWA years earlier. And it was no secret that Harper did so because of his firm and informed view that UNRWA was a highly problematic NGO.
In theory, UNRWA exists to provide support to Palestinian refugees: food, shelter, education, health care. The organization has become a highly politicized vehicle that promotes the dream nurtured among Palestinians to destroy Israel and return to their ancestral homes.
Israel, and many observers around the world, see UNRWA instead a self-sustaining bureaucratic fiefdom, serving the whims of its executives first, at best, and outright hostile to Israel (and sympathetic to its terrorist attackers) at worst.
And now this.
A UN report was leaked several days ago, dropping bombshell allegations: that Krähenbühl’s leadership fostered corruption, nepotism, financial and operational irregularities. And there’s sizzle: reports that Krähenbühl’s alleged mistress, one Maria Mohammedi, was fast-tracked very early on in his tenure into a senior position created for her which, coincidentally, required that she jet about with her boss, first class, on the UNRWA dime.
As an international human rights organization, UNRWA is required to operate on a non-political and, of course, ethical basis. It doesn’t. Anti-Semitism is spewed in educational curriculum in UNRWA schools, and even the social media accounts of staff. The organization is widely known to be operating with near total immunity, answerable to virtually no one.
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See Also:
(1) Shocking Ethics Report Proves Trump Was Right To Defund UN Palestinian Refugee Agency