Israel welcomed the suspension of donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a spokesperson said Monday, welcoming an internal review of the agency after it was discovered to be directly implicated in Palestinian terrorism against Israel.
Earlier Monday, the European Union announced an audit of UNRWA funding after nearly a dozen other countries, including the United States, in cutting off funding. Last week, it was revealed that a dozen UNRWA staff had participated in the October 7 terror attacks, apparently joining the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri, and abducting and holding Israeli hostages.
Ilana Stein, spokesperson at the National Public Diplomacy Directorate, noted in a press briefing Monday that Israel had produced evidence of radical teachings in UNRWA schools for years, though these early warnings had been ignored.
President Donald Trump suspended U.S. donations to UNRWA in 2019; President Joe Biden restored them in 2021, though he suspended them last week upon news of UNRWA’s involvement in terror.
In an overview of progress in the war, on its 115th day, she noted that an additional Israeli soldier had fallen, bringing Israel’s total military casualties to 557, over 200 of whom have died since the counter-attack in Gaza began.
She noted that meetings this weekend between Israel and the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar toward negotiating a new release of hostages had ben “constructive.” However, she said, “there are still significant gaps” that will be discussed at later meetings this week.
Hamas intends to use the hostages to stop the war; Israel wants to continue fighting until Hamas is completely destroyed, though it is willing to let some Hamas leaders escape with their lives, if necessary to secure the freedom and return of the hostages.
Stein noted that 88 trucks of humanitarian aid had reached Gaza in the previous day, including 440 tons of water, 210 tons of medical supplies, two tankers of fuel, and four tankers of cooking gas. She did not mention the growing protests by families and supporters of the hostages at the Israeli Kerem Shalom crossing point, where demonstrators have tried to block humanitarian aid to Gaza until the hostages are released.
Asked by Breitbart News whether, and how, Israel intends to implement the ruling last week at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that requires Israel to punish so-called “incitement” to genocide, Stein said that the ruling “aligns with what we have been doing so far.”
She did not comment on a gathering on Sunday in which far-right politicians had called for Israeli settlement in Gaza and for encouraging Palestinians to leave the territory, which critics said would only provide “ammunition for The Hague.”
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
