Israel-Hamas war: Germany joins states pausing UNRWA funding
Israel-Hamas war: Germany joins states pausing UNRWA funding
Germany joined the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries in pausing funding to the UN's aid agency for Palestinians. DW has the latest.
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Strange priorities and logic by powerful country.
Dozen UN staffer involved in warcrime = stop funding and distance themselves with the UN.
Lots and lots of documented IDF warcrime = continued standing with them and funding their warcrime.
Hell, the staffers haven't even been proven complicit! All this is based on is allegations from the Israeli government.
The same Israeli government whose genocidal campaign benefits when aid from organizations like this one doesn't reach the people they're trying to wipe out.
The same Israeli government who has been caught lying about their own actions hundreds if not thousands of times and even has an officially stated policy of lying and fabricating evidence when necessary to further their goals.
The same Israeli government that for decades have repeatedly accused the UN of bias and bigotry when the UN have condemned their atrocious actions.
The same Israeli government whose propaganda efforts suffered a serious blow from the preliminary ICJ ruling just hours before the news about the allegations came out.
I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but this whole thing stinks to high heaven.
You can't change Israel's behaviour by stopping funds, they'd just double down and bankroll stuff on their own. You can get the UN to clean up the UNWRA by suspending funding.
Also, hot take: This is about the best time to do it since UNWRA can't provide aid in Gaza right now anyways, what with the IDF being around and all.
And all this isn't new btw donor countries have been griping around e.g. PA textbooks for ages, UNWRA is teaching from those, say that they're training their teachers to identify and be critical of sections glorifying martyrdom etc, but the record is spotty at best.
And just for completeness' sake yes Israel is doing a similar thing in its education system, just more covert. There's a reason that Poland isn't allowing Israeli security forces to accompany trips to Auschwitz any more as that's part of Israel's "you're safe nowhere but in Israel, everyone is out to get you" indoctrination programme. Simply not allowing Israelis to walk around armed in Poland was sufficient, cutting funds would've been kinda hard as Israel is paying those trips out of pocket. Figures that having those trips is more important to Israel than to indoctrinate so they caved.
You can't change Israel's behaviour by stopping funds, they'd just double down and bankroll stuff on their own. You can get the UN to clean up the UNWRA by suspending funding.
This is the sort of weird logic i'm talking about. You can't change the action of one country so you continue pouring fund and stand with them and defend them of any wrongdoing. How's that gonna change anything when everyone is actively encouraging them to do it rather than pulling back support and funding? If it's another country it will get sanction to hell.
It's like your 12 years old only know how to throw a tantrum whenever they want something and instead of trying to correct it, you continue to support their behaviour and hope one day they will sort of grow out of it. Spoiler alert: it won't.
How’s that gonna change anything
It's not. But other stuff does. I e.g. talked about how Poland dealt with things.
Different actors in different situations require different approaches to change their behaviour. Is that such a controversial take?
And what did the other nation do? In particular German, UK, Australia, US?
Germany is effectively boycotting settlement products and has very deep ties into the whole of Israeli civil society and politics, doing our best behind the scenes to stop Israel from falling to fascism. We're also funding tons of projects in Palestine, along with generally speaking the EU. Because of history and to not risk those deep ties, don't ever expect Germany to play the bad cop.
All these are long-standing and long-term strategies. I mean to even threaten suspending UNWRA funds you have to be funding them in the first place, aren't you.
UK historically has been very friendly with the Arabs so Israelis are apprehensive of them, anyway. They're not a core player. Australia doesn't even register on the radar and the US is, as so often, being bonkers.
The government of Germany or people who are boycotting the settlement products
Those products aren't even in shelves. It's a EU-wide thing btw: Settlement products have to be labelled as such, not "made in Israel", and stores aren't offering them to customers, why would they. It's kinda like advertising a product with "Made in a North Korean slave factory", not exactly a selling point.
That long term strats seems to going down the drain, don't you think? If the conflict started just last year then yeah it makes sense, but none of it makes any sense when the situation becoming worst and worst each conflict, with them claiming more and more West Bank land. What you mention above didn't involve correcting Israel behaviour whatsoever.
That long term strats seems to going down the drain, don’t you think?
I think without Germany Israel would've long since fallen to fascism.
Very hot take. Our media narrative and political communication are incredibly biased towards the Israeli take, we have 100,000s of Palestinian citizens and millions of Muslim citizens whose voices we ignore. We actively cancel funding for peace activists and silence even Jewish Israelis who are anti-Zionist. We still deliver weapons to Israel and now also deny funding for innocent civilians starving & freezing to death. Germany is not only complicit, Germany and other western countries are actively enabling this genocide and it sickens me.
You can’t change Israel’s behaviour by stopping funds, they’d just double down and bankroll stuff on their own.
You can at least make it harder. The idea of "They'll do it anyway so might as well", aside from being dubious at best, doesn't help anyone.
You can get the UN to clean up the UNWRA by suspending funding.
They're already doing that. 13 employees were caught and they were fired (the ones who aren't dead anyway).
And all this isn’t new btw donor countries have been griping around e.g. PA textbooks for ages, UNWRA is teaching from those, say that they’re training their teachers to identify and be critical of sections glorifying martyrdom etc, but the record is spotty at best.
The double standard of expecting perfection from Palestinians while Israel is subjecting them to Apartheid and committing genocide won't do anything to help end the conflict. Don't want people glorifying terror? Stop funding the environment where terror seems like a legitimate means of resistance. Until that happens criticism of Palestinian textbooks is both missing the elephant in the room and very tone deaf.
You can at least make it harder. The idea of “They’ll do it anyway so might as well”, aside from being dubious at best, doesn’t help anyone.
And Poland did so. Different actors require different approaches to influence is all I'm saying. Have you actually read the whole of my comment.
Poland did one thing. On the other hand Israel has preferential economic deals with the EU and are having the US, UK and Germany defend their genocide on the international stage. Props to Poland, but a lot more needs to be done.
The EU is funding Palestine, much to the chagrin of the Israeli right-wing -- but they can't go full on "the EU is our enemy" mode because the EU does not blindly antagonise Israel. And then, in practice, boycotts products produced in settlements (they have to be labelled such, no "made in Israel", and noone is buying settlement products).
It's much easier to influence people when you have both a stick and a carrot. And when it comes to funding that can only ever be a carrot in Israel's case as they have enough resources to do without, while in Palestine you can use it as both stick and carrot.
The situation over here is vastly more complex and most of all the policies much more deliberate than what you hear out of the US, "evangelicals believe that Israel is important for the rupture thus they ship weapons without regards to pretty much anything".
Okay this actually makes a lot of sense. I still believe it's tone-deaf to expect Palestinians to go all peace and love when Israel is like... that, but this explains why the EU isn't as tough on Israel as it could be.