Earlier this month, the Biden administration reversed its previous and deeply foolish decision to de-list the Houthis as a terrorist organization -- a reflexive anti-Trump move rooted in a dangerously ill-conceived effort to appease Iran. The Houthis have been attacking Americans and terrorizing international shipping lanes, with other Iranian proxies routinely assaulting, and now killing, Americans. Reality has reduced Biden's foreign policy to a smoldering wreckage. It turns out that bending over backwards to accommodate the Iranian regime doesn't improve their conduct. And sternly chanting "don't" for the cameras isn't actually a deterrent to their escalating violence-by-proxy. Weakness is emboldening. But as we noted, there's less than meets the eye to Biden's about-face on the Houthis, as the new re-designation has less teeth than the previous classification, and is packed with loopholes and waivers.
They got their headlines about the designation going back into place, just under the hood, it's a more feeble action than it would seem. Similarly, you may have read that the Biden administration has frozen funds to UNRWA, the United Nations operation in Gaza, after explosive and credible allegations emerged that a dozen UNRWA employees were directly involved in the planning and execution of the October 7 Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians. The Trump administration stopped funding this deeply corrupt organization back in 2018, then Biden quickly restored the money upon taking office. Now that this move has blown up in his face, Biden has belatedly and apparently temporarily stopped the cash flow to UNRWA. But as we saw with the Houthis climbdown, there's a catch:
Wow.@JerylBier discovered that the State Department saying they were pausing funding to UNRWA only applies to new commitments. They plan to continue to use US taxpayer money to fund current projects despite evidence of the group abetting terrorism. https://t.co/zXIfqouXVV
— AG (@AGHamilton29) January 28, 2024
On Friday, in response to allegations that employees of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) had been involved in Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, the State Department announced that it had “temporarily paused additional funding” for the United Nations agency. The funding pause, however, applies only to new and additional funding, not funding already obligated before the pause went into effect on Wednesday, a State Department spokesperson told Pluribus. When asked for details on what obligations would and would not be affected by the pause, the spokesperson directed Pluribus to a fact sheet released by the State Department on January 16, 2024...The fact sheet reports that funding already committed or obligated to the UNRWA for fiscal 2024 for work in the West Bank and Gaza totaled $51 million as of January 16. Although the State Department did not directly answer questions about the amounts or the timing involved in distribution of funds, the spokesperson stated that “we are pausing any new or additional funding. Contributions to UNRWA that were not obligated as of January 24 are suspended, contributions to UNRWA obligated prior to this date remain in effect.”
The piece chronicles how US taxpayers have been sending hundreds of millions of dollars to UNRWA annually, thanks to the Biden administration's decision. And the much-hyped 'pause' in funding doesn't apply to a huge tranche of already-committed dollars. Again, this is softness masquerading as toughness. And it's not as if the alleged UNRWA-Hamas terrorists are unrepresentative outliers. Remember this? "There is not one case where an UNRWA teacher objected:"
So it turns out that several thousand UNRWA staff openly celebrated the October 7 massacre in their Telegram groups.
— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) January 28, 2024
This is what people like @OwenJones84, @HumzaYousaf and others want you to keep funding.
Worth reading for yourself. https://t.co/SLPB6z6BlG
This report details how UNRWA teachers in a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram group cheered and celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre while at the same time asking when their UNRWA salaries will be paid. The UNRWA staff in the group shared photos and video footage of those events and prayed for the terrorists’ success and for Israel’s destruction, in clear violation of UN rules. This is the latest in a series of reports on UNRWA staff antisemitism and incitement to jihadi terrorism which our research proves is systemic and widespread. Since 2015, UN Watch has exposed over 150 UNRWA staff Facebook pages that contain antisemitism and incitement to jihadi terrorism in blatant violation of UN neutrality.
It seems UNRWA employees, including teachers, weren't just celebrating the slaughter of Jews; some took part in the slaughtering. The complicity runs deep:
Breaking: another UNRWA teacher held an Israeli as hostage in captivity in Gaza. New information reveals that UNRWA workers that held Israelis as hostages, took them from one hideout to another through UNRWA’s facilities. @bokeralmog @aviadglickman broke the story.
— נריה קראוס Neria Kraus (@NeriaKraus) January 28, 2024
Yet even all of this has not caused the Biden brain trust to shut off the money spigot, reimposing a correct Trump-era policy. Indeed, US taxpayer dollars will keep being pumped to UNRWA, the temporary 'pause' on new aid notwithstanding. This is who and what we are dealing with at UNRWA:
UNRWA is essentially a large money laundering scheme. Hamas/[Palestinian Authority] needed a way to pay their militants regularly, to establish schools to teach hate, to launder $ to their leaders, to maintain buildings to store weapons, and to steal aid/equipment for developing a military infrastructure. They didn’t want to establish an actual economy for Palestinians to focus on becoming more prosperous because that’s not the goal, so instead they just built an infrastructure that centralized terrorism and had everything else be adjacent to those activities. How do you think Hamas and PLO leaders became billionaires? Where do you think that money came from? They get a cut from the $ we send. There are millions of refugees around the world, but the point of other refugee groups is resettlement. That’s where the money goes. UNRWA is the only one that doesn’t even attempt to resettle and that even counts people born in other places (so not real refugees by any logical definition) as refugees to maintain that permanent status for Palestinians because that way they can demand more money to launder for leaders to steal and terrorism. The fact that there are terrorists part of UNRWA isn’t an accident or poor vetting -- it’s the entire purpose of the way the group is structured.
In short, Trump was right to cease American funding to this terrorism racket, just as he was right to label the Houthis a terrorist organization, just as he was right to pull the US out of the abominable UN 'Human Rights' body. Team Biden only partially reverses course when conditions are too outrageous and embarrassing to maintain their failed posture -- and even then, they pursue half measures, dressed up as more muscular action. Biden's manifest foreign policy failures are not merely humiliating; they're dangerous, and we're seeing the consequences playing out all over the world, on a daily basis. And while we're on the topic of Hamas and its supporters, I'll leave you with this:
Hamas supporters glorifying martyrdom and demanding an expanded terrorist intifada — on campus at an Ivy League school in NYC: https://t.co/7vEFvdX3ga
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 26, 2024
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