The board of WerteInitiative – jüdisch-deutsche Positionen e.V. states:
The Auswärtiges Amt is resuming cooperation with UNRWA. It is undisputed that the people in Gaza depend on humanitarian aid and must receive water, food and medicines on the ground. That humanitarian aid is nevertheless to continue to be channelled through the scandal-ridden UNRWA leaves us stunned. Germany must campaign internationally for alternative aid structures to be established immediately, above all in Gaza. The neighbouring Arab states, for example, should be held to their obligations to become far more strongly involved in Gaza in financial and humanitarian terms. That cooperation is apparently to take place unconditionally after the findings about UNRWA’s obvious entanglements with terror is, however, a mistake.
Several UNRWA employees were involved in the massacre and the atrocities of 07.10.2023 – they abducted or murdered Israelis – or cheered the terror. There are indications that around 2,000 UNRWA employees are members of the terrorist organisations Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
The report by the head of the UNRWA commission of inquiry and Lazzarini confidante Catherine Colonna now provides the Federal Government with a free pass to resume cooperation with UNRWA. Yet the report omits, for example, the massive problems of antisemitic content in UNRWA school textbooks or the incitement to acts of terror by UNRWA teaching staff. Colonna had already previously attracted attention with statements playing down the anti-Jewish textbook content of the UNRWA books. According to Colonna, UNRWA is now supposed to have known nothing about the use of the terror tunnel system beneath the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.
It must be examined how the commission of inquiry could arrive at such a result, and how neutrally and faithfully to the facts it actually came about.
The Federal Government must ensure that indirect financing and support of terror structures can also be ruled out from now on. Particularly after the findings about the serious entanglements with terror, UNRWA is under an obligation to deliver and must explain in advance, comprehensibly and credibly, how support for terror, glorification of violence and antisemitic agitation within its structures can be ruled out in future. It is not enough for Germany to be given more of a say. Germany is UNRWA’s largest funder in Europe and is accordingly also in a position to set clear requirements for the allocation of funds and their use. UNRWA’s structures must be broken up in the short to medium term and the work of humanitarian aid organisations in the region must be realigned. This also includes the eventual dissolution of UNRWA, which can be replaced, for example, by the UNHCR.
Contact for enquiries: Anna Staroselski / spokeswoman of the association kontakt@werteinitiative.de / Tel: 030 / 234 580 20
About the association WerteInitiative – jüdisch-deutsche Positionen e.V.: since 2014 the WerteInitiative has established itself as a civil-society Jewish voice in Germany. We set out to secure the future of Jewish life in Germany. We therefore campaign for strengthening the values of the free democratic basic order from a Jewish perspective. We do this by promoting values-based political, social and media discourse, civic Jewish engagement in Germany and the German-Israeli relationship. For further information we ask you to visit our website: https://werteinitiative.de/
