Our community favours the provision of aid to civilians in Gaza who are in desperate need, but we are totally opposed to the use of UNRWA as an agency for deliv­er­ing that aid.  To say that UNRWA as a whole is not a terrorist organ­isa­tion sets a very low bar indeed for the kind of agencies with which Australia will partner.  It has been demon­strated that UNRWA employees, including school­teach­ers, par­ti­cip­ated in the Hamas massacre of October 7 and many others have col­lab­or­ated with Hamas in other ways.  They are indeed ter­ror­ists even if the organ­isa­tion for which they work is not des­ig­nated as such.

In fact UNRWA is so intim­ately connected to Hamas that no level of external control, even with UNRWA’s stated agreement, has been able to prevent large quant­it­ies of aid from being com­mand­eered by Hamas at the expense of Gazan civilians.  The vast resources that have been squandered in con­struct­ing Hamas’s extensive labyrinth of tunnels, much of which has now been destroyed, are testament to that.

It remains our view that deliv­er­ing aid through UNRWA poses an insur­mount­able risk of Aus­trali­an taxpayers’ money being wasted or, worse still, being used in part to support Hamas’s terrorist activ­it­ies.  Other agencies such as the World Health Organ­iz­a­tion, the World Food Programme, the Red Cross and UNICEF admin­is­ter aid and human­it­ari­an services in Gaza and these bodies would be far more trust­worthy conduits of Aus­trali­an aid funding.

Daniel Aghion KC
President, Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry