"And this is the organization without whose support John
Kerry would refuse to take action to protect America's
security."
THE U.N.'S TERROR PROBLEM
NY Post
October 5, 2004 -- Israel is up in arms — and rightly so: The head of the key United Nations agency dealing with the Palestinians has admitted that his organization employs members of the terrorist group Hamas.
Worse yet, he says he has no problem with that.
There's more. Israeli officials have released an alarming videotape that shows terrorists using an official United Nations vehicle to transport Qassam rockets. (The video was shot from an unmanned Israeli drone over the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza.)
The same terror-friendly U.N. official — Peter Hansen, the director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — insists the tape only shows a stretcher, not a rocket, being loaded into the truck.
(PLO leader Yasser Arafat has chimed in on the dispute with the incredible claim that the easily hidden and transported Qassam missiles, which have become a weapon of choice for groups like Hamas, cause no casualties and "only make noise.")
But Israeli officials are standing by their accusation and demanding a full investigation — and Hansen's immediate firing.
Yesterday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched a formal probe. (Meanwhile, the Security Council got set for a special meeting to condemn Israel for its latest military response in Gaza — as always, with not a word about the murderous Palestinian terrorism that preceded it.)
Canada, a major financial backer of UNRWA, is asking for a "clarification" from the United Nations. Washington, another big donor, should go even further and suspend its payments.
The video is damning enough — though it's hardly surprising in light of the United Nations' long and sorry history of one-sided bias against Israel.
Back in October 2000, recall, the United Nations sought to hide a videotape showing the aftermath of three Israeli soldiers being kidnaped along the Lebanese border by terrorists from Hezbollah. Pressed by Israel, the world body finally admitted the tape existed — but refused to release it until the faces of all the terrorists were first obscured.
That was necessary, the United Nations said, in order to protect its own strict "neutrality."
In fact, the U.N. won't even admit that such groups engage in terrorism against Israel.
Which is why UNRWA's Hansen says of the presence of Hamas members on his payroll: "I don't see that as a crime." Hamas, he says, "is a political organization . . . and we do not do political vetting."
All he demands of his staff, says Hansen, "is that they behave in accordance with U.N. standards." And we all know what those standards are.
Israel's U.N. ambassador, Dan Gillerman, has written the secretary-general to charge that "instead of serving the interests of peace, the U.N. enlists in Gaza . . . on the side of terrorists."
And this is the organization without whose support John Kerry would refuse to take action to protect America's security.
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