[ April 19, 2024 ]
The recent scandal at the very top of UNRWA has been about sex and money. The published account, from this past July, accuses Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl of appointing Maria Mohammedi, with whom he was sexually involved, to a new post, created by him just for her as his senior adviser.
According to the UN report, Mohammedi’s new job allowed her to join Krähenbühl on his busy and expensive travel schedule. Current and former UNRWA officials describe him as perpetually absent from Jerusalem, a director who spent 28-29 days of every month out of the office; they likened him to a submarine who “surfaces for a couple of days” of public meetings and then “disappears into the unknown for protracted periods” when he is travelling with Ms. Mohammedi around the world, staying in luxury hotels as he supposedly conducted UNRWA’s “business,” attempting to persuade various governments to give more money to the organization.
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The commissioner-general’s travel, the report explains, left Chief of Staff Hakam Shahwan in control of UNRWA’s operations in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Shahwan himself stands accused of bullying staff, acting like a “thug,” bypassing procedures for procurement and other financial decisions, and excessive partiality to the Palestinian Authority. UNRWA says he was “separated” from the agency after writing anonymous emails to journalists trying to discredit the report. Shahwan says he’s on paid leave and hasn’t commented on specific allegations.
The 10-page report also accuses Deputy Commissioner-General Sandra Mitchell of using her power to get her husband, Robert Langridge, promoted to a more senior position. She has stepped down but remains on staff. Mitchell and Langridge deny the allegations, as do Krähenbühl and Mohammedi.
One hopes that, now that Krähenbühl has resigned – he tried for days to brazen out the scandal but finally succumbed to the pressure – that Maria Mohammedi will also have been forced to leave. And Hakam Shahwan should no longer be on “paid leave” but discharged from UNRWA for his thuggish treatment of staff, his bypassing of procedures for financial decisions, and his “excessive partiality” to the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, Sandra Mitchell, who “remains on staff,” should also be fired, as should her husband Robert Langridge, whose promotion she instigated.
This scandal involving sex, money, and power is unsurprising. For UNRWA itself is one huge scandal. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was established in 1949 by the U.N., in its Resolution 302 (IV), to “carry out in collaboration with local governments the direct relief and works programs” to help in the rehabilitation of Palestinian Arab refugees, and to “consult with the interested Near Eastern Governments concerning measures to be taken by them preparatory to the time when international assistance for relief and works projects is no longer.” It was always intended to be a short-term measure, helping those refugees until they could be integrated into the Arab countries they now lived in. But instead, those Arab countries did everything they could to keep those refugees from integrating. In every Arab state, with the exception of Jordan, those refugees were not allowed to become citizens. In many places they were, and still are, kept in refugee camps, prevented from living in regular housing among non-refugees. They were also prevented from practicing certain professions. In Lebanon, for example, Palestinian refugees suffer systematic disadvantages. Under Lebanese law, Palestinian refugees are banned from working in over 30 professions, including medicine and law. Palestinians are currently banned from owning property, attending public schools, utilizing public health services, and making an enforceable will. They pay taxes to the National Social Security Fund, yet do not receive any of the benefits. Not just Lebanon, but the other Arab states, with UNRWA as their handmaiden, don’t want to allow these “refugees” to be integrated; they want them to remain as geopolitical pawns, tugging at the heartstrings of the U.N. and the sentimental and gullible West, as they wait — how long, O Lord, how long? — to “return” to their “homeland” of “Palestine.”
In fact, the “Palestinian refugee” problem could long ago have been solved, had the Arabs wished to solve it. Ralph Galloway, former director of UN aid to the Palestinians in Jordan, summarized this situation succinctly. He wrote:
The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die. (quoted in The Palestinians: People, History, Politics by Terence Prittie, p. 71).
And another forgotten voice, from a time when it was still possible for some to state home truths, is that of Elfan Rees, the World Council of Churches’ Adviser on Refugees, who declared in 1957:
I hold the view that, political issues aside, the Arab refugee problem is by far the easiest post-war refugee problem to solve by integration. By faith, language, race and by social organisation they are indistinguishable from their fellows of their host countries. There is room for them in Syria and Iraq [and even more room, and need, now, in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil states]. There is a developing demand for the kind of manpower they represent. More unusually still, there is the money to make this integration possible. The United Nations General Assembly, five years ago, donated a sum of $200,000,000 to provide, and here I quote the phrase “homes and jobs” for the Arab refugees. That money remains unspent, not because these tragic people are strangers in a strange land — because they are not, not because there is no room for them to be established — because there is, but simply for political reasons.
Of the tens of millions of refugees that have been created since World War II, there is only one group of refugees — the “Palestinians” — for whom that refugee status is inheritable. That is, the child or grandchild of a “refugee” is also declared to be a “refugee,” and as the status is handed down, the number of “refugees” on UNRWA’s rolls keeps increasing. There are now over five million such “refugees” in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, the West Bank, and other Arab countries. How many are real refugees, that is, people who actually left Israel in 1948? Perhaps 20,000.
The Israeli government issued a statement, prompted by the resignation of Pierre Krahenbuhl, calling for much wider changes at UNRWA . That Israeli request is here.
The resignation of Pierre Krahenbuhl as commissioner-general of UNRWA on Wednesday was “but the first step in a long process that is needed to eliminate corruption, increase transparency, and prevent politicization” of the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.
“Israel views with great concern the recently published findings of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) investigation into UNRWA and calls for the full and transparent release of all findings of the investigation,” the Foreign Ministry stated. “These findings strengthen Israel’s claims that deep and comprehensive change in the operational model of the agency is required.”
“Under the leadership of UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl over the past several years, the politicization of UNRWA has expanded, the budget deficit has inflated, and the operational model has become unsustainable,” it continued.
“Israel calls on the international community and all contributing countries to take part in an evaluation process to create a new and more effective operational model,” the Foreign Ministry added. “The recent developments prove that the automatic renewal of UNRWA’s mandate for three more years is absolutely absurd, immoral, and unreasonable.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said, “UNRWA’s conduct illustrates that the agency is part of the problem, and not part of the solution. The agency perpetuates the refugee issue in a political manner, and in doing so distances any possibility for a future resolution. The international community needs to find a new model that will provide humanitarian assistance to those who truly need it, and must remove from the agenda the futile idea of the return of the refugees.”
Even stronger was the message from Israel’s U.N. ambassador:
The Jewish state’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said, “Since its establishment, UNRWA has not worked to resolve the refugee issue, but instead fought hard to perpetuate it. The growing list of charges related to the agency’s conduct makes it clear that there is no other solution except to close it.”
Given the sex-nepotism-sinecure-money scandal that has decapitated UNRWA’s executive suite – its three top executive have been removed in disgrace – now is time to insist on a thorough investigation of UNRWA. Objections have been raised before, but this time, they have a real chance not only of being heard, but of being acted on.
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25 Comments
4 years ago
the corruption of this agency and the UN is just following the degenerative path of all human institutions, which makes even more evident the hand of God in the creation of the US constitution and its ability to withstand the test of time, even with the democrats of the last 100 years trying their best to destroy it
4 years ago
Reply to
tituspullo
GUARANTEED! The larger the organization the MORE CORRUPT IT IS.
Just look at OUR government.
Lord Action is RIGHT on this issue.
4 years ago
Reply to
tituspullo
GUARANTEED! The larger the organization the MORE CORRUPT IT IS.
Just look at OUR government.
Lord Action is RIGHT on this issue.
4 years ago
Does this mean all those rumours for the past four decades about UNRAW corruption were true! My faith in the UN is shattered…
All those allegations about UN corruption at the top… I’m shocked, shocked I say!
Next thing we will hear about will be rockets, weapons and bombs stored at UNRAW schools. Oh… Wait…
4 years ago
Reply to
stephen5970
Mine too…
If corrupt politicians like Hillary Clinton aren’t looting countries like Haita, the UN is raping people for food disguised as “peacekeepers”.
4 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
Absolutely true yet you’ve never heard what was done about it
Theis rapist’s should’ve been tried + shot by UN authority right there.
4 years ago
UNRWA may have the dubious honor of being the most corrupt and dishonest unit in an organization with a long history of corruption that has never been adequately addressed.
The USA should remain fully engaged in this world. In the world of today, the is no Fortress America. However:
Get the US out of the UN and the US out of the UN.
4 years ago
Reply to
Liatris Spicata
Instead of Fortress America we have a rotten, corrupt, degenerate, muslum puppet state.
4 years ago
Ain’t never going to happen. Any U.N. “agency” is only there for the edification and uber salaries of its officials. Nothing more. So Israel’s demand for a “new and more effective operational model” is a pipe dream.
4 years ago
The UN is a vile viper den of perversion and evil.
It is THRIVING! Notice the date is 2005 and here we are in 2019.
Nothing has really changed worldwide.
World news
Report reveals shame of UN peacekeepers
Sexual abuse by soldiers ‘must be punished’
Owen Bowcott
Thu 24 Mar 2005 21.43 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/25/unitednations
Even the LIBERAL GUARDIAN admits it.
4 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
And yet the American sheeple will not get off their behinds, petition their representatives, the White House, or anyone else to end the funding of this immoral monstrosity. Our forefathers would never have tolerated this insanity. The Churches would have been shouting against it to the rooftops. Not today. Most people believe that we are supposed to keep our noses out of politics, and keep Christianity confined to the walls of the church buildings until America is allowed to be thoroughly destroyed. The Holy Spirit convicts me of many things. He has never convicted me of being wrong about my attitude concerning these things.
4 years ago
Reply to
movingwaters
The Globalist who paid DemocRAT potus FDR + Truman to install the UN on U.S. soil plan a NWO just as Scripture prophecies with a OWG where buying a selling will be only by number = FDR+Fed’s SocSec #
4 years ago
Don’t care about the damned UN. I wanna see it wiped out of existence. The UN is the main driving force of the ridiculous “Arab Palestinian cause”, and they make the most resolutions against Israel every time they have a security meeting. Well, you know the rest. The faster it’s gone, the better.
Can someone start the tweet #TrumpSanctionUN on twitter? This organization needs to go and not see the light of the day.
4 years ago
Reply to
Kiran Fernandes
Just don’t keep sending them money. The story is about corruption, and our government isn’t supposed to support it, although when Trump mentioned investigating corruption, they are using it as a pretext to impeach and remove him from power. How dare he!
4 years ago
It has been in existence since 1949, that is 70 years, it is time it was abolished and not replaced.
4 years ago
Reply to
cylde
Well FDR promised the IMF in 44 @ Bretton Woods as he signed SocSec numbered Americans over to them as debtor slaves.
Harry Truman then followed thru after FDR croaked + placed the Globalist parasitic organism into our bowels.
4 years ago
Merry Christmas Infidels
4 years ago
Where is Palestine? They are Jordanians, Not Palestinians. King Hussein left them behind for the political reasons To keep the wars going. They are pawns but please call them Jordanians which they are.
4 years ago
Forget the UN and now that the UK has finally voted to leave the EU Trump And Johnson Need to establish a Union Of English Speaking Nations. This was Churchill’s dream. The first step is a trade deal integrating the UK economy with the USA, then to offer the same to Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and Israel (FYI I have never met an Israeli who did not speak English).
4 years ago
Reply to
John Acord
Excellent suggestion and I can imagine how the left will respond. Like the white south Africans, whites anywhere can do no good in their eyes. I would have them all in my country. Strange how everyone ignores Christians and whites being persecuted but not the savages. Whatever happened to governments working on behalf of the people?
4 years ago
Reply to
John Acord
Yes well “linking” nationally as sovereigns still- for mutual benefit and security alliances- also including Canada…be great only *IF…!
Be pushing 500-million people’s tho WE top them all put together economically so would not want to be “the sugar daddy” epic with Britain’s foolish EU started Islamization already in high gear.
*They need to deport them back to native nations as do WE a the rest for being parasitic predatory invaders.
4 years ago
How many kafir refugees have there been from muslum states over the last hundred years? How many Armenians? How many Assyrians? How many Hindus? How many Sikhs? How many Jains? How many Christians? How many Yezidis? How many Zoroastrians? I’m sure it’s in the tens of millions of kafir who have been ethnically cleansed from muslum lands like the Sudan, Kashmir, Pakistain, Bangladesh, Iran, Syria, Iraq, N. Africa (allah of it), Malaysia, Indonesia etc. etc. etc.
4 years ago
The UN is a Globalist criminal enterprise to facilitate their NWO.
UN AGENDA 21 + 30 to usurp Americans authority on our own soil.
4 years ago
According to Forbes the obama has a net worth of $2.8 BILLION. I wonder how much of that is kickback corruption of the Billions he handed out to the muslim countries???
