• pjwestin@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I mean, there are 1,300 of UNWRA employees in Palestine, most of them Palestinian. Do I think it’s possible the 13 accused employees were involved in the October attack? Yes, I believe it’s possible that literally 1% of them were involved.

    Do I think that UNWRA as an institution was working with Hamas? Only in the sense that Hamas is in control of the government, and there is literally no way to carry out their mission of aiding the Palestinian people without working the the ruling government.

    Do I think that UNWRA was working the Hamas on planning military attacks, or allowing their building to be used as a base of operations for Hamas terrorists? No, and the IDF is going to have to produce better evidence than a tunnel underneath a building (which they completely leveled) to convince me of otherwise.

    • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      13,000 in UNRWA employees in Gaza, as I understand. The IDF’s dossier also alleged that 1,300, or 10%, were direct supporters of Hamas whilst 50% have close family or close friends who are members of Hamas.

      I don’t think UNRWA itself was officially coordinating the attacks, but I have zero doubt that UNRWA negligently let it’s resources being coopted, and the world needed a reality check on UNRWA’s activities in Gaza. As you said, they do justifiably work with Hamas as much as anyone can justify working with terrorists. The question is how friendly is UNRWA to Hamas and it’s strategies in that work? Some of longstanding allegations are that UNRWA teaches that martyrdom is honorable and that martyrs are heroes. Perhaps that explains some of the shocking numbers of civilians killed?

      • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        You’re right, I misread that statistic…so, literally 0.1%. I highly doubt that 10% number, or at least I believe that they’re inflating it with a loose definition of, “support.” I suspect that a lot of instances of, “directly supporting,” Hamas will turn out to be people working the Hamas government to distribute supplies to civilians, some of which wound up going to militants. The 50% having close friends of family supporting Hamas seems closer to true, but what of it? Going back to your example, I’m sure at least that percentage of Americans have family/friends who support the January 6th rioters, but that doesn’t mean they want to overthrow the government.

        These allegations seem like war propaganda, and the fact that they came out at the exact same time as the ICJ ruling is even more suspicious. Until they are backed up any other credible source, I will treat them as such.