Full Remarks
Hi, this is Anthony Housefather. I am the member for Mount Royal District in the island of Montreal in the Canadian House of Commons, and I want to thank Hillel Neuer and UN Watch for this really important forum to discuss how we reframe aid given to Gaza.
I strongly support Canada’s decision to pause funding for UNRWA. The claims that have been made, the allegations, of UNRWA personnel being involved in the horrific pogrom of October the 7th in Israel, when innocent men, women, children, civilians were slaughtered, butchered, raped, is deeply troubling.
But this is not the first time that UNRWA has been accused of corruption. This is not the first time that I have been disappointed, disturbed, distressed about what UNRWA has been doing internally.
Let’s leave out the question whether or not the United Nations really needs two different associations that deal with refugees, having different definitions of what a refugee is and having different policies in place.
One of my biggest concerns about UNRWA has always been its curriculum: the idea that UNRWA was teaching local curriculum in its schools and was then adapting it to conform to UN policies.
When Canada first signed on to refund UNRWA after the Liberal government was elected in late 2015, we signed on a year or so later, one of the important frameworks in our contract was our right to audit educational materials and be involved in enhancing and replacing the curriculum where there was antisemitism or other forms of hate against women, minorities, etc. And I take that very seriously, and my colleague Michael Levitt and I, on a quarterly basis, would meet with Canadian officials, would meet with UNRWA, and go over the progress. We were always led to believe that this was to replace the pages in the textbooks. Lo and behold, two years later, we found out that textbook pages were never replaced. What happened was the very hard work that had been done to develop a revised curriculum was given in loose form to teachers and they were told when they arrived at these pages in UNRWA schools to hand it out.
There was no proof that the teachers ever did hand it out, no obligation on the teacher’s part to actually do so. And it seemed to be exactly the opposite of what I had always been told was going to happen, which of course, was there’d be a new textbook with these pages in it, and ever since then, my distrust in UNRWA has only served to increase.
So I strongly believe that Palestinians and Gaza need relief. That is very clear. I think we all agree with that. Gaza will need to be rebuilt. And we all want men, women, and children living in Gaza, and all over the world, to live in peace and safety and have healthcare and have education. And the world really needs to do a job to reform how that is happening. I would vastly prefer that a different organization other than UNRWA delivered the support that has currently been delivered by UNRWA.
I know that it’ll take time, but I think the world has to recognize there’s a deep cynicism amongst many of us about UNRWA’s past, and we would be better served to place the faith of the people of the world and the people of Gaza in a different organization.
Thank you so much.
