DAMASCUS — At UNWRA offices around the Levant this Winter Solstice, the day which astronomically marks the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days, ‘winters midterm’, is not being celebrated as it has been since ancient times when festivals, gatherings, rituals feasting, singing, dancing, and bonfires were the norm. The winter solstice historically has been vitally important because communities were not certain of living through the winter, and had to prepare during the previous nine months for dramatic rises in starvation, communicable diseases, and infant deaths due to hypothermia were particularly common during the first months of the winter, which became known as “the famine months” in the northern hemisphere.
Preparing for a tough next few months is what the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is doing these days, in the face of daunting odds. UNWRA was founded in 1949 and for more than 60 years has been plagued by harassments, intimidation, and countless conspiracies to close it down waged by the international Zionist lobby increasingly trying to ‘put it out of its misery’ as Prime Minister Netanyahu recently demanded from the US Congress.
Many of UNWRA’s 30,000 employees—including those at the Beirut regional UNWRA HQ opposite Shatila Camp, as well as at the UNWRA HQ in Damascus on Mezzah boulevard where this observer is a regular visitor—talk these days about the grim link between the Syrian crisis and the conditions of over half a million Palestine refugees in UNWRA’s 57 camps, who have been living in exile for six decades. Other major concerns for UNWRA are the nearly one million Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war, as well as the more than one million refugees in Gaza suffering from climatic conditions exacerbated by the brutal Zionist occupation of Palestine.
The UNRWA Syria Regional Crisis Response Plan for 2014, published this week sets out the Agency’s hoped for projects to strengthen the resilience of Palestine refugees, and to help them weather the current dangers of the frigid temperatures and lack of heat and sanitation. This winters solstice, the outlook for Palestine refugees from Syria is increasingly bleak in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, as communities, livelihoods, assets, and support networks painstakingly built over decades are being destroyed.
Proportionally, displacement among Palestinians is much higher than that of Syrians and the threats to safe refuge in Syria combined with severely restricted options for flight has confronted Palestine refugees with unprecedented challenges. UNRWA emergency assistance is normally delivered as part of its well-established programs in health, education, community development, microfinance, relief, youth training, and employment. Delivered by Palestinians staff, this support provides a critical source of community and family resilience and continuity in the face of growing hardship. Of the 540,000 Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA in Syria, about 270,000 are displaced in the country, and an estimated 85,000 have fled. Fifty-one thousand have reached Lebanon, 11,000 have identified themselves in Jordan, 5,000 are in Egypt, and smaller numbers have reached Gaza, Turkey, and farther afield. Those who have reached Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt face risky legal limbo compounded with living conditions so difficult that many decide to return to the dangers inside Syria.
UNRWA officials discuss in detail why the UN Agency requires US$ 417.4 million immediately to respond adequately to the urgent humanitarian needs of Palestine refugees inside Syria, US$ 90.4 million in Lebanon, and US$ 14.6 million in Jordan. US$ 2.4 million is required for emergency response outside of the purview of its field offices, including even token cash assistance for Palestinian families from Syria in Gaza. Financial support to UNRWA has not kept pace with an increased demand for services caused by growing numbers of registered refugees, expanding need, and deepening poverty. As a result, the Agency’s General Fund (GF), supporting UNRWA’s core activities and 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, has begun each year with a large projected deficit. Currently the deficit stands at US$ 36 million.
Winter storm Alexa, the fiercest storm to hit Gaza and the West Bank in over 100 years, is still wreaking havoc and bringing misery to thousands. As of December 19, 40,000 people in Gaza have been driven from their homes due to extreme storm flooding. The flooding has been exacerbated by the fuel crisis that has left people without power for up to 21 hours a day and forced raw sewage to flow through the streets. People’s lives and health are at grave risk. Gaza’s Hamas government said 4,306 in all had been evacuated to schools and other centers used as makeshift shelters in the past four days. Gaza’s 1.8 million people, trying to survive in one of the most densely populated tracts on earth, has also been enduring around 12-hour blackouts daily since the lone power plant was switched off last month due to a fuel shortage. The territory lacks much basic civil infrastructure and lives under an Egyptian-Israeli blockade which curbs imports of fuel, building supplies and basic goods. UNWRA staff reports that the situation is worsening due to severe Israeli restrictions on the camps. Refugees cannot reconnect power lines that have been cut due to the heavy snow and have little access to basic necessities such as running water. The crises are deepening this winter in virtually all of the vulnerable refugee camps. The residents face severe power shortages and some on the West Bank also face systematic attacks by the Israeli army.
Other problems weighing heavily on UNWRA include strikes and threats of strikes by UNWRA employees protesting claimed low wages as well as expressed dismay at the UNRWA’s widely weak humanitarian role in Gaza, which is racked by crises and disasters, most notably, the ongoing blockade and the recent displacement of many citizens as a result of floods. The workers’ union at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza continued protests this week calling for salary increases. One Hamas official accused UNRWA officials of receiving exorbitant salaries without being up to the tasks it was assigned to do, stressing that this presidency must fulfill its commitments or resign. UNWRA officials who this observer spoke with denied this but declined any information about any UNWRA salaries.
UNRWA, like many aid agencies working in Syria, continues to loose staff as their 10th staffer, teacher Suzan Ghazazweh, a popular and accomplished teacher at Abbasyyeh School, Muzeirib, was killed by shrapnel in her home in the afternoon of December 2 when a shell struck her residence in Shamal Al Khatt Quarter in Dera’a.
Enter Professor Alan Derschowitz!
Adding to UNWRA’s myriad problems is the fact that Professor Alan Dershowitz for some reason chose this Winter Solstice to retire after 46 years on the job at the Harvard Law School. Alan departed Harvard’s hallowed halls in order to devote more time to his current central cause and arguably his most challenging case, “saving Israel from itself and from UNWRA!” as he told a Harvard Crimson stringer on background recently.
The past few years, Professor Dershowitz would start off the beginning of semester classes apparently wanting to make a strong impression on his new student’s and to get their attention by offering them his essential view of the law. During the first or second class meeting he reportedly often made references to some of the 13 out of 15 major cases he “won” for the likes of Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, Jim Bakker, Claus von Bulow, and O. J. Simpson, to name a few.
He would explain to his classes: “All my big cases I won on a legal technicality! Those cases were lost causes. Otherwise, why would these clients come to me? The first thing to remember as you continue your legal studies is to forget what the law says or even what the facts of a case are! American appellate courts will decide the facts and the law of a case based on what the best advocate says they are. That’s why I win!” To one public international law class, Professor Derschowitz reportedly sneered, “And you can forget about claims of human rights based on international law and universal standards of morality. You’ll never win s— with that malarkey.”
As he begins preparation for his “legitimization case” on behalf of the last remaining 19th century colonial enterprise, the Zionist theft and continuing illegal occupation of Palestine, Alan, associates claim, will come out swinging against UNRWA. During his teaching career, Alan has been a loyal supporter and some claim a main instigator of AIPAC. He has joined the Zionist Lobby’s more than two decades of attacks on, and trying to cut off the funding of, UNWRA. But until now, he has not been ‘lead attorney of record’.
One source who meets with Professor Derschowitz from time to time in Washington, claims that Alan insists that UNWRA is another one of Israel’s growing number of existential threats “because UNWRA keeps the Palestinian refugee issue alive and allows human rights types to keep the issue of wrongful dispossession of their homes and land before the global community and with no end in sight.”
While making regular trips to Israel, Alan doesn’t come around Lebanon or Syria much, and frankly this observer has only met the fellow a couple of times. He claims to have a photographic memory, and maybe that is why he doesn’t seem to cotton much to this observer. He might remember and even hold a grudge of some kind from our first meeting more than a quarter century ago, when Alan came to see me in my Congressional House Judiciary office in the Rayburn building. I am not sure who referred him, but only an hour earlier, my boss, Congressman John Conyers, Chairman of Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, called to give me a last minute assignment. It was simple enough and I had done it before. Congressman Conyers wanted me to escort a visiting Chief Justice, this time from Egypt’s highest court, to meet across the lawn from Rayburn at the Supreme Court with our CJ, Warren Burger—an easy enough assignment because Burger was always pleasant with a southern style aura of gentility about him. Fifteen minutes before Egypt’s CJ was due to join me, an intense, smallish, fast talking guy shows up and says he is from the Harvard Law School and must join “the Egyptian” during his meeting with Burger. Frankly it did not matter much to me one way of the other, but I did call my supervisor, Hayden Gregory, for advice and he said basically, “Not a chance! No way!” Only later did I learn Alan had rubbed Hayden the wrong way over proposed “Federal determinate sentencing guidelines” an issue before our committee at the time.
Long story short, Alan would not take no for an answer. When I made it clear he was not invited and could not join the meeting, he became angry and stormed off.
He may still remember, but it was not personal with me and this is by way of saying that UNWRA had better baton down its hatches because they have more problems coming their way than they realize or are ready for.
Another anti-Semitic/anti Israel piece from this esteemed website. Many errors in this poorly written piece, errors of fact, spelling and judgment. It’s what one has come too expect from
here and in that vein, good job and consistent with what’s come before.
Ah, Barry. How nice of you to visit once again. If you think there are errors of fact in this piece, you are welcome as always to point them out.
Sure Jeremy, I’ll be happy to point out some of the omissions,
flaws and outright mistakes of this biased article.
His comment:
“UNWRA was founded in 1949 and for more than 60 years
has been plagued by harassments, intimidation, and countless
conspiracies to close it down waged by the international Zionist lobby
increasingly trying to ‘put it out of its misery’ as Prime Minister Netanyahu
recently demanded from the US Congress.”
My comment:
UNWRA was enacted to be a neutral UN organization with
no political agenda but for 60 years has clearly sided with the Palestinians. It’s mandate was to help humanitarian care, healthcare and education but the reality is that it has just perpetuated the refugee problem. This is a phenomena in
which the Palestinians have one UN agency devoted entirely to only their issue (and 30,000 employees) while the rest of the entire world has to make do with just one agency (UNHCR) for every other refuge on the planet. In fact the Palestinians have just one special definition for their refugee status when the
rest of the world has six definitions.
In 65 years there has not been a single resettled
Palestinian refugee. UNWRA has no timetable in which to finish their work and seemingly would like this project to go on indefinitely. I’d like to put any such government agency out of its misery too. There have been no conspiracies as the
author suggests, just the truth of the miserable failing of this agency.
His comment:
Many of UNWRA’s 30,000 employees—including those at the
Beirut regional UNWRA HQ opposite Shatila Camp, as well as at the UNWRA HQ in Damascus on Mezzah boulevard where this observer is a regular visitor—talk these days about the grim link between the Syrian crisis and the conditions of
over half a million Palestine refugees in UNWRA’s 57 camps, who have been living in exile for six decades.
My comment:
While some may be living in exile that is because many
left their homes on the advice of Arab leaders in 1947 when they were told they could return after the Israelis were defeated. And some were no doubt expelled by Israel during that war but history tells us most left on their own accord.
Not a single one of their Arab brothers and Arab
countries has seen fit to take in any refugees and grant them full rights and citizenship. Better to keep them in poverty and hating Israel than to help them for the past 60 years.
His comment:
….has also been enduring around 12-hour blackouts daily
since the lone power plant was switched off last month due to a fuel shortage. The territory lacks much basic civil infrastructure and lives under an Egyptian-Israeli blockade which curbs imports of fuel, building supplies and
basic goods. UNWRA staff reports that the situation is worsening due to severe Israeli restrictions on the
My comment:
Why would there be a fuel shortage? After all, Israel
supplies much of the fuel to Gaza? Does it have anything to do with Gaza owing Israel about half a billion dollars for fuel that was never paid for? As for being deprived of building supplies there is little reason to feel sorry for Gaza. Every time these supplies are allowed in at least a portion are used to
make weapons that will be put into action against Israel. Concrete, steel and other items are frequently
weaponized as the author must surely know. Israel is a slow learner but eventually it decided to curb these imports so as to avoid being killed by those using these goods in an evil way. Pretty logical if you ask me.
Enter Professor Alan Derschowitz!
His comment:
Adding to UNWRA’s myriad problems is the fact that
Professor Alan Dershowitz for some reason chose this Winter Solstice to retire after 46 years on the job at the Harvard Law School. Alan departed Harvard’s hallowed halls in order to devote more time to his current central cause and
arguably his most challenging case, “saving Israel from itself and from UNWRA!” as he told a Harvard Crimson stringer on background recently.
To one public international law class, Professor
Derschowitz reportedly sneered, “And you can forget about claims of human rights based on international law and universal standards of morality. You’ll never win s— with that malarkey.”
My comment:
Look, I wasn’t there to hear Dershowitz make these
comments but he is right. Israel has had the very best claims over the years but no one cares about that, they’d just rather hate Israel. If International Law were the standard, the fighting would be over and Israel would have won by now. See below.
His comment:
As he begins preparation for his “legitimization case”
on behalf of the last remaining 19th century colonial enterprise, the Zionist theft and continuing illegal occupation of Palestine,
My comment:
The only illegal occupation of the land is by
Palestinians, under International Law. Anyone who has read and understood the San Remo Resolutions of 1920 which were incorporated into law and ratified by 51 nations in 1922 by the League of Nations (and adopted in full by the United
Nations) would know that legally, the land in question, including ALL of Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people and now Israel. So Mr. Lamb is factually incorrect, there is no Israeli occupation. And as you know Jeremy, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq all came into being at San Remo in the same way that the reconstituted homeland of the Jewish people did. And later all of Arabia followed a similar path. That’s 550,000 square miles for Arabs and in the end, just over 8,000 for Israel.
It’s important to point out that Israel has not taken any other countries land and that includes Jerusalem. If you don’t believe that, name me the victim countries.
Mr. Lamb mentions a colonial enterprise? The Resolutions readthat the world not only had the right to let Jews settle in what was then Palestine, but an OBLIGATION to help them do so. There has been an attempted theft alright but it’s coming from the other direction.
His comment:
One source who meets with Professor Derschowitz from
time to time in Washington, claims that Alan insists that UNWRA is another one of Israel’s growing number of existential threats “because UNWRA keeps the
Palestinian refugee issue alive and allows human rights types to keep the issue of wrongful dispossession of their homes and land before the global community and with no end in sight.”
My comment:
Well, I’ve already covered this. Imagine, one agency
with this many employees just for the Palestinians and one more for the entire world’s refugees. You could inhabit a city with the workers from UNWRA, a supposedly neutral body constructing a “national heritage”, “collective memory”
and “communal identity” makes it appear more involved in keeping the refugee problem alive rather than ending it.
And let’s not forget that only in this case has a group
of people (750,000) turned into five million as far as refugee count. No where else in the entire world can a group of refugees grow into a larger group that encompasses all future generations. And Israel would not be dumb enough to
allow anything close to this to happen (though they often do act dumb in other ways).
As far as the spelling error I mentioned, there really
is only one mistake and let’s face it, anyone can do that or worse, no big deal. “Lose” only has one o in it, not two.
“UNRWA, like many aid agencies working in Syria,
continues to loose staff as….”
Thank you for the forum to express other viewpoints. Mr.
Lamb and others will not agree with me but the case he makes is shaky at best, and differing viewpoints from amateurs such as myself hopefully will keep him more honest in the future.
Barry, it is amazing that for such a long comment, you didn’t manage to actually point out a single error of fact in the article. Your opinions are not facts.
You claim that most Palestinians “left on their own accord”, but as you know, that is a lie. Palestine was ethnically cleansed of its Arab population. Most were driven from their homes by force or fled out of fear and were never allowed to return to their homes.
Then you try to deny that Israel blocks the importation of fuel into Gaza, even though you know this is true. As for your opinion that “there is little reason to feel sorry for Gaza” when Israel is collectively punishing the civilian population, including by blocking importation of construction materials needed to rebuild after Israel’s full scale military assault on the civilian population and infrastructure, your lack of empathy and willingngess to excuse Israeli violations of international law fully exposes your bigotry.
Etc.
Jeremy, as usual you err. While you and I were not there, most every historian, including esteemed Arab writers have stated that a large percentage of Arabs, though certainly not all, left Areas of then Palestine of their own accord based on Arab leaders telling them to vacate until the Jews were vanquished. And this never happened. Brush up on your history Jeremy before I have to give you some exact quotes.
I am a very empathetic person but I’m more honest than you. The people of Gaza may fear Israel but it is their own leaders who have caused their misery either directly or by the after effects of their violent actions.
Barry, your arguments are simply false. The fact is quite the opposite, that historians don’t take seriously claims such as your that the Arabs left on instructions from their leaders, except inasmuch as they chose to flee out of fear of further massacres. The rest were forcibly expelled in ethnic cleansing operations, as you perfectly well know.
Is tha so Jeremy? You were there right?
Check out barenakedislam.com
as one spot that shows you are wrong. Here’s another…
blogs.timesofisrael.com
read through to the end the comments of Robert Kennedy. Interesting to be reminded that the Arabs fully supported the Nazis desire to kill all Jews, and this was three years before 1948.
Jeremy, whether I offer opinions or facts, neither will ever register with you as you are a close minded person. Intellectually clever but oh so dumb when dealing with reality. Sad to observe that as there are aspects of you that are admirable, but the rest….
My apologies, those links do not take you to the correct clips. Try this
http://www.barenakedislam.com/2014/01/07/finally-an-admission-about-why-so-many-arabs-fled-israel-in-1948/
And this…
URL:http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israel-vindicated-1948-as-told-in-1948-and-by-those-who-lived-it/
Sorry again the first links didn’t bring you to the correct links.
Implicitly arguing that since I wasn’t there I can’t know is a rather silly argument to make, since you weren’t there, either.
There is a documentary record. The Zionist claim that Arab leaders broadcast orders for Palestinians to leave isn’t in it.
http://www.palestine-studies.com/enakba/exodus/Khalidi,%20Why%20Did%20the%20Palestinians%20Leave.pdf
The only element of truth to the claim is that not all Arabs were expelled. Many fled out of fear of further massacres like that at Deir Yassin.
If you think there is something in your links that proves there was no ethnic cleansing, that Arabs simply up and left voluntarily and willingly, that they weren’t fleeing out of fear, that they weren’t expelled by Zionist forces, you are welcome to quote it. I’ve neither the time nor interest to go questing for something that isn’t there.
Jeremy, I know you are not usually this slow but you did not have to go looking for the correct information, as I reposted yesterday with the correct link. Here it is again..,
http://www.barenakedislam.com/2014/01/07/finally-an-admission-about-why-so-many-arabs-fled-israel-in-1948/
This is video of a living breathing Arab gentlemen who tells his story of what happened in 1948. Does he sound like he’s lying? I think not. No one sided study can top this.
Again, I don’t say that no Arabs were forced to leave, it was wartime and atrocities existed on both sides. But a significant number left on their own after being encouraged to do so.
You are always begging me to give you facts and here I present one where an elderly Arab tells his story that the Jordanians told him to leave. Now deal with it and tell me how it doesn’t make your claims false.
Yes, some “left on their own”, as opposed to being expelled. I’ve already acknowledged this repeatedly. The fled out of fear of the violence. The man in the video you link to, for example, states clearly he was warned there was going to be a battle in his village and fled for that reason. But your own example illustrates how dishonest you are being, as he also clearly says he expected to return to his village after two hours. Of course, the Zionist forces did not allow Arabs to return to their homes, either after two hours or 66 years. They were ethnically cleansed from Palestine. But by all means, please keep it up, Barry. Keep demonstrating to the world your intellectual dishonesty and willful ignorance.