In fairness, my normal modus aims for irritation over amusement - but I'm vain enough to take any compliments going
Just watching some analysis on Channel 4 news about Israel’s vote to ban UNWRA from Israel and transiting into Gaza and the West Bank. Not only is it a cruel move to deny desperate people aid, food, water and shelter but it’s also designed to erode Palestinian ties to the land, as UNWRA give Palestinians their refugee status, which means they are displaced from the land they own. Without UNWRA Palestinians have no status, and with that no way of preventing any land theft from Israel. Another device to disempower Palestinians and remove them from their ancestral lands, ethnic cleansing via the back door. And all based on the premise that because 9 of the 13,000 employees of UNWRA were kicked out for supporting Hamas attack, the whole organisation and the people they represent should be collectively punished.
There is no reason why the Palestinians cannot or should not be represented more than capably by the UN High Commission for Refugees which does fantastic work for refugees across the globe and for which I have a huge amount of respect and personal experience. I've never been entirely sure why the Palestinians are entitled to their own specific UN body when no other people on Earth is, nor indeed why everyone thinks it is totally fine that this body employs 12,000 more staff than the body servicing the rest of the world's refugees combined, meaning if you're Palestinian, you are privileged to 1 UN staff member per 180 people, whereas if you have the misfortune of being a refugee from anywhere else on the planet, you only get the support of 1 UN staff member per 1832 people. No one talks about this discrepancy. UNWRA has never made sense, irrespective of the recent links to Oct 7th or the fact that its schools openly preach genocide and jihadism against Israel (example from a Grade 8 textbook below, full analysis here: https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/UNRWA-Education-Textbooks-and-Terror-Nov-2023.pdf). As the late great Arsenal philosopher Dr. Claude Callegari once said..."It's time to go".
So some aspects of the UN you have great respect for now ? You never did get back to me on that question of whether you disputed the validity of the UN report into the IDF deliberately killing and torturing doctors and medical staff, because of Eritrea or something …. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/...f-deliberately-hitting-gaza-health-facilities
Your repeated failure to even acknowledge this question has now answered this question. @Citizen Kane.
I've answered it ad nauseum. It's just that my answer is not to your liking, so you continue to ask the question from slightly different angles. Is there a possibility that Israel has been deliberately and unjustly targeting medical personnel? Yes. If found to be true, should those responsible be tried for war crimes? Yes. If those responsible were acting on orders from 'above', should their superior officers also be tried for war crimes? Yes. Do I consider a report commissioned and steered by Navi Pillay as remotely credible? No. Navi Pillay is notoriously anti-Israel. She oversaw the farcical 2001 Durban Conference on Racism that was condemned by almost every western country as a fest of anti-Semitism. She once infamously argued that Israel should be forced to donate Iron Dome batteries to Hamas in order to "make the fight fairer". She is as deluded as she is dangerously biased. Both the US and the EU criticised the decision to appoint her to this Commission of Inquiry. Away from Israel, she was a noted supporter of Robert Mugabe, using her influence in the UNHRC to veto sanctions against him and his government. In fairness, she has contributed some tremendous things, perhaps most notably her work pushing through legislation that classed rape as a war crime and tool of genocide that could be prosecuted as such. But it is difficult to the point of impossibility to take seriously the opinion of someone who has never said a single positive thing about Israel and who keeps company with individuals who openly call for Israel's destruction. If the UN wants Israel and its allies to take these findings seriously, maybe it should stop placing 'Independent' commissions in the hands of people who are so openly biased and find impartial voices instead? So there's my answer again, with more detail and from a different angle. And you still won't like it, but that's what a debate forum is about. Let me know your thoughts about why the Palestinians can't be represented by the UNHC for Refugees, like ever other refugee group on the planet. You side-stepped my dismantling of UNWRA above. Keen to hear why they deserve special treatment when no other group does?
At last, a response. And it's not just Navi Pillay who has been reporting Israeli crimes against doctors and medical staff either. So you can't question the validity of what's happening on the ground, simply because you don't like her. That is a cop out, a lot like your rubbishing of the UN humans rights council and their findings, because of Eritrea. As for Palestinians being represented by UNWRA. I was going to mention it earlier, I don't know in what world you can describe Palestinians as being 'privileged' by virtue of having refugee status, brought about by forcible removal from their land by Israel. The issue here is not your opinion of UNWRA, it's Israel's systematic denial of Palestinian rights, persecution of their people, theft of their land and now after turning their home to rubble, denying them aid via one of the only agencies that could get it to them.
