UN aid agency ‘saving Gazan kids’, says Penny Wong
Penny Wong has signalled she wants to quickly reinstate funding for the UN’s aid agency in Gaza accused of aiding Hamas’ October 7 massacre.
Penny Wong has signalled she wants to quickly reinstate funding to the UN’s aid agency in Gaza accused of aiding Hamas’s October 7 massacre of Israelis, declaring it is “the only organisation” delivering assistance to 1.4 million desperate Palestinians.
The Foreign Minister said the allegations against UNRWA needed to be urgently investigated and “those responsible” held to account. But she said Australians needed to consider the plight of Gazan civilians.
“We have reports from the UN that 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza are actually starving and a million are at risk of starvation,” she said.
Her comments came as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the agency the “backbone” of Gaza aid, after several countries suspended funding over Israeli claims that 12 UNRWA staffers participated in Hamas’ October 7 attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday AEDT said the UN agency had been “totally infiltrated” by Hamas, and “we need to get other UN agencies and other aid agencies replacing UNRWA”.
Senator Wong approved a further $6m in funding for the UN agency on January 16 – less than a month after Jewish community and business leaders warned her to halt support to UNRWA because of evidence it helped Hamas carry out its October 7 terrorist attacks.
The Australian has obtained a letter sent to the minister just weeks after Labor’s election victory warning that UNRWA promoted educational content glorifying the killing of Israelis, jihad and martyrdom for the purpose of perpetuating conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Our central concern is that UNRWA as an institution is inherently structured to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee problem rather than solve it,” he said.
The letter said the UNRWA, over the previous two years, had produced Palestinian school textbooks that replicated the curriculum of the Palestinian Authority and inculcated “attitudes among Palestinian children inimical to any kind of peace with Israel.”
It referred to a report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, which found UNRWA’s education material contained anti-Semitic passages that labelled Jews “inherently treacherous”.
“A poem included in the educational content glorifies the killing of Israelis, portraying dying as martyrs by killing Israelis as a ‘hobby’,” the letter said.
Revelations that UNRWA staff were involved in the massacres led the Australian government – along with the US, Britain and Canada – to temporarily pause assistance to the agency, which employs about 13,000 mostly Palestinian workers in Gaza.
On 2GB radio on Thursday, Peter Dutton said Senator Wong’s position would be “untenable” if it was revealed she had received earlier advice suggesting funding for the organisation could be used for purposes that “wasn’t intended by the government”.
“If she’s knowingly sent that money to a terrorist organisation, then I think that’s an outrage,” he said. “And I think Penny Wong and the Prime Minister have more questions than answers in relation to this particular issue.”
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