World
by UNRWA? “Absolutely zero,” he says. A census by the Lebanese government found some 275,000 refugees that UNRWA said lived there actually “do not exist,” Prosor says. He says UNRWA issues “inflated reports” to justify its budget. According to Prosor, UNRWA’s educational and place- ment programs are faltering badly. He says its number of graduates declined by 12 percent from 2009 to 2015. Educational programs UNRWA underwrites in Gaza teach “hate and incitement against Israel,” he says. “And most of the employees are often members of Hamas, pub- licly,” he tells Newsmax. “So of course, good cannot come out of this.” One reason the annual U.S. contribution of over $350
million a year to UNRWA has become so controversial: allegations of corruption. In March 2010, an internal UN audit found UNRWA was vulnerable to “misappropriation, graft, and corruption,” especially regarding its “procurement, partner selection, food and cash distribution, hiring and promotions, and other areas.” Prosor comments: “The U.N. and efficiency are contra-
dictory terms. I would say that if you want to really promote accountability and transparency, you would not start doing it with UNRWA as an organization: Fuzzy numbers, using
money to incite rather than educate, perpetuating the refu- gee problem, and not solving anything. Clearly, this is a very problematic institution.” UNRWA’s critics in Israel and in the Trump administra-
tion say it should be absorbed into the UN body that looks after other refugees around the globe, UNHCR. Anything less, they say, will only serve to reinforce the quixotic notion that over 5 million Palestinians have a “right of return” to someday be allowed to reoccupy Israel and Palestine. “What they call ‘return’ is basically a euphemism for an end of the state of Israel,” Prosor says. Prosor and at least some in the Trump administration
see the so-called “right of return” as one of the biggest contributors to the longstanding futility in the troubled region. Trump has apparently decided he must “strategi- cally break” the impasse, if peace is to ever break out in the Middle East. Amb. Prosor remarks: “UNRWA is the problem, UNRWA
is not the solution. People don’t understand that UNRWA is not just bad for Israel, but it’s bad for the peace process and bad for the Palestinians. “It’s bad for the Palestinian people because it creates this
endless cycle of refugees without a solution. It gives them this false hope, and the ‘right of return’ doesn’t really allow them to move forward to find a solution.
Jewish Leaders on Bush 41: ‘He Was a Righteous Gentile’ A
mong those eulogizing President George H. W. Bush, the 41st U.S.
president, who died in December at age 94, were Jewish leaders who hailed him as a “righteous gentile” who helped save thousands of persecuted souls in the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and Syria. Bush’s relations with the Jewish
community during his presidency were somewhat rocky. They criticized his opposition to loan guarantees that might be used to build Israeli homes in Palestinian territory. And Jewish voters overwhelmingly favored Bill Clinton in 1992.
But what finally cemented Bush’s legacy as a friend of Israel was his role in saving persecuted Jews from an imploding Soviet Union. Former Israeli ambassador to the
U.N. Ron Prosor tells Newsmax: “I think really on the issue of Soviet Jewry, he was someone who made a difference to many people’s lives. This is how I think we Israelis as Jews would
40 NEWSMAX | JANUARY 2019
SEA OF CHANGE George H. W. Bush hosted Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to his oceanfront compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1992, just months before the president lost his bid for re-election. Bush’s relations with the American Jewish community were rocky and many switched their support to Bill Clinton that year.
remember him.” Abraham Foxman, the national
director emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League, praised the elder Bush as “a dear friend and a righteous gentile who helped liberate thousands of Jews from
the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and Syria.” Regarding Bush’s defense of
persecuted Jews, Prosor recalled an ancient Israeli saying: “When a person saves one soul,” he observed, “it is as if they saved the entire world.” — D.P.
BUSH AND RABIN/PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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