The Giant UN Agency Hijacked by Hamas: Asaf Romirowsky

American Thought Leaders

“As long as the world can believe that Palestinians are refugees in perpetuity and are stateless in perpetuity because of a so-called colonial empire that has been thrust upon them by the Jews, then they have the sympathy of the world. And that has been their success story.”

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, many of us became aware, for the first time, of UNRWA, the United Nations agency serving Palestinian refugees. It receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States every year.

“UNRWA has basically transformed itself into an advocacy organization for the Palestinian people—what I would consider to be a case study of where the client has hijacked the service provider. So, where you have an entire apparatus of an agency, but that has the imprimatur of the United Nations, and so gives the illusion of neutrality, integrity, and whatnot,” says Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East historian and co-author of “Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief.”

Established in 1949, UNRWA was supposed to be a temporary organization. So how did it become one of the largest and costliest U.N. agencies? And how is it that the number of Palestinian refugees has ballooned sevenfold, according to UNRWA, when virtually all other refugees established after World War II have been resettled?

To find out, I sat down with Mr. Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

“UNRWA has been proven to be exactly synonymous to Hamas. The fact that they had Hamas servers under their headquarters, the fact that they had individuals who were part of the perpetrators of the attacks on October 7—UNRWA is no longer a legitimate organization. They have never been to my mind. ... It’s an obstacle to peace, rather than a solution to peace,” says Mr. Romirowsky.

“I think that there’s a disconnect—and this has always been something we’ve observed here and in Europe about the reality on the ground and what it takes to create peace. I think peace is a goal and should be the goal. But ... there has to be mutual recognition. ... There has been a refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.