Kuwaiti Columnist: Stop Funding For Racist UNRWA Until It Dwindles And Dies

MEMRI

‘Abdallah Al-Hadlaq (image: Al-Watan, Kuwait)

In his January 10, 2018 column in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan, ‘Abdallah Al-Hadlaq supported the criticism voiced by U.S. President Donald Trump about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and Trump’s decision to cut its funding. Calling UNRWA a “biased and racist organization” that “perpetuates the problem of the ‘Palestinian’ refugees,” that succumbs to Hamas’s dictates, and that strives to destroy Israel, Al-Hadlaq called to stop all funding and aid to this organization until it crumbles and disappears.

Al-Hadlaq is known for his uncommon positions on Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which are reflected in many of his articles. For example, in past articles he wrote that Iran, rather than Israel, is the Gulf countries’ real enemy;[1] that Hamas is a terrorist organization whose “reckless” rocket attacks on Israel kill innocent people,[2] and that Israel has the right to defend itself from Palestinian knife terrorism.[3] In a 2017 interview on the Kuwaiti TV channel Al-Rai, he even stated that Israelis are not occupiers but rather “a people that has returned to its homeland.”[4]

The following are excerpts from his column:

“Everybody agrees with the harsh [but] reasonable criticism leveled by U.S. President Donald Trump at UNRWA, for it is a biased and racist organization that perpetuates the problem of the ‘Palestinian’[5] refugees and the narrative of the so-called right of return, an organization whose role is apparently to work towards the destruction of the state of Israel. Hence, the U.N. should stop funding this organization until it crumbles and disappears.

“On January 5, 2018, a few days after President Trump threatened to stop future aid to the ‘Palestinians’, the U.S. froze $125 million in funding for UNRWA… and announced that the funding would not be renewed until the Palestinians stopped being stubborn and resumed negotiations with Israel… [It should be noted that] the U.S. grants $300 million annually to the U.N. Refugee Agency.

“The terrorist Hamas movement, which supports the Persian Iranian regime, rejected [UNRWA’s] curricula on human rights.[6] This caused a grave crisis between the Hamas government and UNRWA, following which the latter suspended these curricula in its Gaza schools… Hamas’s complaint was that these curricula address everyone’s human rights, including those of the Jewish and Israeli people, and contravene the culture and rights of the ‘Palestinian’ people. There are no signs on the horizon of any solution for this broad crisis that developed between the terrorist Hamas government… and UNRWA…

“Therefore, all forms of financial aid and international funding for UNRWA must stop, as long as it [continues] subjecting its decisions to the methodology of terror, exclusion, racism and lack of consideration for the rights of other peoples, namely to the methodology of the Persian Hamas movement that controls Gaza, which [Hamas] imposes upon the UNRWA curricula and schools.”