UNRWA adds insult to injury

U.S. President Joe Biden can and should revoke any immunity for UNRWA employees facing charges stemming from Oct. 7.

Leonard Grunstein | Sept 26, 2024

Hamas rockets found hidden among boxes of UNRWA relief supplies in northern Gaza, Dec. 2, 2023.    Credit: IDF Spokesperson.

In response to a lawsuit filed in the New York Federal District Court on June 24 against the U.N. Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and others for damages suffered by so many as a result of UNRWA employees participating in the Oct. 7 massacre, the U.N. defendants are claiming immunity and moving to dismiss.

If this wholly unjust position were not immoral and absurd enough, the U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly weighed in and shockingly told the court: “Because the U.N. has not waived immunity in this case, its subsidiary, UNRWA, retains full immunity, and the lawsuit against UNRWA should be dismissed due to lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”

Why is this callous and conclusory statement relevant to the question of whether UNRWA and its employees are responsible for their outrageous criminal acts; it’s little more than a galling nonsequitur.

To put this in perspective, consider that UNRWA employees do not have absolute immunity as a matter of law. The Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, as to U.N. officials—other than the secretary-general and assistant secretaries-general, and experts performing missions for the United Nations—expressly provides only for limited functional immunity (under articles V-section 18 and VI-section 22), not for unlimited immunity.

In essence, when acting in an official capacity and performing their job, they have immunity. Is anyone suggesting their job description includes committing murder, rape, kidnapping and other atrocities? How, then, can anyone blithely assert that these defendants have immunity?

Indeed, even UNRWA has in the past taken the position that its employees do not have unlimited blanket immunity. In the case of Saqer v. Commissioner-General of UNRWA (before the UNRWA Dispute Tribunal, judgment dated Aug. 15, 2021), one of its employees demanded that UNRWA assert her immunity to defeat an obligation she had undertaken to a Jordanian hospital for the cost of treating her husband’s self-inflicted wound. UNRWA flat-out said there was no immunity. This was hardly a case of her acting in an official capacity within the purview of her employment.

The German Federal Court of Justice has gone even further in defining the limits of functional immunity. It has held that there is no immunity for committing war crimes like genocide, torture and enforced disappearance.

U.S. law, 22 USC 288d, also accords officers and employees of international organizations functional immunity, not absolute immunity, as it says “ … immune from suit and legal process relating to acts performed by them in their official capacity and falling within their functions as such representatives, officers, or employees … .”

It should also be noted that the U.S. president is authorized outright under 22 USC 288 to revoke even these limited protections afforded UNRWA under this law, because, in the president’s judgment, if it’s justified by reason of abuses by UNRWA or its officers or employees of any of the privileges, exemptions or immunities provided under the law.

It is hard to imagine a more blatant case of atrocious and contemptible abuses than the ones that occurred on Oct. 7. U.S. President Joe Biden can and should revoke any immunity. In addition, the president should act to defund UNRWA. As an affiliate of Hamas, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, it should also be sanctioned, and funding it or offering it other material support should be prohibited under the anti-terrorism law covering Hamas.

The fact that our government appears to be assisting UNRWA in evading responsibility for the illicit and criminal conduct of its officers and employees is intolerable. We cannot condone, let alone reinforce, these abuses.

Israel is fighting the evil terrorist Hamas and its fellow terrorist, the Iranian-regime proxy Hezbollah, on the battlefield in a war that is being waged not only against Israel but also against the United States. It is, in effect, America’s human shield in the Middle East.

This battle against evil is also being waged in the U.S. courts. The United States is duty-bound to do its best to advocate for its citizens and those of its ally and friend, Israel, who have been profoundly harmed by those enemies and their cohorts.

We may not passively yield and surely not actively participate in a miscarriage of justice. Do not add insult to injury. Much like the clarion call of Genesis 4:10, the blood of our brothers and sisters cry out and may not be ignored or forgotten. We must fight any obnoxious claim of immunity and pursue justice.