UC Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian has a posting in his blog decrying the Trump administration’s cut off of funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides funding to the world’s longest-running group of “refugees"-the Palestinians. Bazian himself is a Palestinian having washed up on our shores from his West Bank home of Nablus to get a college education at San Francisco State and eventually become a professor at Berkeley. He basically has two causes- bashing Israel and complaining about Islamophobia. He is co-founder of many dubious enterprises, including the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Center at UCB, the Zaytuna (Islamic ) College at Berkeley, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and American Muslims for Palestine-which funds SJP. In addition, he has a litany of intemperate statements about Jews over the years that have led to charges of anti-semitism.
In the below article, Bazian complains about the UNRWA decision calling it something designed to starve the Palestinian people, who seem unable to feed or educate themselves without UN assistance, into submission, and eliminate the “right of return”. Of course Bazian conveniently ignores the real reasons Trump has wisely decided to end US funding.
http://www.hatembazian.com/content/uss-defunding-unrwa-starving-the-palestinians-into-surrender/
There are so many points left out of this piece. The so-called “right of return” for the 750,000 1948 refugees (Arabs who left Israel during the fighting, mostly at the urging of the invading Arab states) is a Trojan horse designed to allow the descendants of the original people who left to flood into Israel and change the demographics in the Arabs’ favor. Most of of the original refugees have died off. In addition, there is no mention of the hundreds of thousands of Jews driven from Arab nations during the same period. There is no right of return for them-not that any would want to go back to certain persecution. Unlike the seemingly incapable Palestinians, those Jews were able to rebuild their lives in Israel or other places and become productive members of society. UNRWA was set up in 1949. It continues to this day, partly because neighboring Arab states (with the exception of Jordan) have been unwilling to integrate the Palestinians, who are the world’s longest-standing refugee group.
But the most important missing pieces in this article are those which represent the real reasons Trump has stopped funding UNRWA. First of all, there is no real willingness on the Palestinian side to reach a real peace agreement with Israel. Gaza remains under the yoke of the terrorist group, Hamas, while the West Bank, under Mahmoud Abbas, teaches its school children that Jews/Israelis are the “sons of apes and pigs”. Children are trained that their highest aspiration should be to strap on a suicide vest and blow themselves and Israelis to smithereens. Even the Palestinian version of Mickey Mouse is used to drum this into the little brains of their children. These schools are funded by UNRWA. In addition, money that pours into West Bank coffers from the international community is used to pay the families of terrorists killed or imprisoned by Israelis.
We should also not forget that, in the 2014 fighting that broke out between Israel and Gaza, UNRWA schools were used by Hamas fighters to store rockets and other weapons.
In addition, Palestinians have hardly shown themselves to be friends of America. Remember the scenes of Palestinians dancing in the streets on 9-11? Similar scenes have followed successful acts of terror against innocent Israeli civilians.