What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: UNRWA’s problem isn’t the terrorists in its ranks
UN agency keeps Palestinians as eternal ‘refugees’ – even if they have citizenship. As staff collaboration with Hamas surfaces, Rettig Gur argues this is not the org’s biggest evil
Deputy Editor Amanda Borschel-Dan is the host of The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, What Matters Now and Friday Focus podcasts and heads up The Times of Israel's features.
Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now.
The Israel Defense Forces revealed this week that beneath the Gaza Strip headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the controversial aid organization known commonly as UNRWA, the Hamas terror group hid one of its most significant assets, a subterranean data center.
As witnessed by Times of Israel military reporter Emanuel Fabian, cables were discovered running from an UNRWA server room to the Hamas data center underground.
According to Times of Israel senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur, however, Hamas’s infiltration of UNRWA should be taken as a given. The great “evil” behind the United Nation’s outfit, the only humanitarian aid group on the ground in Gaza, is the fact that it is more of an ideology than an aid organization.
We hear about UNRWA’s origin story and how its mission will only be fulfilled when the State of Israel no longer exists.
So in this week of proof of UNRWA workers’ collaboration with Hamas, we ask Haviv Rettig Gur, what matters now?
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