Joly's photo op reignites debate over Canada's funding of UNRWA
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OTTAWA — Canada’s continued funding of a contentious UN agency has reignited the debate over Ottawa’s Middle East policy — particularly after Sunday’s death of a prominent Hamas leader who also headed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA) teachers union.
On Saturday, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly tweeted a photo of herself shaking hands with Palestinian Authority head Mohammed Mustafa on the margins of the UN General Assembly.
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“I expressed Canada’s deep concern over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and reaffirmed our support for UNRWA and humanitarian access into the region, as well as the PA’s reform efforts,” Joly wrote.
While Canada followed suit with the United States earlier this year in halting funding for the UNRWA due to the organization’s ties to Hamas, the Trudeau Liberals resumed funding in March — despite evidence that UNRWA employees took active roles in the deadly Oct. 7 attacks.
That reversal came in time for Canada to fulfil a $25-million pledge to UNRWA, part of a $100-million grant announced last June — despite Israel sharing intelligence with the government proving UNRWA’s links to terror.
That prompted a legal challenge by Canadian relatives of Oct. 7 victims, a lawsuit the government tried to quash last month.
UNRWA’s ties to Hamas were reinforced with the death of Hamas’ Lebanon chief Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, killed Sunday in an Israeli air strike.
Sherif, a key Hezbollah liaison in Lebanon, was among a handful of UNRWA employees placed on leave for his “political activities,” reported the Times of Israel. Sherif was also head of the UNRWA’s teachers union.
Invitations by the Sun to Joly’s office for a comment went unacknowledged.
Canada’s continued funding of UNRWA is a point of contention with the country’s Jewish groups.
“Despite repeated incidents, such as the case of Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, the Trudeau government continues to fund UNRWA with Canadian taxpayer dollars,” said David Cooper, vice-president of government relations for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), a plaintiff in the aforementioned court case.
“In effect, Canada is subsidizing the salaries of terrorists. That is why CIJA is taking legal action to put an end to this misuse of public funds.”
Casey Babb, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and adviser to Secure Canada, said UNRWA’s insidiousness goes much deeper.
“UNRWA is an organization that has been hijacked and weaponized by Arab nations and their many enablers around the world, including Canada, who are using it intentionally to ensure a never-ending pipeline of Palestinian ‘refugees’ — the only group of people in history who, generation after generation after generation, get that claim,” he said.
“When you signal to people that they get to be refugees forever, you’re conditioning them to think they’ll be able to right some wrong and that wrong was the founding of Israel.”
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Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada, told the Toronto Sun the Trudeau Liberals are already well aware of UNRWA’s connections to Hamas, courtesy of shared intelligence.
“(Canada) has everything they need to know, from our perspective it’s just untenable to continue to fund UNRWA,” Moed said, adding there’s no argument about the need to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, pointing to daily shipments of supplies, food and aid being delivered to Palestinians in need.
“It’s not just about a few apples, the whole tree is rotten to the core.”
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