President Trump cut off US funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees last September because UNRWA is “irredeemably flawed.” In fact, it’s worse than he thought.
An internal ethics report leaked to the press this week exposed a corrupt UNRWA “inner circle.”
Notably, its married director, Pierre Krahenbuhl, allegedly created a position for his married girlfriend in the Jerusalem office where he works. He also put her on “an extreme fast track,” then allegedly jetted around the world with her (business class), while she lobbied him to hire her husband, who was then conveniently farmed out to a Jordan field office as deputy director.
That’s just a nugget in pages of allegations describing a “toxic environment” full of “nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.”
Hah! Other nations, mostly in Europe, had been stepping up to replace the $360 million hole that Trump blew in UNRWA’s $1.2 billion budget. Switzerland was the first to announce it would suspend future payments until the scandal’s resolved.
All this, on top of the larger issues that prompted Trump’s move: UNRWA workers have been caught with bomb-making materials and even throwing firebombs at an Israeli bus; its buildings have stored Hamas weapons.
It’s really no surprise to find that so politicized an agency is also thoroughly corrupt. As Trump’s former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, put it: “This is exactly why we stopped their funding.”