...One of the largest humanitarian programs is the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). One-third of UNRWA's $350 million annual budget is furnished by American taxpayers, and a little more than half comes from their European counterparts. UNRWA is unlike any other international agency. It was established in 1949 by the General Assembly to carry out relief programs benefiting Arabs displaced (some quite voluntarily) during the fighting that erupted after the new state of Israel was simultaneously invaded by its five Arab neighbors. (Remarkably, the UN offered no such succor to the numerous Jewish communities, some dating from biblical times, which were forcibly evicted from Arab countries.) Not only is UNRWA unique in its exclusive concern for original Palestinian "refugees" and their descendants (now numbering over 4 million according to the agency's rather loose criteria), it is the only refugee services organization whose raison d'être is not to resettle its charges, but rather to keep them and their dependents in squalid temporary dwellings while they await their "right of return."

The needless festering of grievance in the undeniably miserable 59 camps (27 of which are located in the West Bank and Gaza) is not UNRWA's only flaw, however. Indeed, far from being an impartial dispenser of humanitarian relief, UNRWA has become an enabler of terrorists, complicit through sins of commission and omission, in the cycle of violence wracking the Middle East.

Until the Bush administration blocked his reappointment last year, long-term UNRWA commissioner-general Peter Hansen made a career out of "see no evil, hear no evil" with respect to Hamas while imputing all manner of malfeasance on Israel. The final straw for Washington may have been Hansen's candid admission during a television interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in late 2004: "I am sure there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don't see that as a crime." Hansen's placid acquiescence to paying Hamas is usefully contrasted with his hysterical comments -- since proven false by the UN's own investigation -- that Hansen had seen "with my own eyes" Israeli "helicopters strafing civilian residential areas," "wholesale obliteration," and "mass graves" during Israel's Defensive Shield operation following the massacre of Passover celebrants by Palestinian terrorists in 2002. These "big lies" are on a par with Hamas's citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its founding Covenant...