UNRWA is Problematic

In fact, I literally quoted Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi 15 years ago to show that the Arab world, with the exception of Jordan, have made no effort at all to integrate Palestinians displaced in 1948, and noted that UNRWA is part and parcel to all of this.

As I have mentioned before the official policies of the host governments is to not keep Palestinians in camps and to keep them as stateless refugees in order to make sure that they, "Stay in the fight," which is why many of the Gulf states deny basic human rights to Palestinians, and (for example) Lebanon stripped Palestinians of the right to own land in 2001.

Unlike the other UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, which is chartered to work toward seeing the refugees settled in where they have fled, repatriated, or settled in a 3rd country, UNRWA is charged with maintaining the camps for the Palestinian refugees, and their descendants, until the sun has burned down to a cinder.

UNRWA is paid to support people in refugee camps as refugees, and the UNHCR is paid to get people  out of refugee status and to become normal citizens.

This, along with its focus on only one group of displaced people does not produce best outcomes for the people that they ostensibly support.

Under these circumstances, it is inevitable that supports for conflict and militants would become part of the de facto mission of the UNRWA.  Direct support of militants has been documented on multiple occasions, and this is a feature, not a bug.

Therefore the revelation that some employees of UNRWA were participants in the October 7 massacres is not a surprise.

What is a surprise is that when Israel provided evidence of this, some of the largest donor nations to UNRWA suspended payments.

It is well past the time for UNRWA to be folded into the UNHCR.  It would be better for peace in the region, and far better for the Palestinians left in limbo for nearly 80 years:

The decision by the US, UK and other western nations to freeze ­funding for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees will significantly worsen the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians have warned.

Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland joined the United States, Australia and Canada in pausing funding after UNRWA, the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, revealed an investigation had been launched into 12 members of staff who allegedly took part in the 7 October attack led by Hamas that killed 1,140 people.

Switzerland?  Given historical Swiss neutrality, whatever evidence that has been presented must be VERY convincing.

Also, Japan has also suspended funding to UNRWA.

………

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, pleaded on Saturday for donor states to “guarantee the continuity” of the body.

“While I understand their concerns – I was myself horrified by these accusations – I strongly appeal to the governments that have suspended their contributions to, at least, guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s operations,” Guterres said in a statement.

I actually think that the continuity of UNRWA operations are the problem, at least in the longer term.

Placing the provision of aid to refugees under the auspices of the UNHCR, WITHOUT transferring senior staff to the other agency, is probably the best alternative for all of the stakeholders in this process.

The refugees should have some sort of normalcy in their lives, and UNRWA is an impediment to this process.

More Refugees

In this case, they are Americans fleeing their student loans:

Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it. But after some plotting, he settled on what he considered a less risky plan. This year, he relocated to a jungle in India. "I've put America behind me," Haag, 29, said.

Today he lives in a concrete house in the village of Uchakkada for $50 a month. His backyard is filled with coconut trees and chickens. "I saw four elephants just yesterday," he said, adding that he hopes never to set foot in a Walmart again.

More than 9,000 miles away from Colorado, Haag said, his student loans don't feel real anymore. "It's kind of like, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really exist?" he said.

Some student loan borrowers are packing their bags and fleeing from the U.S. to other countries, where the cost of living is often lower and debt collectors wield less power over them. Although there is no national data on how many people have left the United States because of student debt, borrowers tell their stories of doing so in Facebook groups and Reddit channels and how-to advice is offered on personal finance websites

………

But the fact that people are taking this drastic measure should bring scrutiny to the larger student loan system, said Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice.

More and more every day, e resemble a 3^rd world country.

How to Deal With Blackmail

Turkey is (rather successfully) attempting to blackmail Europe over their handling of the refugee crisis:

Shopping in a Turkish bazaar is never wise for the novice.

The EU learned that lesson the hard way when it discovered the carefully crafted refugee deal it believed it had sold to Turkish leaders in the run-up to Monday’s summit turned out to be little more than the beginning of the negotiation.

Turkey made Europe a counter offer early Monday that six months ago would have prompted EU negotiators to get up and walk out. To European eyes, the proposal Ankara put on the table read more like a ransom note: €3 billion in refugee aid in addition to the €3 billion already pledged, full-scale visa liberalization for Turkish citizens in the EU by June, an acceleration of Turkey’s application to join the bloc as well as a pledge to resettle many of the Syrian refugees Turkey takes in.

Turkey’s message to Europe was clear: You need us more than we need you.

That Europe is not just considering the Turkish proposal, but is likely to end up accepting most, if not all of it, is testament to the desperation of the Union and its largest member, Germany, to secure a deal to limit the flow of refugees and end a crisis that is testing EU solidarity like nothing in its history.

Seeing as how Erdogan is trying to turn Turkey into an theocratic dictatorship, you don't want to do things like speed Turkey's entry into the EU.

The way I see this, there are two options:

• Roll over.
  
• Start sending large numbers of Turks home to "make space for the refugees", and  clamp down on remittances, which cripples the Turkish economy.

I recommend that the leaders of Europe choose the 2^nd option.

Using Turkish gastarbeiters as human shields is not a particularly laudable thing, but the Turks are using the Syrian refugees as human shields as well, and Turkey continues to support ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates driving the refugee flow in Syria.

The Turks won't stop fomenting the civil war in Syria, nor trying to exploit and exacerbate the refugee crisis until the cost to them become prohibitive.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico

The state of Texas has just sued the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in an attempt to prevent them from reuniting a Syrian refugee family in Dallas:

Texas has filed a lawsuit aiming to block Syrian refugees from settling in the Dallas area, in the latest salvo of an escalating row between the state, an aid group and the federal government.

Relatives of Faez and Shaza, who fled Syria for Jordan in 2013 and were settled this year in a Dallas suburb, are expected to arrive as early as Friday.

They are being helped by the Dallas branch of the New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC), but Texas officials sent letters to IRC asking them to halt their assistance to the refugees. The humanitarian group issued a statement on Wednesday refusing to comply with instructions from Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, and Chris Traylor, the head of the state’s health agency.

In response, Texas’s health and human services commission filed a federal lawsuit against the IRC and the Obama administration this week that asks the court to stop the family from arriving in Texas in the next few days.

It accuses the defendants of potentially endangering public safety by failing to cooperate closely and share sufficient information about the background of the refugees.

This is just repulsive.

Speaking Truth to Bigoted Cowards

They mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings makes an obvious point, that there is more to worry about from white men with guns than there is from Syrian refugees:

The mayor of Dallas is pushing back against politicians who say Americans should be skeptical of Syrian refugees, saying he is “more fearful” of armed white men than people fleeing civil war in the Middle East.

Speaking to MSNBC on Saturday morning, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings was asked to discuss the growing anxiety over Syrian refugees entering the United States, purportedly over concerns they could be potential agents for militant groups such as ISIS. Rawlings staunchly rejected the assertion that Syrians are somehow uniquely prone to violence, saying he is more concerned with the rise of white supremacy and the recent flurry of mass shootings committed by white men.

“I am more fearful of large gatherings of white men that come into schools, theaters and shoot people up, but we don’t isolate young white men on this issue,” Rawlings said.

He also said that vilifying refugees only helps ISIS, as doing so falls into their “trap.” He then pushed back on the notion that ISIS is somehow representative of Islam.

This is so true.

The Phrase "Bad Optics" Doesn't Even Begin to Describe This………

The German government has selected former SS Barracks at the Buchenwald concentration camp to house asylum seekers:

Plans to house asylum seekers in a former SS barracks at a Nazi concentration camp are causing controversy in Germany.

Local authorities in the city of Schwerte, in western Germany, want to house 21 asylum seekers in a Nazi-era barracks believed to have been used by SS guards at a local outpost of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp.

Germany is facing an acute shortage of accommodation for asylum-seekers while their claims are assessed. A huge influx of refugees, many of them fleeing the violence in Syria and Iraq, has left official shelters overcrowded and forced local authorities to improvise alternatives.

But the Schwerte authorities have been accused of bad taste over their decision to use a former SS barracks building to make up the shortfall.

"This is not a normal place, not just anywhere, but a place of exploitation, oppression and unbounded violence," Christine Glauning, director of the Documentation Centre for Nazi Forced Labour, told Spiegel magazine's website.

Seriously?