This from J. Peter Pham and Michael I. Krauss at TCS Daily:

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.

UNRWA’s anti-Semitism is not merely doled out to the press, however. The agency runs one of the region’s largest networks of schools, in which similar “ideas” are inculcated into a new generation of potential militants.

Read the whole thing (Hat Tip: Eugene Volokh, who’s post has a follow-up with Michael Krauss). But this is nothing new; this from Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S):

	1.	Reuters has a [video (WMV file)] taken during the Israeli army operation in the Zeitun quarter of Gaza City on May 11, 2004. It shows armed Palestinians using UNRWA ambulances to transport terrorists and possibly also remains of fallen Israeli soldiers.
	2.	Partial confirmation came from the statement made on May 13 by a UN spokesman, that during the incident (which occurred in Gaza on May 11), armed Palestinians threatened an UNRWA ambulance team and forced them to transport an armed and wounded Palestinian and his two armed escorts to a Gaza hospital. The spokesman noted that UNRWA censured the action “in the strongest terms possible.” He also noted that armed personnel are not permitted to enter UNRWA vehicles on any pretext whatsoever, and called upon Israel and the Palestinians to respect the agency’s neutrality.
	3.	In addition, since the beginning of the current ongoing hostilities, several incidents have been recorded in which terrorist organizations have used UNRWA facilities and vehicles (including ambulances) to facilitate their terrorist operations. Two prominent examples are:
		a.	Nidal ‘Abd al-Fataah ‘Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist from Qalqiliya who worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver (arrested in August 2002), admitted he had used one such vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists and had also exploited the freedom of movement he enjoyed to transmit messages to and from Hamas activists in various places.
		b.	Nahd Rashid Ahmad Atallah, a senior UNRWA employee working in the Gaza Strip who was in charge of distributing aid to refugees (arrested in August 2002), admitted that during June and July 2002 he had given rides in his car – an UNRWA vehicle – to armed terrorists belonging to the Popular Resistance Committees. The terrorists were on their way to attack Israeli soldiers at the Karni Checkpoint and to fire rockets at Israeli settlement in the northern Gaza Strip. He also used his UNRWA car to transport a bomb weighing 12 kg (about 25 lbs) to his brother-in-law, a Popular Resistance Committees operative (Note: the Popluar Resistance Committees are a militant faction of Fatah and are active primarilyin the Gaza Strip).
	4.	Nahd Atallah explained that he had used his car to transport terrorists to their targets because it belonged to the United Nations, and since the Israeli army did not search such vehicles, he could travel freely. His admission is a striking example of the way terrorist organizations exploit the privileges of relaxed security restrictions accorded UNRWA vehicles by Israeli forces. Such privileges are the result of humanitarian considerations and the Israeli desire to maintain correct relations with UN representatives active in the Palestinian Authority-administered territories.

And then there’s this four year old piece from Dr. John Hagee at World Net Daily:

The benefits are as follows: Suicide bombers come from the refugee camps to produce carnage on the streets of Jerusalem; killers take asylum in the refugee camps; mortars are fired from the refugee camps into Israeli settlements; food warehouses in refugee camps have been transformed into storage facilities for artillery shells, ammunition and mortar rounds; al-Qaida terrorist squads are based in the refugee camps; refugee camps organize official celebrations in honor of suicide bombers who kill Jews in Jerusalem.

This is really a terrific “benefit package,” funded entirely by the United Nations who is asking the United States to double its contribution. What’s wrong with this picture?

And then there’s this (also from 2002) from Ian Williams at The Nation:

That led to a joint call by Tom Lantos, ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, and Tom DeLay, the GOP whip, for Congressional hearings on UNRWA, with a suggestion of ending US funding, which pays for a third of UNRWA operations. Jumping on the bandwagon, Republican Eric Cantor of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism repeated the allegations.

We talk of cutting off aid to the PA under Hamas. But why are we continuing to fund terrorism through the UN?