[Azure]

OTTAWA – While many observers praised Canada for following suit with the United States in cutting funding for a contentious UN agency allegedly involved in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, many are wondering why it took so long.

Shimon Koffler Fogel, President and CEO of the Centre for Israeli and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), praised the move, saying they’ve been issuing warnings about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for years.
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“We’re concerned about the fungibility of support directed by Canada to the agency, and ultimately where money goes and what it supports,” he said.

“There’s been a very long track record of not just of internal corruption within UNRWA, but there were a number of UN investigations of the agency and impropriety on the part of their staff — not just its local-hired staff, but the international UN staff that manages the organization.”

“But the fact now that you have a Democratic administration in Washington, Biden, that froze (funding), and now all the other countries have followed, particularly Canada. The evidence has been very clear — it’s something countries have ignored for many years, but now because of the direct connection with the brutality of Oct. 7, there’s a recognition that UNRWA cannot continue to function the way it has been up until now.”

Aurel Braun, a professor of international relations at the University of Toronto, said the accusations against UNRWA came as little surprise.

“We had so many warning signs about UNRWA,” he said.

“There were studies done by NGO Monitor and others that were rejected by Canadian diplomats, but the evidence is staring them in the face.”

The central question, Braun said, is why it took so long.

“Now, the evidence was so stark that there was clearly documentation that shows members of UNRWA were actually moonlighting as terrorists,” he said.

“It got the point where they just ignored the evidence, but it’s not as if the evidence wasn’t there, they didn’t want to see it. The evidence was hiding in plain sight.”

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...-funding-pause

*crickets*