Liberals resume UNRWA funding despite alleged Hamas involvement
Episode Stats
Words per minute
162.37779
Harmful content
Hate speech
2
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the Canadian government's decision to suspend funding to UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency, in response to an allegation that some of their own staff may have aided Hamas in their attacks on Israel. We also discuss the growing problem of anti-Semitism in Canada and the government's response to it.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
We've seen in the last several days and weeks, and to be honest, months, a mounting of anti-Semitism,
00:00:16.080
of incidents of anti-Semitism on city council and politicians' offices and Jewish community
00:00:23.340
centers and schools. And what's happening throughout all of these instances is we've
00:00:28.740
seen the liberal government in particular be very equivocal on its position. You may remember it was
00:00:34.560
very slow to start talking about a lot of the horrific atrocities that Hamas committed when it
00:00:41.300
came to protesters calling for a ceasefire. The government didn't say, well, we support Israel's
00:00:46.000
right to defend itself. Justin Trudeau turned around to protesters and says, oh, no, no, no, but I am
00:00:49.860
calling for a ceasefire, basically saying, yes, I agree with you. Stop protesting. Well, one of the
00:00:55.160
things that is really interesting here is that the government, when it learned that UNRWA, which is
00:01:01.180
the UN refugee agency for the Palestinian territories, had been turning a blind eye to members of its own
00:01:08.160
staff, literally its own staff, assisting Hamas and joining the Hamas attack, they said, all right,
0.80
00:01:14.500
we're going to announce a pause. But now they've reinstated it before the next payment was due.
00:01:20.500
So the federal government in Canada has basically not deprived UNRWA of a dollar by my count. Brian
00:01:28.360
Lee Crowley here is here. He is from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and we're so glad to talk to him as
00:01:34.460
always. Brian, thanks so much for coming on today. Andrew, it's always a pleasure to be with you. And
00:01:39.260
just before we get underway, I want everybody to see my mug with the Queen's profile on it in the context
00:01:47.080
of your last conversation. Yeah, Chris said she's a quasi-monarchist. You're not doing the quasi on
00:01:53.060
your part, are you? I'm the real thing. All right, duly noted. This, I mean, this was purely
00:02:01.180
window dressing when the government said it was going to pause this funding. And the fact that
00:02:05.600
they've reinstated it just weeks later tells us as much, doesn't it? Well, it does, Andrew. And let's
00:02:12.160
let's be even clear about this. What Canada and most other countries have done is who have taken action
00:02:19.900
on this, they've suspended additional funding. They have not cut the basic funding, which is about
00:02:27.580
1.1 or $1.2 billion. That's the base budget for UNRWA paid for mostly by Western democracy. I think
00:02:35.920
the United States pays about literally three quarters of the budget of UNRWA. But there's now,
00:02:46.440
because of the conflict, obviously, that's going on between Israel and Hamas, carried out on the
00:02:52.260
territory of Gaza, people are putting extra money into UNRWA. And it's that extra money, which a number
00:02:59.500
of countries promised to suspend, while an investigation was carried out about whether
00:03:05.240
there, you know, we could find credible evidence to support the allegation that there are staff members
00:03:14.820
of UNRWA, as well as family members, associates, and other people close to UNRWA, very much involved
00:03:22.240
in not only the armed conflict since the 7th of October, but in the heinous attacks on Israel on
00:03:30.220
the 7th of October. People, staff members who have actually boasted online and elsewhere about their
00:03:36.320
involvement in this. So, you know, Canada has, first of all, said, okay, we're going to suspend
00:03:43.900
extra payment, not the basic payment. Yeah, that's fair. And we're going to suspend it until we have an
00:03:50.960
investigation that tells us whether these allegations are founded. They've now reversed
00:03:56.060
themselves completely. Basically, they've said, oh, well, it doesn't, we're not going to wait for
00:04:00.860
the results of the investigation. We may be funding an organization that aids and abets terrorism.
00:04:08.180
But, hey, you know, we got to get that funding in there. And the idea that there is no other way
00:04:16.120
for Canada to provide humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza, except through UNRWA. It's complete
00:04:22.520
nonsense. So I'm not very impressed. Well, nor should you be. And I should point out, I mean,
00:04:28.920
UNRWA itself has even conceded that this allegation was accurate. Now, they've done the whole Casablanca
00:04:35.520
thing of like, we're shocked to find gambling in here. But they've not refuted it at this point.
00:04:41.180
And I want to play and get your reaction to this, Brian. This is a clip from an Israeli official
00:04:46.440
responding to Canada's decision this week. Let's roll that.
00:04:51.780
A similar question. Canada announced on Friday that funding to UNRWA will be resumed after being
00:04:56.640
paused. Does the PMO have comment on that? And why should the Canadian taxpayers,
00:05:03.600
and what should they know about the links between UNRWA and Hamas?
00:05:07.440
So I think what the taxpayers should know is that their money is funding terror. As simple
00:05:15.160
as that. And do they want their money to help terrorists build tunnels, educate children how
00:05:24.040
to kill and that they should kill, and train them how to do so? Is that the best way for the
00:05:30.220
taxpayers' money to be used? We think that there are much better ways. If we want Gaza to have the bright
0.98
00:05:36.800
future that it can't, you can't keep on giving the money to an organization that taught hate,
00:05:43.520
facilitated, and was part of a massacre. And it's not just a few. We have evidence of a lot of people,
00:05:50.920
and there's no way that the people who are running this organization did not know this.
00:05:55.700
So that means that there has to be another solution. And the taxpayers' money should be
00:06:00.440
for a better future for Gaza, which does not include UNRWA in any way.
00:06:07.020
She is not talking about Iran or Lebanon or Saudi Arabia or Qatar when she's talking about funding
00:06:15.020
terror. She is talking about Canada. And that was a question that was asked by our friends over at
00:06:19.720
the news forum. Quite a far cry from the relationship Canada had with Israel up until,
00:06:25.420
well, basically up until the liberals took over.
00:06:27.180
You're absolutely right that the historic relationship that Canada has had with Israel
00:06:33.900
has been a very supportive one. Canada was one of the countries that voted for the creation of Israel
00:06:39.100
in 1948 at the United Nations, in case people have forgotten that the creation of the state of Israel
00:06:44.320
was mandated by the United Nations and carried out by a majority vote of the member states. So the next
00:06:51.560
time somebody tells you that, you know, Israel is an illegitimate state, they've got several birth
00:06:58.800
I think it was the only pro-Israel vote that ever passed at the UN, to be honest, but it was the
00:07:03.440
Well, it's the one that matters, I think. And, you know, Canada has been a strong supporter of Israel
00:07:12.060
over many years. And I have to say that I think this decision by the government of Canada to restore
00:07:19.640
the extra funding to UNRWA is entirely in keeping with the behavior of this government over pretty much
00:07:26.400
every foreign policy, national security, national defense issue, which is they're playing to a domestic
00:07:33.320
audience. This is diaspora politics. They're looking and seeing, you know, tens of thousands of
00:07:40.400
Palestinian and Hamas supporters in the streets and cities of Canada, and looking at the fact that there's now
00:07:48.080
a million Muslims in Canada more, and saying to themselves, hmm, there's an electoral calculation
00:07:57.160
here, we don't want to be on the wrong side of. And I think that's a shocking and shameful way to
00:08:04.660
I would agree. I mean, obviously, politicians, I think, should be beholden to, you know, everything
00:08:10.920
they do should be to serve Canada and Canada's interests. And I think that domestic policy is
00:08:16.080
actually very relevant to foreign policy. But I also believe that fundamental questions of right
00:08:20.220
and wrong are, and those are not majoritarian decisions. And we're talking here about a very
00:08:26.180
clear-cut case about terrorist aggressors assaulting civilians. And we've seen equivocation. And the liberals,
00:08:32.140
I mean, it used to be historically that the Jewish vote, insofar as it existed, and it was never
00:08:38.000
monolithic, it isn't with any group, but that a lot of the Jewish vote went to the liberals. And when
00:08:43.280
did that change happen? When did, because there are a lot of liberals that I've, or lifelong liberals who
00:08:48.660
are Jewish that I've heard from, that don't really have much in the way of high expectations from the
00:08:53.880
liberals now, but a couple of years ago did. And a couple of years ago, kind of would never have
00:08:58.560
expected what's happening now from this party that they've been part of for, in some
00:09:04.260
Yes. Well, I mean, of course, I can't speak to what's going through the mind of members of the
00:09:10.660
Canadian Jewish community. I can tell you what's going through my mind, which is that if I were
00:09:17.600
Jewish, and I were looking at the equivocation of the government of Canada, their complete unwillingness
00:09:23.260
to be crystal clear about the fact that Canada, as a Western democracy, supports the only Western
00:09:30.060
democracy in the Middle East, which is Israel, one that is under the rule of law that makes its
00:09:35.480
decisions by democratic means, that is entirely legitimate under international law, and is being
00:09:42.740
attacked by people who do not share those values. If I were a Jewish Canadian, I were looking at the
00:09:49.060
government of Canada fumbling the ball over and over again, when being asked to confirm that they are going
00:09:55.380
to support Israel, and the values that Israel represents in the Middle East, and the government
00:10:00.440
of Canada said, well, maybe until someone makes me uncomfortable politically, and then maybe not.
00:10:08.820
But this, this is completely at odds with the historical behavior of the government of Canada, and
00:10:15.880
with, I believe, the values that the government of Canada and the Canadians have pursued for generations.
00:10:24.000
So where do you see it going from here? I mean, the situation domestically has gotten very ugly. I mean, we've
00:10:30.920
just abandoned any pretense that this is about Israel or Zionism, when you have Jewish schools and neighborhoods
00:10:36.800
being targeted. We have police that have been, I think, very, very shy about getting involved. And
00:10:43.240
part of this is because they don't want to be in the middle of some, you know, ethnic turmoil,
00:10:47.520
basically, or some, you know, cultural spat. And police in general don't want to be the ones in the
00:10:52.160
line of fire when government comes and second guesses whatever decision was made. So where do you see
00:10:56.520
this going? Because I fear, and every Jewish person I've talked to about this says it's going to get a
00:11:02.860
Yeah, well, I think you really touched on something very important there, Andrew. And that is that I think
00:11:09.580
one of the reasons, not the only reason, I think one of the reasons the police have been so ineffectual,
00:11:14.680
in my view, in protecting the Jewish community in Canada and asserting the right of all Canadians to
00:11:21.540
carry out their ordinary lives, free from fear and intimidation. That is what the, that is what the police
00:11:27.320
are for. That the police have learned that if they do not follow the line that the government wants
00:11:38.140
them to follow, that the government will not be there to support them. And that means that they are
00:11:45.100
quite reluctant, I think, to get into the, get into the dirty business, and it will be, it will be
00:11:53.100
unpleasant. There is no way to deal with, you know, tens of thousands of people in the street shouting
00:12:00.660
hateful slogans, you know, intimidating citizens. This is completely different than the hot tubs of
00:12:08.020
the, of the, of the freedom, I got to tell you. Completely different. And, and many laws are being
00:12:17.340
broken. That the laws that police traditionally use to police unruly demonstrations, they're not being
00:12:24.220
pursued. The government, the police are hanging back. And I think one of the main reasons is that
00:12:29.980
they do not think they will be supported by public authorities if they, if they exercise their legitimate
00:12:36.060
authority in these, in these situations. And the people who are paying the price are, of course, the
00:12:42.780
vulnerable members of our Jewish community, who feel completely unprotected and unsupported by the
00:12:48.940
rest of the country. And I, I don't know how we can do something about this in the absence of public
00:12:58.300
authorities who are willing to take responsibility for what's going on. And I just don't see that right
00:13:03.660
now. No, you're, you're quite right to Brian. I mean, it's an absolute tinderbox. And I think it's,
00:13:08.860
it's incredibly dangerous and disheartening. And I am glad people like you are lending your voice to
00:13:13.600
speaking up against it. Uh, Brian Lee Crowley, McDonald, Laurie Institute, I feel you frozen or
00:13:18.320
are deep in thought. So, uh, fitting that we have to bring it to an end here, but thank you so much
00:13:22.060
for coming on, sir. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the
00:13:27.180
program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.