My latest: Hamas’ friends

“Temporarily paused.”

That’s what the Trudeau government said it has done with funding it gives to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that supposedly helps Palestinians – but, it is alleged, also participates in massacres of Jews.

Since that shocking news dropped last Friday, just about every other civilized nation on Earth as also stopped funding UNRWA, because the accusations that its employees helped torture and murder 1,200 Israelis – and helped kidnap some 250 others – are just too credible. There is evidence.

And, yet: just ”temporarily paused.” Doesn’t sound like it’s going to be very permanent, does it? It doesn’t.

Even if Canada’s withdrawal of support for UNRWA becomes permanent, it may not matter at all. Why? Because Canada continues to fund other organizations without ensuring the proper oversight.

Forty-eight hours after Canada announced it was “temporarily pausing” support for UNRWA, Ahmed Hussen, the Trudeau government’s Minister for International Development, issued a defiant-sounding press release that stated Canada was still shoveling out $40 million to these non-Governmental agencies (NGOs):

• World Food Programme: $16 million
• UNICEF: $6 million
• United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA): $5 million
• World Health Organization: $3 million
• International Committee of the Red Cross: $3 million
• United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA): $2 million

Do innocent Palestinians need help as they navigate a war zone? Of course. But are the above organizations deserving of Canadian millions?

We need to know – because an expert is urging caution. The expert is Anne Herzberg, a human rights lawyer and the legal advisor to NGO Monitor – a Jerusalem-based group that tracks NGOs operating in the Middle East. And what she and her 22-year-old organization have found is deeply disturbing.

Says Herzberg, in an interview from her Jerusalem office: “UNRWA employees taking part in the October 7 massacres is certainly shocking. But its certainly not an aberration. There are other cases of terrorist entities that have embedded people into humanitarian aid organizations and NGOs. It’s not unique.”

Many other organizations are still receiving millions from Canada. Should they?

“One of the problems we’ve found is that there is not proper vetting going on,” says Herzberg, who obtained her law degree at Columbia University. “So, you have governments, including the Canadian government, pouring millions of dollars into the NGOs without really checking to see the extent to which they are hiring members of Hamas or other terrorist groups.”

She cites examples, and names names. The Gaza-based head of World Vision, Herzberg says, diverted $40 million to Hamas, and was later convicted in an Israeli court and sentenced to 12 years in prison for supporting terrorism. And World Vision receives substantial support from Canada – just last year, $41 million from Global Affairs.

Herzberg sighs. “There has been a very long and sad history of exploitation of humanitarian organizations to commit terrorism, unfortunately,” she says. “We’ve been seeing evidence of this abuse going back to the early 2000s. In Gaza, the problem became most acute when Hamas took over the strip in 2007. What’s been surprising to us is the degree to which the human rights industry and the United Nations have tried to cover it up. They knew.”

Canada knows, too. Or it should, she says.

Citing recent stories in this newspaper documenting how anti-Israel protestors are being paid to protest, Herzberg says Canada needs to take corrective action, now. “The first thing Canada needs to do is look at the protests, and try and find out who is paying. I think that’s critical. Canada especially needs to take a close look at the organizations it is funding.”

But that’s not all, she says.

“Canada claims to support a two-state solution, and claims to be against anti-Semitism. Yet a lot of the money they’re giving out is going to NGOs who do not support two-state solution, and who do not oppose anti-Semitism They actually actively promote anti-Semitism. Same goes for the United Nations organizations that Canada is supporting. Canada needs to have a full and comprehensive review of all this development aid.”

Will we? So far, it hasn’t happened. And, when you poke through the entrails of the Trudeau regime’s own language – “temporarily pausing,” above – they don’t seem very committed to fixing a big, big problem.

Until they do, until our money starts going to the organizations that truly oppose terror and hate, more October 7 massacres aren’t just possible.

They’re likely.