LILLEY: Trudeau needs to explain funding UNRWA to Canadian victims

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In 2017, Justin Trudeau defended resuming funding for UNRWA saying it would get aid where it is needed without “creating negative consequences for Israel or for anyone else.”

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This week, before his government officially resumed funding again, Trudeau was making those same false and empty promises.

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“When we began our investments in UNRWA after a previous government had suspended them, we put in significant conditions and assurances about where and how that funding was to be used,” Trudeau said Thursday.

“We will continue to ensure that the funding, any funding on humanitarian issues anywhere around the world is used to protect the most vulnerable.”

Those conditions and assurances put in place in 2016 didn’t stop the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees from violating their pledge of neutrality over and over again. It didn’t stop more than a dozen UNRWA employees from taking part in the killing, raping and kidnapping of innocent civilians in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

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As for Trudeau pledging to protect the most vulnerable, what does he say to the families of Vivian Silver, Judith Weinstein, Netta Epstein, Shir Georgy, Ben Mizrachi, Alexandre Look, Adi Vital-Kaploun, Tiferet Lapidot and the other Canadian victims of the Oct. 7 massacre carried out by Hamas but aided by UNRWA.

The Trudeau government promised to pause UNRWA funding until the investigation into allegations that employees of the organization took part in the massacre were complete. There has not been a full investigation, just an internal interim report, and yet Canada announced funding would resume the same week Israel offered more evidence of UNRWA’s complicity in the attack.

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On Tuesday, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, released chilling phone recordings of UNRWA teachers taking part in the Oct. 7 massacre. One phone call detailed the taking of a young Israeli woman as a hostage in Gaza.

“Over 450 UNRWA employees are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza,” Hagari said.

“This is no mere coincidence, this is systematic. There is no claiming ‘We did not know.’”

If the Trudeau government knows more due to that interim report, they aren’t saying. Asked directly on Friday what he saw in the report that made him comfortable with restoring UNRWA’s funding, International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen wouldn’t say.

He also wouldn’t say if the interim report showed proof of UNRWA workers taking part in the Oct. 7 massacre.

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“I will urge you to contact the U.N. itself to provide the report to you,” Hussen said.

He never denied there are and were problems with UNRWA. In fact, he stated several times there were and that they have been taking steps to fix those problems.

These problems have been going on for years and the participation of UNRWA workers in the Oct. 7 massacre, including the killing of Canadians, should be enough to cut this group off once and for all – but the Trudeau government refuses to do so.

And while Trudeau made a big show of pausing funding in January and resuming it now, the truth is, UNRWA never missed a payment.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said on Friday that it would challenge the government’s decision to restore funding in court. That challenge should be joined by the Canadian families of the victims, they should raise up their voices to say they do not support funding terrorism.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Saturday calling Canada’s decision a mistake and urged the Trudeau government to “stop the funding and not to support an organization whose ranks include hundreds of members of the Hamas terrorist organization.”

That would be the right thing to do, the principled thing to do.

But instead, Trudeau and his team made the cold political calculus that there are more votes to be found funding UNRWA than standing against terrorism.

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