UN International Court of Justice Harangues Israel Again Says that Israel must work with UN agency that is entangled with Hamas. by Joseph Klein
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/un-international-court-of-justice-harangues-israel-again/
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is a contaminated appendage of the UN system, which should have been removed decades ago. Yet it remains as a symbol of the UN’s poisonous bias against the Jewish State of Israel.
UNRWA is devoted exclusively to Palestinians it registers as “refugees,” which is separate and distinct from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that handles all the rest of the world’s refugees. UNRWA was supposed to operate as a temporary organization to provide humanitarian relief and services for the original Palestinian refugee population of about 700,000 Arabs following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. But it turned into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, which, unlike UNHCR, defines “refugee” as including generation after generation ad infinitum of the millions of descendants of the original refugees. Moreover, unlike UNHCR, UNRWA continues the status of “refugee” for Palestinians even if they have become citizens elsewhere (e.g., Jordan).
UN humanitarian organizations are supposed to operate neutrally, impartially, and independently of any undue outside influence. UNRWA has operated in the completely opposite manner. Nevertheless, the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion on October 22, 2025 concluding that international law requires Israel to fully cooperate with UNRWA in fulfilling its mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.
The ICJ dismissed the overwhelming evidence Israel presented proving its allegation that UNRWA cannot be trusted to perform its services neutrally, impartially, and independently of Hamas’ influence. The advisory opinion is a hopelessly one-sided political statement against Israel, not a carefully reasoned and impartial judicial decision. Fortunately, an advisory opinion is non-binding as a matter of law.
UNRWA does not carefully vet its employees, resulting in the hiring of numerous members of Hamas and other terrorist organization members as well as individuals with close family ties to terrorists. One former Commissioner-General of UNRWA shamelessly declared: “Oh, I’m sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don’t see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not conduct political vetting to exclude individuals based on their affiliations.” Another former Commissioner-General remarked: “Our employees are part of the social fabric of Gaza and its ecosystem. And as part of that social fabric in Gaza, you also have Hamas.”
UNRWA is infiltrated with Israel-haters who want nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish state. Thus, it is no surprise that UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terrorist attack inside Israel in which the savage terrorists massacred, raped, tortured, and abducted Israeli civilians.
Hamas has freely used UNRWA facilities such as schools and clinics to hide its rockets and other weapons and for launching attacks against Israeli population centers. Whether deliberately or through gross negligence, UNRWA has taken virtually no preventive measures to protect its facilities from such misuse.
UNRWA-run schools incorporate hateful anti-Israel propaganda in their classroom curricula under the direction of Palestinian leaders. “Hamas took over the UNRWA staff unions that oversee thousands of teachers and school principals, and hijacked the agency’s entire education system,” UN Watch concluded with plenty of substantiating evidence.
Despite all the evidence pointing to UNRWA’s entanglement with Hamas, the ICJ judges concluded that “The Court considers that the information before it is not sufficient to establish UNRWA’s lack of neutrality for the purpose of assessing its impartiality as an organization under Article 59 [of the Fourth Geneva Convention].”
Lady Justice is supposed to be blind. But not in the way that the ICJ judges deliberately closed their eyes to compelling evidence that contradicted their predetermined outcome.
The ICJ judges also neglected to update their majority opinion to acknowledge that Israel is permitting many tons of humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza during the current ceasefire under the terms of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan.
Vice President of the International Court of Justice, Julia Sebutinde, dissented from the ICJ’s advisory opinion. She wrote that the Court did not sufficiently consider Israel’s arguments that Hamas operatives have infiltrated UNRWA, “thereby potentially undermining the neutrality of that humanitarian organization.” Israel’s decision to terminate its provisional cooperation agreement with UNRWA may be justified “based on credible evidence of its involvement in terrorist activities.”
Judge Sebutinde added that “there is no legal requirement that Israel as an occupying Power must permit a specific third State or international organization to conduct humanitarian activities in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territory], if doing so would compromise Israel’s security interests.” (Emphasis in the original)
The International Court of Justice has become a discredited, politicized forum that, in the words of the U.S. State Department, has issued an advisory opinion that “unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism.” Noting the bad precedent that the ICJ has set with its “ongoing abuse of its advisory opinion discretion,” the State Department warned that the ICJ’s advisory opinions have become “nothing more than a partisan political tool, which can be weaponized against Americans.”
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