THE U.N. AT WORK

The UN at Work - Dore Gold (Wall Street Journal, 19 January 2005)
In 2003 and 2004, the Israel Defense Forces captured documentation showing how the UN Development Program was regularly funding two Hamas front organizations: the Tulkarm Charity Committee and the Jenin District Committee for Charitable Funds.

In June 2003, the Office of the Coordinator of the Activities of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip asked UNDP to stop all assistance to the Jenin District Committee because of its Hamas connection. Israel knew that Hamas operatives ran the charity; its deputy director had been a member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the elite terrorist unit of Hamas. Timothy Rothermel, UNDP's special representative in Jerusalem, turned down the Israeli request.

Captured documents also reveal the support provided by the UN Relief and Works Agency for the "Koran and Sunna Society" of Kalkilya, a group that defines itself as salafi - it adopts doctrines from militant Islam. The Society, with six branches in the West Bank, distributes pamphlets published in Saudi Arabia that are often written by radical Wahhabi clerics with references to the value of martyrdom and jihad.

In October 2004, the "Arab International Forum for Rehabilitation and Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" held a conference in Beirut under the auspices of the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). The conference announced a joint initiative between ESCWA and the "Coalition of Goodness," an organization led by a spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradhawi, who a year earlier in Sweden spoke in favor of suicide operations against Israeli civilians. Two months before the Beirut conference, he signed a communique calling on Muslims to support the forces fighting the U.S. in Iraq.

Besides getting to the bottom of the Oil-for-Food scandal, it is equally vital to get the UN to halt its backing of recognized international terrorist groups. The Bush administration gave the UN a special status in the Arab-Israeli peace process by making it part of the "Quartet." But because of the behavior of its agencies, the UN should not be granted this diplomatic standing. The UN has a duty to clean up its act before it asks for the trust of Israel or any law-abiding member of the international community again.