Karys Rhea - How UNRWA Perpetuates the Palestinian Refugee Myth

Show Notes and Transcript

UNRWA is a term that I had not heard 6 months ago. Their work, methods and purpose has intrigued me ever since. 
Karys Rhea understands this issue at its core and joins Hearts of Oak to give the other side of the story. 
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugee, known as UNRWA, was set up in 1948, just 3 years after the UN started. 
Karys starts by setting out the story of how and why UNRWA started. 
A fascinating part of this story is how refugee status of 'Palestinians' is defined. It seems as though this is used to create a Palestinian refugee myth that exists out of hatred for Israel. 
Which country in the world has dozens of refugee camps in their own country? How much money is used and is the UNRWA corrupt or transparent? 
Karys exposes this group like you have never heard before.

Karys Rhea is a producer of "American Thought Leaders" and "Fallout" at The Epoch Times and a fellow with The Jewish Leadership Project. She also works with the Middle East Forum and Baste Records. She has appeared on Newsmax, OANN, Real America’s Voice, NTD News, and a variety of podcasts, and her articles can be found in Commentary, NY Daily News, Newsweek, The Federalist, Washington Examiner, and more. She has a BA from NYU in broadcast journalism and an MA in counterterrorism and homeland security from Reichman University in Israel. A former life found her touring the world as a drummer and songwriter before becoming disillusioned with the political and cultural arrogance of the music industry. She continues to release music in her spare time, in addition to publishing absurdist flash fiction. 

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Interview recorded  23.3.24

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TRANSCRIPT

(Hearts of Oak)

It's wonderful to have someone who I met when I was over stateside last time, and that's Karys Rhea. Karys, thank you so much for your time today.

(Karys Rhea)

Thank you so much for having me, Peter.

Not at all.

It was great to meet you there at Epoch Times whenever I came there with Dr. Malone.

And of course, you're there, a producer of American Thought Leaders and Fallout at the Epoch Times, you're a fellow of the Jewish Leadership Project, and people have probably seen you, especially your US audience on Newsmax or OAN or Real America Voice and many other of those networks.

And I know your background, I think your BA is in journalism and then you've got a master's in counterterrorism and security, which is not just fascinating itself, but there are wider things to discuss.

And you've got a strange background, I think, which you said to me was the music industry.

The music industry to doing media and politics that's quite a step.

Yeah well I mean I have competing interests on the one hand I grew up in the Bay Area and it's very progressive and artistic if you will lots of subcultures so I was always very much into the arts and performance and writing music.

And then I spent 18 years in Brooklyn, which has New York City and much of that in Brooklyn, which has an incredible independent music scene.

So after college, I made the decision to put a more lucrative and a safer career on hold and pursue music.

And that's what I did for about seven years.

And then I sort of grew up and got sick of hustling.

And like I said, I had other interests and I started to slowly make my way into the non-profit world, doing Israel advocacy and, and, monitoring, Islamic terrorism and Islamism.

And I went to grad school and then I got tired of doing that.

And I switched into, broadcast journalism because as you mentioned, that is where I had originally received a degree in.

And so that seemed like an appropriate career shift.

Well it certainly is and obviously people can find you there on Epoch Times and also that is your handle on the screen for people to follow you on twitter and all the links are in the description but Karys maybe we can start with this term and I know you've spoken about it quite a bit I've seen a number of interviews you've done and that is this little phrase, which is an acronym, but I thought it was a phrase, UNRWA.

And I heard this phrase from two of my US friends.

And sometimes you let something go past thinking it's going to come up in the conversation, it's going to work out what it is they're talking about. I was never sure.

So I had to ask, UNRWA, what is it? Do you want to just let us know what that stands for?

It's obviously a United Nation agency, what it stands for, and then why this is an organization which you personally have been interested in it following?

Sure. So UNRWA stands for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Many people do not know about it and did not know about it until October 7th, but there are actually many people throughout the world that have been raising the alarm bells on how corrupt and ineffective this UN agency is.

It is one of the oldest and the costliest and largest agencies of the United Nations.

It started in 1949 in order to help deal with the

Arab Palestinian population that had been displaced as a result of the War of Independence, Israel's 1948 war when it was re-established after World War II.

And it produced about 400 to 750,000 Arab Palestinian refugees.

There's debate about that. And this UN agency was set up to to handle these refugees.

One year later, another UN agency was set up called the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UNHCR.

That agency deals with all of the refugees in the entire world.

Today, it serves about 20 million refugees in 130 countries.

And its mandate, as it should be, is to resettle these refugees that it's dealing with, right?

You never want to keep refugees in limbo, in a stateless environment where you're in a camp and you rely on social services and healthcare and education, right?

If you have been displaced from a conflict, the goal is not to keep you in a camp.

The goal should always be to repatriate you, get you situated, get you settled in a new country where you can eventually be given citizenship and you're in that country and your children can be given citizenship.

Right? You're repatriated.

Now, UNRWA has a completely different mandate. And this is why, this is precisely why the Palestinian refugee population is still an issue today.

If not for UNRWA, there would likely be no Palestinian refugees.

Because think about it. Let's go back in time. When the War of Independence happened in 1948.

That was after World War II. And after World War II, you had tens of millions of refugees created, right? I think 40 million refugees.

I mean, there were millions of ethnic Germans, right, that were displaced from Eastern European countries.

And you also had around that time the partition of Pakistan and India, right?

And there was, I think, millions of refugees created from that, Muslim and Hindu refugees.

How many of those refugees still exist today?

Zero. There's no ethnic German refugees, no Pakistani refugees created from that conflict, right? Why?

Because UNHCR has resettled them.

And so that number of refugees has decreased. It has gone down and eventually has gotten to zero.

The Palestinian refugees are the only group in the world whose population has increased from, as we said, 400 to 750,000 originally in that war, ballooned to what UNRWA says is 5.9 million refugees.

Now, if UNRWA only claims to serve refugees that were displaced in this 1948 war, as it says, how has this number ballooned?

People don't think about that. People accept, the media, academics, our governments, everybody just accepts this number that UNRWA touts.

There is 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and nobody thinks to themselves, well, how is that possible?

You know, and the reason is, is because UNRWA uses a different definition for what constitutes a refugee and their mandate, unlike the UNHCR, is not to resettle refugees.

Not one Palestinian refugee that UNRWA claims to serve has been resettled into a host country.

Not only that, as I just mentioned, the definition of what constitutes a refugee is different, right?

So, you know, I could even read you. I have the actual definitions right here if you'd like me to, but if not, I can just summarize.

Here, let me just read it to you.

So we have, oh, wait, actually, I don't think I have it pulled up here.

Never mind. It doesn't really matter. The point is, is that the UNHCR, the refugee status that they afford to those displaced from conflicts, it directly relates to those people, those individual people that were displaced.

That's it. It does not carry on to their offspring, right?

And that refugee status ends once they are resettled and especially once they are given citizenship in a new country, right?

But refugee status for UNRWA extends to offspring of refugees regardless of whether they have been resettled or not, okay?

And regardless of if they've gotten citizenship in another country, they're still considered refugees.

So for example, if you were displaced in the 1948 war, you ended up in Jordan, and now you're given citizenship as about 1 million refugees, Palestinians in Jordan have been.

All of those Palestinians are still considered refugees according to UNRWA, even though they are now Jordanian citizens.

Not only that, but their children are now Jordanian citizens.

And their children's children, even though they were born as Jordanian citizens, they are still considered refugees.

This is bonkers, right? And not only that, UNRWA actually extends this refugee status to even adopted children, right?

So, and it's so weird. They extend it.

It's not all offspring. It's offspring of male Palestinian refugees, not females.

And then it's adopted children as well of male Palestinian refugees. It is bizarre.

So it's phenomenal that you have that crazy that the UN set up an organization to deal with refugees, but only one particular group a year before they set up a general.

But you're right, you set up such an organisation to deal with an issue.

So there was a conflict, Israel had reclaimed the land, it was rightly due, but there was a conflict, therefore, in that region, and Israel taking on the land, retaking its borders.

So I can understand it would make sense to set up an organisation to help those who may be displaced by a conflict, conflict by any conflict, but yet that needs to have an end goal.

But you talked about this passing on generation to generation.

It seems as though the UN and other agencies, other bodies, worldwide governments, want to have an issue there, a problem there, because that's how they

continue to apply pressure on Israel.

So it seems to be they want a thorn in Israel's side. Is that a fair enough assessment?

Absolutely. UNRWA was created to perpetuate the refugee, well, not created, but very soon after it was created.

Because actually, I think a year after it was created, the director general or somebody high up in UNRWA recommended resettling about 250,000 refugees.

The Arab countries were up in arms about this.

Absolutely not, right? Not only that, we're not going to take any of these people in, right?

These Arab countries that presumably were so, you know, sympathetic to the Palestinian plight and were so outspoken about, you know, how much these Palestinians needed to be cared for and how, you know, big bad Israel had treated them, right?

And yet, how many Palestinian refugees have these Arab countries taken in?

Only Jordan. Jordan is the only Arab nation that has taken in any Palestinian refugees and given them citizenship.

They are still heavily discriminated against in Lebanon and Syria.

You never hear about that. You only hear about Palestinian Arabs in the context of what Israel is doing to them.

You never hear about how they're treated in Lebanon, where they are banned from dozens of professions, right.

Uh, and kept in horrible, uh, conditions.

So yeah, the UNRWA is, has basically just been hijacked.

They are no longer, they are not a humanitarian, uh, agency as Enoch Wilf, who wrote a book called the war of return, I believe.

And they, she heavily goes into the origins of, of UNRWA.

She says that UNRWA is a war agency. It is not a humanitarian agency and it is meant to keep the Palestinian Arabs as as pawns in this fight against Israel.

Tell us, you talked about corruption, I've heard that with the two friends i've spoken to stateside and they also repeat what you said that this is utterly corrupt organization within the UN and you think wow a corrupt organization is a corrupt organization within the corrupt organization of the UN.

That's saying a lot. But what is specifically, because again, from the outside looking in, its mandate can seem a very positive one to actually help a group.

So tell me why it's, I mean, the finance that goes through, how is that not used correctly?

Is it because they have close relationship with Hamas?

Is it because the money goes elsewhere? I mean, tell us a little bit about that side.

Right, so even apart from Israel, even apart from UNRWA's connections to Jihadist groups, Islamic terrorist groups, even apart from the hate education, the anti-Semitic and jihadist material that they promote in their schools, even apart from their facilities being used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to store weapons and launch rockets, apart from all of that, they have actually been engaged in scandal after scandal relating to nepotism, sex for money.

The suppression of whistle-blowers, right?

There was a huge scandal, I think, in 2019 where the director general was involved in this horrific sex for money scandal.

And he ended up being fired along with, I think, half a dozen others.

And if you look at what was going on and how the funds were misused for private jets and lavish business trips, it was just horrific.

So that's apart from the, you know, irredeemable nature as an anti-Semitic and violent group, right?

So even just aside from all of that, this group has many problems when it comes to corruption.

But in terms of how its funds are used with relation to, you know, terrorism and perpetuating this war against Israel, there's many different components of this.

So, for example, there's the curriculum component, right?

UNRWA schools serve half a million Palestinian Arabs throughout Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

I think they serve about 300,000 just in Gaza and the West Bank.

And they have hundreds of schools. And they use the Palestinian authorities curriculum since 2017.

And year after year after year, the textbooks are shown to be absolutely, horrifically rife with material promoting martyrdom, suicide bombing, other forms of violence, not just against Israelis, but against Jews anywhere, glorification of Hitler, teaching children in the context of math and science that there is no better position to aspire to than to be a martyr and to die in service of Allah.

There is no better goal than to be fighting against Jews everywhere and to take up arms against Jews.

I mean, the examples of this have just been documented year after year after year by organizations like UN Watch and Impact SE, they monitor these textbooks, and you'll see just the horrific examples.

Not only that, UNRWA's teachers, their social media accounts have been investigated. And these teachers, hundreds of them have been found to glorify Hamas, to glorify the October 7th massacres.

They've been found to just be outspoken about slaughtering Jews wherever you see them, slaughtering Zionists, slaughtering Israelis.

They use these terms Jews, Zionists, Israelis interchangeably in Arabic, right?

Like you're not going to, you know, when I say they're talking about slaughtering Jews...

I'm not using Jews interchangeably with Israelis or Zionists. They are.

They will use the word Yahud. They will use the word Jew, right?

And in other times, they will use the word Israeli.

In other times, they will use the word Zionist. So they're not just talking about Israelis here, right? Even if they are, that would be horrific.

You don't want to be promoting violence against anybody. But these educational standards are in direct violation of UNESCO's provisions, which demand that all UN educational materials promote peace-making and tolerance.

And, you know, you're not allowed to be othering any sort of group, any sort of religious or national or minority group.

And yet UNRWA does nothing to reform their curriculum.

As far as I know, not one teacher has been fired.

There was a few, there was about six that were placed on administrative leave after a big report came out a few years ago.

That's the most that I have heard, even though year after year after UN watch and it takes their reports to the UN, takes it to, you know, to Gutierrez and to, Philippe Lazzarini, the director of UNRWA and says, here, this is what we found.

You need to to do something about this, nothing gets done. So that's just one element. That's just the education.

Then we could go into, you know, their…

So can I pick up?

So how, I mean, people will be surprised to think the UN are actually running schools in any country.

It's one thing to actually give money or help the program, but I didn't know it was a United Nations rule to actually run whole education establishments in other countries.

Yeah. So UNRWA, well, because UNRWA's mandate, again, it's not to resettle refugees, it's to provide relief for refugees.

So UNRWA, especially in a place like Gaza, has become the de facto government of Gaza.

They provide education, they provide healthcare, they provide loans, they provide social services, right?

And there was a quote that came out after October 7th from a Hamas leader who said.

It's the U.N.'s job to deal with the refugees, the millions of refugees.

It's our job to build the tunnels. So essentially what UNRWA does is it allows Hamas and other terrorist groups to not take on the responsibility of governing their own population and building a state.

UNRWA allows Palestinian leadership, even the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, to just focus on their war against Israel and not actually do the things that they would need to do to create a viable, functioning Palestinian state.

That then they could actually have a chance of, you know, they could then actually have a chance of that state being independent and universally recognized.

Tell us, there's one thing which came out, maybe the first time people did come across this term was earlier this year, or could be the end of last year, which was when a number of countries said they would cut funding or stop funding for UNRWA.

Tell us about that because that seemed to be a possible wake-up call, although I think most countries have now rolled back and said, no, they'll keep giving.

But there was, well, more than three months ago or whatever, a number of countries did say they had concerns.

Right. It's tough to, it's hard to even really follow what's going on because, you know, one country will say we're pausing funds, right?

And then a week later, you'll find out that they just released, you know, tens of millions to UNRWA and they'll say, oh, well, that was just leftover from like a previous contract or something.

And now going forward, we're not, and then, and every few years, the European Union will pause funds because of a report that comes out discussing exactly the things we've been talking about here.

And then they'll resume funding.

You know, I mean, Trump completely pulled out funding of, he stopped all funding of UNRWA.

We were giving, the US was giving about 300 million a year to UNRWA, which is about two thirds of its budget.

They have have over a billion dollars annually from all of the countries.

And just as an aside, the Gulf countries make up only about 7% of that budget.

So the burden falls on the US and the EU and Germany and the UK.

The UK gives about 40 million a year.

And so we are funding UNRWA. And Trump pulled out this funding.

He withdrew all of it in 2018 because he said it was the organization was irredeemably flawed.

And unless they completely reformed, there was no reason to be giving money to an entity that was perpetuating a conflict rather than helping to solve it.

Biden reversed that. Biden gets an office, you know, in 2021, he resumes funding.

I don't think it's, I don't think it's back to 300 million a year.

I think it's back to 150 million a year.

You know, and then recently, like you said, the Biden administration and some other countries said, we're going to pause funding.

You know, it might be paused for a few months here or there, but unless donor countries are prepared to permanently end funding, then I don't see any of these.

I see these more as kind of virtue signalling moves rather than any profound interest in helping solve this problem.

And I think I read that there were something like 60 refugee camps, I guess, run by UNRWA, supported by UNRWA.

Obviously, you've got Lebanon, then Syria, then down to Jordan.

And then half of them are, oh, they're in the West Bank and in Gaza.

So half of the refugee camps are in areas where they are free to live.

How do you have a refugee camp in your own country?

I'm confused. Please explain that to me.

I'm so glad you brought that up.

There's no way to explain this. I mean, this is absolutely absurd.

And it's such a tragedy that nobody has this thought that you just had, that people don't recognize, that people don't think to themselves, wait a second, why are there any refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank?

These are areas that would be part of a future Palestinian state.

These areas are Palestine, right?

And the West Bank areas, Area A and parts of Area B in the West Bank have complete autonomy.

I mean, Israel has no jurisdiction over Area A in the West Bank, and Israel has no jurisdiction over all of Gaza, right? Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

There's people who say it's occupied. They don't know what they're talking about. Who occupied?

There's no troops there. There's no Jews there. There's no Israelis there.

How can it be occupied, right?

People are now saying, oh, well, they still control the borders.

Well, okay, we can talk about that, but that's not occupation.

That would be correctly referred to as a blockade, right? But not an occupation.

So, I mean, you know, so if Gaza is completely independent, has their own government, they're not taxed by Israel, right?

Why are there still Palestinians in refugee camps? This makes no sense.

And again, it's because UNRWA keeps them there, stateless, in limbo, right?

And as an aside, let me just say that many of these camps, quote unquote, are not really camps at all.

A few of them are, okay? There are some camps that, and you see pictures of them and they're, they're not in, they're not really in great conditions.

But usually when you think of refugee camps, you think of tents, squatters.

Many of what UNRWA considers refugee camps are actually four or five story concrete buildings that have electricity, running water, kitchens, satellite TV, internet. Okay.

And Palestinians are living in these, in these buildings and they're still considered camps, but regardless.

So, so, you know.

Going back to the definition of a refugee, right, the UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which deals with all the other refugees in the world, their definition clearly states that to be considered a refugee, you cannot be in the country that you supposedly were displaced from.

You have to be outside of the region, right?

But these millions of Palestinians that are living in the West Bank and Gaza, that is their home.

It's not like they would leave if they got a Palestinian state.

So they should not be considered refugees to begin with.

And yet they are.

Wow. And you've got, I think it was a beautiful interview clip I saw of Douglas Murray talking about, of course, the interviewer telling him how Israel is occupying Gaza and he was trying to work out what do you mean by occupation and the journalist then wanted to quickly move on but the other point was the Gaza Strip does border another country and that is Egypt.

I don't see any refugee camps in Egypt, obviously the Egyptian border and Gaza is fairly closed I mean there has been a lot of Israel have welcomed many, many of individuals living in Gaza to work in Israel.

And that's been back and forward. And by doing that, Israel shows itself to be a good neighbour, as long as you don't try and kill us.

That's the prerequisite, which we all have.

But it seems Egypt, that border doesn't seem to be very open for work.

And yet no one criticizes Egypt for having that blocked border.

Yep, which just goes to show the double standard when it comes to Israel.

The sole Jewish state in the world is held to a different standard than any other country.

Not only is the border between Egypt and Gaza closed, but since October 7th, Egypt has reinforced this border with tanks, right? Right. I mean, the block.

I mean, they have been adamant about not accepting a single Palestinian from Gaza after October 7th. Now, now think about that.

In any war, Israel is at war, right? There is a full fledged war happening in Gaza. In any other war the civilian population is allowed to leave. There are refugees that are produced.

This war has produced virtually no refugees.

Why?

It's because the Biden administration is not letting people leave.

Why? Because we don't want any Palestinians displaced from this war.

Oh, OK. So you just want to keep them in Gaza, right, at risk of being killed or at risk of, whether it's from Hamas or from Israel, right, at risk of starvation, at risk of losing their homes, right?

You just want to keep them trapped in this war-torn region?

That is cruel and inhumane.

Biden gives, the U.S. provides Egypt with, I want to say, is it one and a half million? It may even be more than that.

Egypt is the second largest recipient after Israel of U.S. aid.

Biden could so easily pressure Egypt to open the border and say, yo, you've got to let some of these Gazans in.

You're not in a very good position right now, okay?

Not a word from Biden, not one word.

And it's because this is all about images, the images that have to be portrayed, right? It's all about pressure on Israel.

Well, if Biden really cared about the Palestinians' casualties, about the growing Palestinian casualties, then you would think that the first thing that he would do is try to get the border with Egypt opened so that Palestinians could actually leave.

Biden doesn't care at all about the Palestinians, neither does Egypt, neither does UNRWA, neither does any other country, not in the Middle East, not in the West.

Since, I mean, 2005 was the last time Israel were in Gaza, and then they pulled out and obviously didn't do the job of finishing off Hamas and removing that external threat they face.

But since 2005 to last year, 7th of October, when the atrocity happened.

Was there no, you've got a better understanding because you're aware of this space, but surely that was the time for such organizations as UNRWA, for the world community.

For the EU, for the US to have conversations about what actually could happen now, supposedly, what could be the narrative, the people are now free of Israeli occupation so they can get on with actually building their country.

That doesn't seem to have happened and I'm wondering how, because in one way on one side I feel sorry for those, I even hesitate to call them Palestinians because I do have a massive issue with that, but we're talking to Robert Spencer about that next week, the Palestinian delusion, but that's a whole other issue but you kind of feel sorry for the people in one way but at the same time, hey you have got a government and if you don't like the government you have to overthrow it, that's what happened under communism all across eastern Europe, that supposedly was what the Arab spring was about, overthrowing government or leadership that you don't want and bringing a new one and yet those who Palestinians living in Gaza they seem to keep this government therefore kind of that does make you responsible for the the crimes the government does upon you and the crimes that the government may do on other countries and bring it on you so I've kind of come to a position where I look at the Palestinian people differently because I think, well.

You've kind of brought some of the misery upon yourself, if that's not being too cold and callous.

I don't mean that, but we're all responsible for what happens in our own countries.

There's a lot to unpack there. I think to a certain extent, you're right.

It's hard to really know how many Gazans or even Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank support Hamas.

There's been a lot of polls on this.

Some people say these polls are not to be trusted. If you call up a Gazan and say, do you support Hamas? Obviously they're going to say yes.

But what we do know is that they do enjoy some measurable, of some measure of of popular support.

There have been some protests over the years against Hamas, that Hamas has heavily cracked down on.

And I salute those Palestinian Arabs. They did that with great risk, you know, but it's nothing like Iran where you know, where you see since 2009 year after year, people rising up.

The mass is really rising up and protesting against their government. It's nothing like that.

And even these Palestinian Arabs in Gaza who are unhappy with Hamas, I think that not a lot of people understand that just because Palestinian Arabs support Hamas, I mean, don't support Hamas, doesn't mean they like Jews.

So there can be Palestinian Arabs who are very upset with Hamas because Hamas keeps them in these horrific economic conditions.

Now, actually, if you look at pictures of Gaza, they're very different than what the general media narrative is. The general media narrative is that this is a region that is the most densely populated region on earth. False.

That is just the whole thing is steeped in poverty and shacks everywhere.

False. there is such an incredible degree of luxury alongside poverty in Gaza because Hamas has created an incredible gap between the poor and the super rich.

So there are actually, there's a whole class of Gazans that really live a life of luxury.

And it really goes against this narrative of Gaza being some, you know, open air prison or what have you.

But I digress. In terms of Palestinian support for Hamas, it's very, very disturbing to have seen the level of complicity in October 7th among ordinary Gazans, right?

We know, like you said, there was about 20,000 Gazans that came to work in southern Israel virtually every single day, before October 7th, so much for it being a prison and blockaded, right?

You have 20,000 people leaving, coming to work every day in Israel.

And they were working in these kibbutzim. And these kibbutzim that were on October 7th were largely, the residents were largely left-wing peaceniks, right?

They really reached out. They sent an olive branch over to Gaza.

They wanted Gazans to come in and work. They thought that, you know, getting, because they would get paid a lot more in Israel, and then they'd be able to have more economic success in Gaza that would help the region grow and flourish.

Well, what we have found after October 7th is that many of these workers provided, they were complicit.

They provided maps to Hamas of where to attack.

Not only that, we saw troves of Palestinian civilians.

Barefoot and on horseback come through, break through the border on October 7th and actually carry out some of these attacks themselves, whether it was murder, whether it was taking them hostage, whether it was just coming and looting.

So these Israeli residents of these kibbutzim, after October 7th, a lot of them, you've heard them discuss how they have completely changed their views.

They thought that it was really just Hamas is the government and the people are different from their government, much like in Iran, where the regime is not supported by the masses and enjoys minority support among the population.

And that's what people thought about Gaza.

And now that has just largely been questioned.

And we see that there is a level of support that maybe people weren't really prepared to admit before.

And polls have shown that if there were to be an election that was held in the West Bank, I mean, one of the reasons why, you know, Mahmoud Abbas is a dictator, he hasn't held elections.

He's the president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and he hasn't had elections in, what is it, 15 years now since he was elected?

And one of the reasons, even though it was supposed to be a four-year term, and one of the reasons is because poll after poll shows that Hamas would win in the West Bank.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that, look, it's not surprising.

When you have half a million Palestinians that are indoctrinated in their schools, in their mosques, on state TV, right, in higher education, when they are indoctrinated to believe that they are perpetual victims, that Jews are evil, that they are irredeemably impure, filthy sons of apes and pigs.

When you are indoctrinated to believe that Hitler was righteous, when you are indoctrinated, when the protocols of the elders of Zion and Mein Kampf are still in display cases in bookshops throughout this region.

Then why wouldn't you support Hamas? I mean, these kids don't stand a chance and kids have been interviewed.

There have been videos that show kids that are in UNRWA schools being interviewed and they say things like, we are taught to believe that the Jews are bad, right? I mean, it's black and white.

There's no grey area here. It's very clear that there is systemic anti-Semitism, that it really has to do with Jews, not so much Israel, that this is a holy religious war, and that the issue is fundamentally not about two states, but about the Palestinian leadership's refusal to accept a non-Muslim sovereign in the region.

That is what what it comes down to.

Just finishing off it's obviously if any of us were overseeing the UN the first requirement for funding going in would be have a government that actually you can work with and if you have someone like Hamas you can can't give a penny, obviously there'll be massive demands for huge increases of money to go in, probably like we've seen in the crazy amount amount spent in Ukraine, I could imagine demands for that money now to be switched over to Gaza.

But of course, with those refugee camps outside.

If I was Nenyao, personally, I would just say, well, we're going to get buses.

We're going to bring you all to your other refugee camps in Jordan, in Syria, in Lebanon.

And actually, we'll turn Gaza into a nice area that actually may be a national park or something.

And therefore, the people still get to live in the refugee camp in an area.

But you kind of think, well, there has to be a way forward. How do you see?

Because this war will come to an end.

Either by the time Israel achieve its objective of destroying Hamas or by the time the world's PR machine forces Israel to stop. It'll be one or the other.

And at that point, there'll have to be a conversation.

What do you do with this problem that we have next door?

And I don't know how you see, not that you have a crystal ball, but I don't know how you kind of see that conversation going and whether it's going to end up in a better situation than where we currently are.

Right. What you're talking about is the day after, right?

This is a term that a lot of people have used when talking about the Gaza war, which in my opinion is a little premature.

We don't usually talk about the day after a war when we're in the middle of a war, but people seem to be obsessed with this idea that Israel is going to reoccupy Gaza and then everybody's going to be up in arms about this.

But let's be clear about one thing. This is not Ukraine. This is no stalemate.

OK. And if not for the Biden administration, this war would have been over weeks ago.

OK. Israel has won.

They've done a tremendous job. They've been incredibly successful at achieving, largely achieving their goals.

Right. though they haven't retained the hostages. But Hamas is, I think, two-thirds of their military apparatus is just completely reduced to nothing.

And Israel has one last stronghold, basically major stronghold, Rafah, right?

And this is where a lot of the Palestinian Arabs, the Gazans, have been moved, right?

And so if Israel can take out Rafah, and this is also where they believe the hostages are, where Yaha Simwar is, the head of Hamas, the war will pretty much be over.

And then the process of what I call de-Hamasification, just like the de-Nazification of Germany after World War II, then needs to commence.

But Biden has put a red light on Israel and is refusing to let Israel to take out Rafah, right?

He doesn't want more casualties.

So Biden is, with pressure from other countries, but mainly the Biden administration is prolonging this war and not letting it be won, which it could be won very swiftly.

And also, let's just let's just be clear when I say Israel has been largely successful in their goals.

I'm even taking into account the large number of Palestinian refugees, because even though people are going on about the fact that there have been tens of thousands of, sorry, Palestinian casualties. Did I say refugees?

But people are going on about how there's been 30,000 Palestinian casualties. And that's outrageous.

But actually, if you look at the casualty count in any comparable conflict in the history of modern urban warfare, the combatant to civilian ratio is unheard of.

The amount of restraint and precision that Israel has exercised cannot be said of any other army in the history of warfare, okay?

If you average out the general civilian to combatant ratio, it's usually about nine to one when you're dealing with modern urban warfare, meaning for every one combatant or enemy soldier, terrorist that you kill, nine civilians die.

This is how it's been in past conflicts, taking out ISIS or whatever in modern warfare.

Israel has managed to achieve, especially in this war, a two to one or even in some cases a one to one ratio.

Because what that 30,000 casualty number doesn't tell you is that roughly half of them are Hamas fighters, right?

But people, but the media loves to rely on the Palestinian health ministry, the Gaza health ministry for these numbers as if it's not completely 100% in arm of Hamas, right? Right. Like it's so insane.

Like would we trust like Al Qaeda's numbers? Right. Or like ISIS's numbers.

And yet everybody just accepts Hamas's numbers, even though this 30,000, this number of 30,000 does not mention any Hamas fighters.

Not once have they included Hamas fighters in this number.

They just say that the majority are women and children, but there have been incredible analyses done of this number that have shown how bogus and how problematic it is, even from just a statistical standpoint.

But yeah, so I mean, Israel's done a tremendous job of minimizing casualties.

But in terms of the day after, there really can only be one answer to this, and that is is that for some period of time, Israel needs to maintain control, security control of this region, right?

After World War II, after Germany, after Nazi Germany was defeated, we did not just pull out and just like, okay, you're left to your own devices.

No, there was a denazification process to reform the entire society so that the civilian population could be raised on tolerance and peace.

And that is what needs to happen here. That cannot be done by the United Nations.

We've already seen how corrupt UNWRA is. But even just other UN agencies cannot be, despite what everybody is saying, the UN is not equipped to be in control in Gaza.

If you look at the history of UN peacekeeping missions, especially in that region, every single one has been an abysmal failure in Lebanon, in Syria, in Egypt.

It's just, I mean, Eugene Kontorovich, Professor Eugene Kontorovich has documented this extensively and provided massive evidence for why this is just a recipe for disaster and for Hamas regrouping and taking power, if not, another organization that's equally as religiously, extreme and violent.

So it can't be the UN. It can't be the Palestinian Authority because the Palestinian Authority is virtually the same as Hamas.

The only difference is that because Israel has a presence in parts of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority isn't able to carry out October 7th, you know, October 7th like attack, even though they have said that they would want to, even though members of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have have praised the attacks.

Members of Fatah actually participated in the attack and they have been very supportive.

So, you know, and we had seen that when in 2005, when Israel pulled out and they thought that the PLO, which was the precursor to the Palestinian Authority, was going to be in charge there.

Well, they didn't do a very good job because Hamas came, Hamas was elected and then they purged the strip of the, of their their Fatah rivals, and the same would happen.

The PA is just, it's just an incompetent apparatus to keep that region secure.

So unfortunately, although Israel doesn't want to be in control of over a million Gazans, Israel needs to maintain a presence there for security purposes and really transform that region so that something like October 7th can never happen again.

Well, I'm still up for a national park there, but that's a different discussion.

Karys, thank you so much for coming on. Fascinating, that whole understanding of UNRWA, of that refugee situation, which is probably an eye-opener to many of our viewers and fits perfectly into the current situation that we find in Israel. So thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.