An Intentionally Maintained Forward Army, Not “Refugees”

7 min readMar 25, 2024

The Accusation Israel “Oppresses” and “Provokes” The Palestinians Into “Resistance”

Only a small percentage of people are aware that the UN has two refugee organizations. One is dedicated to caring for and resettling refugees wherever in the world they are found, except in Gaza and the West Bank. They hold that refugees should be peacefully resettled so they can start new lives when they are in situations where there is no long term future or prospects of return to their country of origin.

The other is UNRWA, which is dedicated solely to perpetuating the refugee status of Palestinians forever, generation upon generation. It prevents them from being resettled despite claiming the refugees live in what they themselves have called “intolerable” conditions in Gaza and knowing they have no prospects of ever returning to their ancestor’s homes in Israel. UNRWA teaches instead that it is a fundamental right for the Palestinian refugees to return to live inside Israel.

UNRWA has a budget over $1B and the US itself contributes over $300M to it each year. The head of UNRWA in Gaza must be approved by Hamas, and runs the schools in the Gaza strip. Please watch the video below to understand what UN money is being used to teach the children of Gaza. The world claims Gaza and the West Bank populations need this money for humanitarian purposes, but this is circular reasoning. There would be no humanitarian need if the refugees had been resettled decades ago, as normally happens. UNRWA perpetuates itself by creating the humanitarian needs it claims it is serving.

If this sounds odd, it becomes less odd when you understand UNRWA was established as a temporary agency in the aftermath of Israel’s 1948 War for Independence. The UN originally intended for it to deal with the displaced people from the war. A few years later, it was made a permanent agency, with a permanent and ever growing “refugee” population camped on Israel’s border, as a favor to the Arab states who wanted them there as a forward army which could pressure and destabilize Israel. The Arab League’s idea was that resettling the refugees would leave the Arab League’s territorial ambitions exposed as pure aggression, without a humanitarian fig leaf. The Palestinian idea was that allowing their “refugee” status to expire normally would indicate acceptance the war was over and a Jewish state existed. Having a permanent “refugee” population to “return” would provide cover and be a signal the war is not over and must continue as a fight for “justice”.

The story of UNRWA and its contribution to the war against Israel is a big one and I cannot do a better job of it than Dr. Einat Wilf has. I recommend her book The War of Return and strongly encourage each reader to click on the Go deeper link below to listen to Dr. Wilf explain the agency’s history, how it works and its place promoting the conflict before proceeding.

Go deeper video: Dr. Einat Wilf discusses UNRWA’s essential contribution to the institutional root causes of the endless nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict

You might hear a lot about the numbers of children being killed in the war in Gaza. What you won’t hear is how many of them are actually being killed on the battlefield. The video below will help you understand how so many children could end up on a battlefield, in the line of fire, by allowing you to hear these young people speak for themselves,

Video: UNRWA and Gaza’s Schools of Terror

Go deeper video: How and why UNRWA perpetuates unending conflict

Go deeper video: UNWatch on UNRWA perfidy

Here is testimony from an American Christian woman who has seen the videos of the October 7th massacre, carried out by young men who came through that school system,

Portions of the video contained images that were apparently filmed using GoPro-style cameras that were mounted on the terrorists’ heads. I still find it so traumatic that I can only recall fragments. The faces of two dead babies. One lay dead in crib. Was that a footprint of a man’s boot on the baby’s white onesie? The other was on the floor, arms by his side, peaceful. I thought the baby was alive until a man shoved a long metal rod into the infant’s eye socket. I recoiled in my seat.

Go deeper: Testimony from a Christian viewer of the Hamas massacre videos

When Hamas burned their victims to a crisp, including tying a mother to her small child and burning them together, it wasn’t random cruelty. It was intentional signaling to the Israelis of the continuity between the extermination of Jewry in the ovens of Nazi concentration camps and the ultimate plans many people in the Arab lands have for the Israeli Jews.

Doing poorly in a fight is not victimization

We know from frequent polling of the Palestinian population over years that a large portion of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have never reformed their nationalist and religious based hatred or forsook violence. Depending on what might be happening in current events, between 40% and 60% of Palestinians polled will reject any sort of peaceful co-existence with a Jewish state.

Here is what passes for “moderation” among Palestinians in the West Bank (from NPR),

Hamas made the most important action against Israel since its existence,” says Nihad Abughosh, a Palestinian journalist and political analyst, who describes himself as a secular moderate. “To me it’s something like a miracle, the 7th of October,” he tells NPR in an interview in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Throughout the chapters of this book so far, I have described how the Palestinian path has been a straight line, unbending and unwavering, more than 100 years back in history. Their war isn’t about settlements. It isn’t about checkpoints. This isn’t really a war of “resistance” against “colonialism” or “apartheid” by “indigenous” people against “European invaders”. It isn’t about Israel arresting young men with scissors in their cars because Palestinians chose to send their young sons into Israel as guerilla soldiers to stab people to death.

Those things are all results of the war’s long history, not causes, as Israel has had to incrementally tighten its segregation from the descendants of the Arabs who lived in old Palestine.

The Palestinian “cause” is about seeking justice and redemption ( as they see it ) by retaking land and committing genocide against Jewish Israelis through asymmetric warfare.

Israeli checkpoints and settlements are partly a military tactic to suppress the violence and keep it from spilling over into Israel proper.

It is a form of suppression of violence in an ongoing war, not racial oppression in an “apartheid state”.

If you come late to a fight, you shouldn’t automatically assume the one losing the fight is the victim.

I haven’t heard any pro-Palestinian person in the streets agitating for Hamas to disarm and surrender. No Palestinians in the West Bank are doing that. They cheer Hamas’ bravery.

Go deeper: NPR’s Report on Palestinian’s response to Hamas violence

While Israel focuses on suppressing Palestinian violence at home, the current phase of the war on their end focuses on weakening Israel by isolating Israel from Western allies, through a well orchestrated public relations and propaganda campaign. This campaign has been honing its narrative and its tools for decades, and knows how to out-shout the world’s tiny Jewish population because it is greased by Arab and Islamic allies using their huge population advantages and oil money, deployed to buy positions at Western universities, at the UN and at UN-affiliated organizations.

‘Disarm and surrender’ is the only path to peace and also the quickest

I hear pro-Palestinian activists say, defending Palestinian violence, that anyone would react the same in similar circumstances. Left unsaid is a harsh truth: hardly any other group of people would have maneuvered themselves into such circumstances in the first place, through so many decades of folly, again and again choosing violence against another people.

I do not support Netanyahu or his government. I see Israel as a flawed democracy, much like the US where I live, being torn apart by a Jewish religious fundamentalist minority who will not compromise, a minority driven by an aggressive faith incompatible with democratic freedoms.

That said, I’m not going to put up a pretense of “both sidesism” here. Hamas must disarm and surrender. The Gazans are not innocent of Hamas’ crimes. Hamas is widely supported, as poll after poll has shown, and Gazan civilians die because there is no other way anyone has even imagined for Israel to uproot Hamas and stop aggression against Israeli people. Hamas has to be burned out.

The best way to understand how things have gone so badly is to read the chapters of this resource in order, from beginning to end, clicking on the Go deeper links as your time allows. It is an immersive experience and few people will get through unchanged, having learned the context of the conflict, including parts the United Nations does not want people to learn.

This essay is part of a larger resource for parents, teachers, students, concerned individuals, and anyone else who desires to contextualize the conflict and navigate the accusations against Israel and Palestinians.

All Chapters:

0. Foreword to Zionism and Anti-Zionism

1. The Gish Gallop of Anti-Zionism

2. Genocide or Just War?

3. For Hamas, The Suffering Is The Point

4. What Is Israel? Why So Much Violence?

5. The Hebrew People, Not the Jewish Religion

6. Chosen For Their Insignificance, Not Their Superiority

7. The Incoherence of, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionism.”

8. Refugee Immigration, Not Settler Colonialism

9. Zionism, Arab Feudalism, and the Tragedy of the Serfs

10. How the Zionists Saved ( Not Conquered ) Palestine