Mick Hartley

UNRWA supports Palestinian refugees, some 75 years after Israel's foundation – the only UN agency dedicated to helping refugees from a specific region or conflict. It was originally established to provide relief to all refugees resulting from the 1948 war, but the Israeli government took over responsibility for the Jewish refugees in 1952. No Arab country has stepped forward to take responsibility for the Arab refugees however, despite all the talk of Arab Nationalism and Arab unity. Keeping them as refugees – and the responsibility of UNRWA – is too convenient, and reinforces the point that the state of Israel, for them, can never be acknowledged. The refugees will stay refugees – now more than 5.6 million registered with UNRWA – until Israel is destroyed. That's the thinking.

Unfortunately for Palestinian concerns, UNRWA has just announced a new Code of Conduct for its employees, including over 30,000 Palestinians, and it includes gay rights.

Oh dear. There would appear to be a moral gulf between the beneficent UN organisation and its less-than-grateful beneficiaries.

Here's Palestinian Islamic scholar Abd Al-Rahman Al-Zayoud:

 "UNRWA, which ostensibly serves the refugees, has circulated a 69-page Code of Conduct to its employees, in which it called on its employees to respect the homosexuals and their rights. If this call clashes with the 'local culture'…

"What is the local culture? The Islamic culture. If this call clashes with the local culture, the laws and covenants of the United Nations – which call for homosexuality – must be followed. So what do they want from us? What do they want from this society that follows the Islamic culture, which sees homosexuality and lesbianism as punishable by death? They want us to respect this and strip us of our religion."

Elder of Ziyon reports:

The reaction in Gaza was, predictably, fierce. And every single organization that commented argued that UNRWA should discriminate against gays. 

The Joint Committee for Refugees in the Gaza Strip issued a statement saying, “This code violates the moral system of our Palestinian people…. blatantly violates the feelings of refugees and employees, calls for vice, and disdains all the customs, traditions, struggle, and history of our Palestinian people, and is in violation of to the laws of the host country….So-called gay rights are completely rejected and have no place in our Palestinian society, and the claim that they are among human rights are false claims."

The Joint Committee of the Employees’ Unions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at UNRWA denounced the code, saying, "We call on UNRWA management to respect our values, our common sense, and our Islamic morals, and not to spread such ideas." They told union members to return the booklet unsigned.

The head of the Hamas government media office, Salama Maarouf, said, "We clearly declare that this matter is unacceptable to us, and we see it as a clear violation by the agency's management of its internal regulations and its founding work protocol, which requires it to adhere to the values, customs, and laws of the communities to which it provides services."

The Democratic Assembly of UNRWA Workers "called on the UNRWA administration to retract the bulletins and immediately investigate who placed them in the bulletins, and to apologize to the great Palestinian people for this incident, which is considered a dagger in the side of the Palestinian refugee." It also said that the Code "calls for immorality."

The Association of Palestine Scholars said that UNRWA was "glorifying obscenity and vice, and targeting the moral and humanitarian values ​​of Palestinian society.”

You know, the moral and humanitarian values that celebrates murdering Jews.