UNRWA’s Munchausen Disease

Munchausen syndrome is a mental illness in which a person considers himself to be sick even when they are actually fine. The person will act injured or sick and perhaps even harm themselves to elicit a sympathetic response from people around them.

WebMD notes that “People with Munchausen syndrome deliberately produce or exaggerate symptoms in several ways. They may lie about or fake symptoms, hurt themselves to bring on symptoms, or alter tests…. Although a person with Munchausen syndrome actively seeks treatment for the various disorders he or she invents, the person often is unwilling to admit to and seek treatment for the syndrome itself. This makes treating people with Munchausen syndrome very challenging, and the outlook for recovery poor.”

What a great description of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and the Palestinians themselves.

Perpetuating the Status of the Refugees
Perpetuating a Temporary Agency

UNRWA was created in 1950 to be a temporary UN agency to assist refugees that left the newly reestablished Jewish state of Israel. The situation arose when the Arab countries that invaded Israel refused to make peace with Israel, and Israel never allowed the roughly 711,000 hostile refugees to return to their homes. As the Arabs continued to wage war against Israel over the years, UNRWA opted to redefine a “refugee” in several unique ways:

For Palestinians, a refugee is someone that left a house or town, while for every other refugee in the world, it means leaving a country;
For Palestinians, a refugee is anyone that had a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent that left their home many decades ago, while the definition for every other refugee is specifically only for those people who actually fled a country (not descendants)

A fake symptom (refugee status) has enabled a temporary agency to become permanent.

Tons of Money Wasted to Ask for More Money

UNRWA has been spending billions of dollars on the stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) for decades. Even though the schools and libraries have already been built, and the people are living in the same place with the same language as they have for decades, billions more is requested annually. The infrastructure has been paid for and the needs should be few. No matter.

UNRWA’s 2017 budget was $760 million serving 5.9 million registered people. That’s $129 per person on average. How many actual SAPs are there still alive from the 1948-9 war? Estimates are less than 30,000 people. That would mean that UNRWA is spending over $25,000 on average for actual refugees.

A fake definition of refugee produces a greater demand for money.

The ever-growing number of “refugees” and registered people asking for UNRWA assistance yields to an ever increasing number of staff. In 2017, there were 30,799 staff members on the ground in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, and roughly 33,000 working at the agency globally. An estimated 98% of the 33,000 staff members – over 32,000 people – are SAPs themselves. There are more Palestinians working at UNRWA than there are actual Palestinian refugees.

UNRWA’s appeal for global contributions is simply a way to funnel money to thousands of Palestinian Arabs in fake jobs.

The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Pierre Krahenbuhl, made an appeal to the world on January 17, 2018 stressing the need for more money for schools and hospitals. He barely mentioned the loans – tens of millions of dollars that UNRWA gives to Arabs for their businesses every year – now amounting to half a billion dollars overall.

The cries for money to help student and hospitals masks the reality of tens of millions of dollars going simply to make business loans.

As a benchmark to see how much money is needed for actual refugees with real housing, language and monetary needs, one can look at the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2016, the UNHCR counted 16.5 million actual refugees, plus millions of others that were internally displaced and stateless to whom it provided services, 67.8 million people in all. It spent just shy of $4 billion on these people, or $59 per person. In June 2017, the total broad refugee count serviced by UNHCR was 65.6 million, treated by just under 11,000 staff members. That’s a staff to refugee ratio of one staff member to every 5963 refugees, spread all around the world.

UNHCR, a global agency that helps millions of desperate people get their lives together spends $59 per registered person and has one staff person for every 6000 people, while the bogus UNRWA spends $129 on fake refugees who already have complete infrastructure and provides a staff person for every 179 people. That means that UNRWA is over-staffing by roughly 33 times.

The obscene UNRWA waste of money produces the pleas for more aid.

UNRWA in Jerusalem

Undermining Dignity While Claiming the Status
of Defender of Dignity

In his remarks asking the world for money, Krahenbuhl mentioned Palestinian “dignity” four times, making the point that UNRWA is the agency that will protect the dignity of the Palestinian refugees that are at risk.

But how does keeping people in a continuous state of taking the world’s charity instill any sense of dignity?

UNHCR helps refugees get settled in their new host country and learn skills to obtain jobs and become self-sufficient. But not UNRWA. In places like Syria, the SAPs are forbidden to get white collar jobs. In Lebanon and Jordan they are prohibited from obtaining citizenship (meanwhile in Jerusalem, Arabs are welcome to apply for Israeli citizenship). The SAPs are left to live off of UNRWA’s breast milk, never being weaned to become independent.

The very agency that keeps Palestinian Arabs as wards of the world, then claims that it is the protector of their “dignity.”

In short, like Munchausen syndrome, UNRWA created and has perpetuated a fake illness (millions of refugees). It then wastes hundreds of millions of dollars funneling money to these wards of the UN while convincing these SAPs that there was no other way to get homes or jobs. They became addicted to their refugee status and UNRWA money, and have let UNRWA beg for handouts to treat the disorder that it created and helped fester.

Treating Munchausen Syndrome

UNRWA is plagued with a terrible mental disease and it continues to lean on the world to treat its fake illness. It is time to break the fever.

WebMD proposes the following treatment for Munchausen:

“When treatment is sought, the first goal is to modify the person’s behavior and reduce his or her misuse or overuse of medical resources. Once this goal is met, treatment aims to work out any underlying psychological issues that may be causing the person’s behavior. Another key goal is to help patients avoid dangerous and unnecessary medical diagnostic or treatment procedures (such as surgeries), often sought from different doctors who may be unaware that physical symptoms are either being faked or self-inflicted.

As with other factitious disorders, the primary treatment for Munchausen syndrome is psychotherapy or talk therapy (a type of counseling). Treatment usually focuses on changing the thinking and behavior of the individual (cognitive-behavioral therapy). Family therapy may also be helpful in teaching family members not to reward or reinforce the behavior of the person with the disorder.”

Modify behavior: Stop pretending that there are over 5 million Palestinian refugees. Do not “misuse and overuse resources.” Modify the staffing and budget of UNRWA to accommodate the actual 30,000 refugees that are living just a few miles from where there grandparents once lived. Using the figures from UNHCR of $59 per person for the 30,000 people would yield an annual budget of $1.8 million, not $760 million.

Work out any underlying psychological issues: If acting-President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas is indicative of the fake history of both Palestinians (they are not Canaanites) and Jews (it IS their holy land), then the entire school curriculum that UNRWA is so proud of should be flushed down the toilet. Teaching basic facts and the ability to reason must be advanced.

Change thinking and behavior: According to the ADL, almost every single Palestinian Arab is an antisemite. When factoring in the inability to acknowledge basic facts and the perpetual reinforcement that Palestinians are victims for whom relief will only come at the hands of the United Nations is a cocktail for extremism and terrorism.

The United States withdrawal of some funds from UNRWA in January 2018 was a useful first step. Folding UNRWA into the UNHCR, moving tens of thousands of Palestinian UNRWA employees to service real refugees from Syria, Yemen and Somalia, and redoing the entire UNRWA school curricula are the added steps needed to break the UNRWA Munchausen Syndrome.

Related First.One.Through articles:

UNRWA’s Ongoing War against Israel and Jews

Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR

Delivery of the Fictional Palestinian Keys

How the US and UN can Restart Relations with Israel

Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the “Inalienable Rights of Palestinians”

The Palestinian’s Three Denials

A Response to Rashid Khalidi’s Distortions on the Balfour Declaration

First.One.Through videos:

The Hypocrisy of Queen Rania of Jordan

The Hamas Theme Song in the UNRWA Schools

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