March 12, 2024
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim has urged Labor to support the US plan to build a "temporary floating pier" in Gaza to deliver aid rather than restore funding to the UN's aid agency.
Mr Wertheim said the Jewish community supported the provision of aid to Gaza civilians who were in desperate need but remained "totally opposed" to using the UN Relief and Works Agency to deliver that aid.
The call comes after Anthony Albanese signalled on Monday that Labor was considering alternative routes to funnel humanitarian aid into Gaza "through other forms" than UNRWA, saying he was "giving consideration to the range of support".
"The consequences of the action that's taken place there should not impact on innocent civilians the way that it has," he told ABC Radio Canberra. "We've been very clear about that.
"We continue to call for not just humanitarian support, and we're giving consideration to the range of support that can be given, including through other forms as well, in terms of essential food and lifesaving delivery there." The Prime Minister's remarks come amid mounting pressure to reverse a pause in funding to UNRWA, which was announced following allegations some of its staff played a role in the October 7 attack, with Canada and Sweden announcing they were restoring support.
Mr Wertheim said it would be "irresponsible" to waste taxpayers' money supporting the UN agency, and Australia could bolster the US effort to "establish a temporary floating pier in Gaza to deliver aid supplies to civilians in Gaza directly, and bypass UNRWA".
"It has been demonstrated that UNRWA employees, including school teachers, participated in the Hamas massacre of October 7 and many others have collaborated with Hamas in other ways," he said. "UNRWA is so intimately connected to Hamas that no level of external control has been able to prevent large quantities of aid being commandeered by Hamas at the expense of Gazan civilians.
"The vast resources that have been squandered in constructing Hamas's extensive labyrinth of tunnels, much of which has now been destroyed, are testament to that." On Monday, RSL national president Greg Melick condemned pro-Palestine activists who vandalised the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial in Canberra by spray-painting slogans on the monument describing Israel as a "colony" and warning of "genocide" in Gaza.
Protestors vandalised the memorial overnight on Sunday to highlight the situation in Gaza, with Mr Melick describing their actions as "contemptible".
The slogans on the national memorial - which said "Eyes on Rafah" and "This is genocide" had not been cleaned on Monday, a public holiday in the nation's capital to mark "Canberra Day." Other slogans were clearly visible to residents walking or driving by.
Mr Melick said people were "entitled to protest, but the desecration of a memorial to those who served, suffered and died in the Vietnam conflict is to be deplored." Opposition veterans' affairs spokesman Barnaby Joyce said the protestors had undermined their own cause, declaring that the "disgraceful actions of those who desecrate a war memorial are beyond contempt and anathema".
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman James Paterson said the government should only restore funding to UNRWA when it was "confident that there is no risk of any of that funding finding its way to Hamas".
Senator Paterson urged Labor to wait until an investigation into UNRWA had been completed to ensure Australian money was not being "misspent".
"The major obstacle to get aid into Gaza is not funding for UNRWA, it is the physical obstacles and operational obstacles to getting the aid in. Of course, more aid would always be welcome," he told ABC Radio National.
"But the main obstacles are not the amount of aid, but the access of that aid into Gaza and particularly the distribution of the aid within Gaza, which is very challenging operationally."
