Almost 24 hours after Ville Tavio, Finnish minister for foreign trade and development, said Finland would stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the Israeli Foreign Ministry lauded the development.
“Israel welcomes Finland’s decision to end its multi-year funding for UNRWA,” the Jewish state said on Friday. “It is good to see more countries recognizing the undeniable truth in light of the conclusive evidence of UNRWA employees’ involvement in the Oct. 7 massacre and UNRWA’s inseparable links to Hamas.”
“UNRWA is a hotbed of terrorism,” the Israeli ministry said of the U.N. agency. “It is part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
On Thursday, Tavio stated in Finnish that the country’s “support agreement with UNRWA ends, and funding to the Palestinian territories continues through other channels.”
“The multi-year support agreement made between Finland and UNRWA during the previous” Social Democratic Party of Finland “government ends, and I have not granted it an extension,” Tavio stated. “The level of funding does not decrease, but is provided through other channels, such as the World Food Programme.”
António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, “continues to encourage member states to support UNRWA’s vital work,” his office told JNS.
“As to Finland, UNRWA has taken note of the announcement, and they are grateful to Finland for the disbursement of the 2023-26 funds under the multi-year agreement,” the secretary-general’s office told JNS. “UNRWA looks forward to continuing our discussions with the government.”
Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told JNS that “over the past three years, Israel has systematically exposed how UNRWA has effectively become an extension of the Hamas terrorist organization.”
“For years, UNRWA schools have incited violence against Israel, UNRWA employees actively participated in the Oct. 7 massacre and throughout the war, terrorists carried out attacks against Israelis from UNRWA facilities,” the Israeli envoy said. “This is why the State of Israel outlawed UNRWA. I welcome the Finnish government’s decision to end funding for UNRWA and call for other nations to join us.”
In June, the Finnish mission to the United Nations stated that the country “supports UNRWA with €5 million flexible core funding this year.” (That amount corresponded to about $5.7 million in June, per the U.S. Treasury Department.)
In January, the Finnish Foreign Affairs Ministry stated that the “demolition of the UNRWA compound in East Jerusalem is unacceptable.”
“We urge Israel to return to protecting and respecting international law and the inviolability of U.N. premises,” it said at the time. “UNRWA must be allowed to continue its vital humanitarian work in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University and director of the international law department at the Jerusalem think tank Kohelet Policy Forum, stated that the “symbiotic relationship between UNRWA and Hamas” is “leading serious countries to end their ties with the U.N.-based terror group.”
“The ones who continue their funding are on full notice that they are providing material support to a designated terror org,” he added.
Michal Cotler-Wunsh, CEO of the International Legal Forum and former Israeli special envoy for combating Jew-hatred, stated that “what’s crazy is that there are still countries that knowingly fund UNRWA.”
The U.N. agency was “born in sin to uniquely pass down refugee status in perpetuity, shield war criminals, appoint genocidal Hamas terrorists to run schools and hospitals, indoctrinate kids with lethal antisemitic hate and glorification of murder” and to “fuel a forever war,” she said.
Israel and the United States have said that, and presented evidence of, UNRWA employees taking part in the Oct. 7 attacks. UNRWA fired a principal at a Gaza school. The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Agency for International Development said that there was conclusive evidence that the principal took part in the Oct. 7 attacks as a captain in Hamas’s East Jabaliya Battalion.
