Speech #890268162

Senator EDWARD M. KENNEDY. chairman. Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees of the Senate Judiciary Committee. at a hearing on refugees in the Middle East. said: There are various substantial abuses in the UNRWA operations which should be condemned by all people truly interested In the welfare of the refugees--whether those concerned be Arab or not. It has also come to my attention from various other sources that the United Nationadministered schools in Arab refugee camps inculcate hatred directed against the West and particularly against the United States and the State of Israel. Flagrant abuses and fraud in the refugee relief rolls in Jordan. Lebanon. Syria. and the Gaza strip were uncovered. The United Arab Republic and Syria have an estimated 10.000 to 14.000 refugees serving in the socalled Palestine Liberation Army whose goal is the announced destruction of the State of Israel. The armys recruits. I understand. are regular recipients of food and relief supplies from the United Nations Relief and Works AgencyUNRWA. It certainly is incompatible with the policy of the United States and with the original idea of the United Nations to supply material assistance to an army whose sole purpose is to destroy a member country of the U.N. If our State Department and the U.N. are so ineffective as to be unable to stop the conditions described. I plan to vote against any appropriation of funds for the U.N.-administered schools or for the resettlement of refugees in the Near East. I have so advised Secretary of State Dean Rusk by letter dated August 15. On July 29. 1966. the Baltimore Jewish Times published its Times Letter From Israel. bearing on this matter. entitled "How Stupid Can One Get?" Because of the importance of this subject. I include it and my letter to the Secretary of State in the pages of the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD. They are as follows: TIMES LrrER FROM ISRAEL: How STUPin CAN ONE GET? (By Eliezer Whartman) JERUSALEM.-I recently met a Christian minister with whom I had long been acquainted in the United States. He had just crossed into Israel after a tour of the Arab states during which he visited a number of Arab refugee camps. The picture that he presented of the camps was horrifying. It was not so much the physical condition of the camps which bothered him. for the refugees had a higher standard of living than the surrounding populations. it was the systematic inculcation of hatred. in the UN administered schools. directed at the West and Israel that caused his alarm. Children at a tender age Were being taught that Israel was a monster which had to be exterminated. and that it was the Westparticularly the United Stateswhich supported Israel and was. therefore. the real enemy of the Arabs. For those of us who have been living in the Middle East for some time this was not new. We hear the Arab broadcasts daily. but it came as a shock to my friend who had been unaware of the virulence of western hatred among the refugees. Apparently it has shocked an American investigating mission headed by Senator TED KENNEDY which has just concluded a study of the camps. Here is a classic case of people biting the hand that feeds them. for the United States pays 70% of the cost of maintaining and educating the refugees. During the last seventeen years the total has come to a staggering half billion dollars. exclusive of the extensive grantsinaid that America has made to the Arab governments. (In contrast. the Russians have not contributed a single ruble. nor have the Arab host governments.) Today over a million and a quarter Arab refugees are on the UN relief rolls. despite the fact that less than half a million actually quit the country (based on the Mandatory Government census figures) in 1948. The chief reason for the swollen figure. according to a former United Nations Relief and Works Agency Director. Henry R.