UNRWA Director needs submachine guns for his bodyguards

Not for protection against the IDF as Marco Villa would hasten to claim, but to protect him from Hamas—whose members have already tried to assassinate him, not once, but twice, already.

Here's another story that won't make it to the mainstream media.

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UN Gaza leaders given submachine guns for protection 'against Hamas'

UNRWA director of activities in Gaza said his life is in constant danger and he needs better protection than his bodyguards' handguns.

By Chaim Levinson

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The defense establishment has taken the unusual step of granting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency approval to take four weapons into Gaza. The weapons, submachine guns, are to serve the security detail guarding the heads of the agency in Gaza.

The request to bring in the weapons was made three years ago and approved last week.

The director of UNRWA's activities in Gaza, John Ging, said on his website that his life is in constant danger and he needs more suitable protection than the handguns his bodyguards had been carrying.

The UN body asked for German Heckler and Koch submachine guns for UNRWA's commissioner general, Filippo Grandi, and for Ging.

The organization told Israeli security officials that its personnel are being threatened by Hamas representatives. UNRWA operates 221 schools in Gaza and dozens of medical centers, employment centers and women's help centers.

More than a million refugees and their descendents are registered with UNRWA, which operates eight refugee camps in Gaza.

In March 2007, gunmen fired at Ging's convoy and he escaped without injury. In the summer of 2007, armed men again attacked him, in Rafah, killing one. After previous assurances by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories that authorization was forthcoming, in July, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said he would not approve the request.

Ya'akov Imut, in charge of weapons registration at the Interior Ministry, said the ministry turned down the request because it is authorized only to license handguns. Only last week, after pressure from the UN, was the request approved.

The COGAT office said "the delay was because UNRWA received authorization from the Germans only five months ago."

UNRWA's representative in Israel said it does not issue responses on security matters.

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Now I find it unconscionable that the UN would put pressure on a country to violate its own laws. There is no way that a person in Israel can have a licensed automatic weapon unless he is an IDF soldier on leave. Even then, regulations about that are extremely stringent. Only the IDF can issue permits for automatic weapons, and then only under a set of highly defined conditions—only to Israeli citizens who are active in the IDF reserves. Isn't the UN supposed to protect the sovereignty of each member country—including respecting its laws?

This is the same John Ging who denied that Hamas fired rockets in close proximity to UN installations and didn't use UN-marked ambulances to transport weapons and fighters…

Hamas has no interest in UNRWA doing its job—they need the Gaza population to be hungry, unemployed and angry. That's why they steal regularly from UNRWA warehouses (either using them for their own purposes or selling the stolen supplies at incredibly high prices), vandalize UNRWA summer camps for kids and terrorize the general population with their "modesty patrols".

It looks like John Ging is finally getting a large dose of reality about what Hamas really is. What I don't understand is why there's no hue and cry for a UN investigation to find out why his bodyguards need the firepower provided by H&K submachine guns to protect him if Hamas is so "wonderful".