Many of you may remember my son refusing the Trick or Treat for UNICEF blue and white box last year during Halloween time. He caught some flak from his teacher for refusing it, but after some explanation, she understood his (and our) point of view.

Please recall that a teacher (Ms. L) in his school had spearheaded the UNICEF project. I reached out to her, sending her articles with a note explaining that UNICEF funds Palestinian Summer Camps that promote hatred of the West, Jews and Christians. These same camps hold homicide bombers in very high esteem. One of these camps is named for Wafa Idris, the 1st female homicide bomber. I never received an answer from this teacher; and an appeal to the school’s principal got me nowhere.

Determined to stop UNICEF before Halloween 2006, I decided to take a different tact. My friend and fellow Little League coach - P was elected President of the XXX School Board. P trades commodities on the NY Merc, and was in the WTC on 9/11. This year I appealed directly to P to put an end to UNICEF fundraising in XXX Public Schools.

Moments ago, I received a phone call from P. The UNICEF program is d-e-a-d, dead... A memo is going out from the District Superintendant to all principals and teachers putting an end to this program. There’s to be no fundraising for UNICEF until they clean up their act.

I vaguely recalled the funding of terrorist-inspired summer camps for Palestinian children.

All UNICEF-supported summer camps are run under the umbrella of the National Committee on Summer Camps, a body headed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, and which includes the Palestinian Authority, UNICEF, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency) [the only UN relief agency specifically for one group of refugees, which encourages terrorism] and NGO representatives. The camps are guided by a National Declaration on Summer Camps, which promotes non-violence, tolerance and non-exploitation. [my emphasis-JSW] The principles in the Declaration are drawn from the Convention of the Rights of the Child — the world’s most widely adopted human rights treaty.

. . . . The summer camps supported by UNICEF will have intensive and frequent monitoring. All UNICEF staff from Jerusalem and six zonal offices will assist with monitoring activities — providing support to summer camp organizers as well as ensuring availability of such basics as proper sanitation, water and food.

Are they monitoring only for facilities, or are they responding to this criticism from 2003 in addition to the revelation about the Wafa Idris summer camp?

PYALARA, the Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation, is a student-run Palestinian NGO founded in 2000. It was founded as a non-political organization to provide support to young Palestinians.
. . . . Despite its non-political mission statement and its commitment to UNICEF not to engage in political activities, NGO Monitor is concerned by the organization’s covert ideological agenda. Of particular concern is the publication of an article on Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the PFLP terrorist organization and killed by Israeli forces in 2001. [The article has since been taken down.]
. . . . PYALARA has used funds that are donated explicitly for non-political and non-violent projects in order to promote blatantly political objectives, including the indirect support for terror attacks on civilians. The article calls Abu Ali Mustafa “a political leader...whose history prides his nationalistic activism.” Further on it states, “this is a human being who has a family that awaits his arrival every day.”
There is no mention of the fact that Abu Ali’s Mustafa’s organization, the PFLP, has been responsible for 3 car bombs in Jerusalem, the death of an Israeli government Minister and many other terrorist attacks since September 2000. This comes from an organization that with Red Army assistance carried out a massacre of 24 people at Tel Aviv’s International airport in 1972. Four years later, the PFLP hjiacked a Paris-Athens Air France flight and diverted it to Entebbe in Uganda demanding the release of jailed militants. Founded by George Habash in 1968, the Marxist-Leninist PFLP has changed alliances and shifted positions several times since its establishment, but it has always been consistent in its opposition to peace negotiations with Israel.

The article has more details about Mustafa’s other terrorist activities, and and the PYALARA’s polemics.

In 2004, UNICEF officials were still giving tacit approval to terrorists by overlooking their adulation by Palestinian society.

The following appeared this week in the PA daily:

“The Shahid [Martyr] Salakh Khalaf [Abu Iyad] Stadium was inaugurated [Friday]… speeches were made by UNICEF representative in Palestine, Jonathan Hutchen… [and] in the name of USAID, who financed the project… Deputy Minister of Youth and Sport, Dr. Jamal Muhaysin, thanked the sponsoring and supporting agencies and praised the management of the Shahid (Martyr) Salakh Khalaf Center… which is considered one of the most important and of the biggest sport centers … Honor shields were presented by the Ministry of Youth and Sport to Save the Children [and to] USAID…” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May, 30, 2004]

In 2005, the Simon Weisenthal Center accused UNICEF of making propaganda from an incident involving three Palestinian teens killed by the IDF while smuggling arms from Egypt.

UNICEF - an organization whose raison d'etre is about helping children - has engaged in the typical UN activity of running child sex rings.

. . . . the Belgian office of UNICEF (United Nations Childrens Fund) was home to a very large international child pornography/child prostitution ring. UNICEF official Jozef Verbeek, and UNICEF volunteer Michel Felu, a recidivist child pornographer, were caught with thousands of pornographic photographs of children, many of which depicted children 10 years of age and younger. The predators had compiled names of 400 pedophiles in 15 countries on a UNICEF office computer.

In 1987, Joseph Verbeek, a Belgian who headed the Belgian office of UNICEF, and Michel Fetu, a UNICEF volunteer, were arrested and charged with using the UNICEF facilities in Brussels for child prostitution and production of child pornography. Their international ring was called Center for Research and Information on Children and Sexuality. They had taken UNICEF’s motto, “Every Child is Our Child.”

(I was only able to source this controversy with these sections from anti-UN polemics.)

Then there was the infamous Smurf Village carpet bombing, also a Belgian product.

The people of Belgium have been left reeling by the first adult-only episode of the Smurfs, in which the blue-skinned cartoon characters’ village is annihilated by warplanes. The short but chilling film is the work of Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and is to be broadcast on national television next week as a campaign advertisement.

Belgian television viewers were given a preview of the 25-second film earlier this week, when it was shown on the main evening news. The reactions ranged from approval to shock and, in the case of small children who saw the episode by accident, wailing terror.

. . . The short film pulls no punches. It opens with the Smurfs dancing, hand-in-hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom- shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky. Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs. The final frame bears the message: “Don’t let war affect the lives of children.”

The purpose of the ad was to raise money for a program in aid of former child soldiers. The concept makes sense in a schematic way, but is tone-deaf to its effect. Ironically, the program to aid child soldiers addresses the psychological trauma of experiencing the brutality of war at an impressionable age. So what does UNICEF do? It creates more psychological trauma of experiencing the brutality of war at an impressionable age.

You can view the video here.

This year, UNICEF is taking care of its public image by staging treacly Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. I have not been able to ascertain whether it is still funding organizations which promote terrorism in the Palestinian territories.

At the Hudson Institute conference on the UN, Claudia Rosett countered the argument that even though the UN is riddled with corruption, it still does good work. Claudia said, if the UN is disbanded, then all the people doing good work are released to go to work for organizations which aren’t corrupt and which use their personnel and programs wisely. There are plenty of organizations which help children worldwide. Give your nickels to them.