Delegitimizing UNRWA was always the goal. One does not accidentally elicit random confessions under torture—the confessions you get are the confessions you set out to get.
Defunding UNRWA is precisely the politics of collective punishment. Even if these allegations are proven, there is no justification in this unless your goal is wiping out an entire people.
From Truthout:
"Is US’s Suspension of UNRWA Funding Retaliation for ICJ’s Interim Ruling?"
"The vibrancy of Palestinian arts, literature, music and culture is a testament of Palestinian resilience and also the inspiration children receive during their study at UNRWA schools. Over the past four months, Israel has targeted and/or killed 152 UNRWA workers, 119 journalists, more than 300 doctors and health workers as well as numerous Palestinian academics, poets, painters, writers, scientists and teachers in a deliberate attempt to further a cultural genocide that deprives Palestinians of the education that have allowed them to excel in every discipline and profession."
"Poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose poetry collection won the American Book Award 2023 and was finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, taught English at an UNRWA school; internationally renowned painter Malak Mattar attended an UNRWA school; and so did Loay Elbasyouni, a Palestinian American engineer from Gaza who helped design the lightweight robotic helicopter for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover mission. In 2016, Hanan Al Hroub, who grew up in the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem and attended an UNRWA school, was announced by Pope Francis as the winner of the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize and was awarded $1 million. In 2020, the Global Teacher Prize was won by Asma Mustafa, another Palestinian English teacher in the UNRWA Halima Al Saadia Intermediate School for Girls, north of the besieged Gaza Strip. Safa’ Obeid, a teacher at the UNRWA Sweileh Preparatory Girls’ School in Jordan, was selected as the 2022 Earth Prize Educator of the Year. These are but a few of those who owe their education to UNRWA schools."
"Some of the most brilliant Palestinian thinkers and creators graduated from or taught at UNRWA schools. Those who perished recently include poet and storyteller Refaat Alareer who wrote his now world famous poem “If I Must Die” just before he was killed in the Israeli bombardment on December 7; novelist Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed along with her son in an airstrike in Khan Yunis on October 20; artist Heba Zagout, a 39-year-old who was killed with two of her children, Adam and Mahmoud, in an Israeli airstrike; award-winning scientist Sufyan Tayeh, who held the UNESCO Chair for Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Space Sciences in Palestine, who was killed on December 2 alongside his family in an Israeli airstrike in the Al-Falouja area in the Jabalia camp; and numerous others."
"The war on UNRWA is part and parcel of Israeli ethnic cleansing and the erasure of Palestinian culture and resistance. Since the early days when UNRWA was established in 1949, Israel lobbied against operating and funding UNRWA schools in refugee camps in an effort to thwart activities that promoted Palestinian self-determination and liberation. It wanted refugees to be settled and fully integrated into their host countries in order to extinguish their hope of returning to their homes. But Israel was getting increasingly worried about how Palestinians used education as a “form of liberation” and a means to strengthen their national identity. It feared that one day it may be forced into a peace agreement that will honor the Palestinians’ right of return to their homes as called for by UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which runs counter to Zionist plans."