Israel: UNRWA review group org has anti-Israel bias - exclusive

One of the organizations in the United Nations’ independent review group on The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and its connection to terrorism has a conflict of interest and anti-Israel bias, the Diaspora Ministry claimed in an April report obtained by The Jerusalem Post.

The Norwegian Chr. Michelsen Institute’s (CMI) senior researchers have longstanding connections with UNRWA, have conducted in-person interviews with terrorist organization operatives, worked to advance pro-Palestinian agendas, and attempted to justify the October 7 Hamas massacre, the ministry said.

Ahead of the review group’s expected Saturday final report concerning the allegations against 12 UNRWA personnel in the October 7 attacks, the ministry asserted that CMI’s past relations and positions contradicts the group’s mission of issuing a neutral report to assuage the concerns of donor states. The ministry highlighted several examples of partiality to UNRWA and the Palestinian narrative.

CMI Associated researcher Kjersti G. Berg wrote in the 2022 report “UNRWA, funding crisis and the way forward” in favor of the organization and its funding. In the report Berg describes the Nakba and corresponding events only though the Palestinian narrative, and described Israeli and other criticisms of UNRWA school curricula as political attacks that serve to delegitimize and weaken UNRWA. UNRWA has been criticized by groups like the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education for teaching content that promotes terrorism and antisemitism.

“As Israel has moved to the right, supporting UNRWA can be a way for foreign ministries to support the idea that international law extends from an international order,” Berg wrote in the 2022 report commissioned by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Evidence fuelling accusations of bias

The Diaspora Ministry alleged that Berg, who notes in the report that she conducted extensive interviews with UNRWA staff and was given access to internal documents, was given access permitted to few researchers based on decades of interaction and trust.

Berg co-wrote an October 21 article for the Norwegian newspaper Bergens Tidende in which she blamed Israel for the factors that led to the Hamas pogrom.

“It is not legitimization of Hamas’s attack when one as a researcher points out that the attack by Hamas cannot be understood in a vacuum. It is absolutely essential to understand Hamas and the dynamics between Hamas and Israel over the past 16 years, but there is also a wider context that we must deal with.” wrote Berg and Peace Research Institute Oslo member Jørgen Jensehaugen.

“Under the status quo, Israel has not sought a political solution with the Palestinians. Instead, they have tried to manage or minimize the conflict by using military force and physical control over large parts of the country, through blockades, border posts, walls, surveillance, etc.”

The two underlying causes to understanding the conflict, according to Berg, was the displacement of Palestinians since 1948 and Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

“The occupation has led to an ongoing Palestinian resistance struggle,” said Berg. “The only way to achieve peace is to resolve the underlying causes of conflict. Israel will not gain security as long as the Palestinians’ rights are violated daily during the occupation.”

CMI Post-doctoral researcher Heidi Mogstad in an October 31 Public Anthropologist blog post claimed that Israel was engaging in collective punishment, and that the IDF’s actions exceeded the boundaries of self-defense.

“We should not show solidarity with Israeli civilians by granting their leaders moral permission to retaliate,” said Mogstad. “Revenge will not break the cycle of violence or contribute to making citizens of Israel safe. As violently exposed by the October 7 terror attacks, no lasting peace will be achieved unless Palestinians are granted their full rights and freedoms.”

In a January 24 call for papers for an issue of the same publication that Mogstad served as a guest editor, it was alleged that Israel was engaging in ethnic cleansing, and anthropologists were invited “to reflect on their responsibilities and experiences of speaking and acting out in response to Israel’s assaults on Gaza, and to consider what is at stake and what is possible through intervening inside or outside the academy.”

The Diaspora Ministry decried CMI’s long history of interactions and interviews with terrorists, such as CMI Research Professor Are John Knudsen and Birzeit University researcher Dr. Basem Ezbidi’s 2006 report “Hamas and the Quest for Palestinian Statehood,” in which Hamas legislator Khaled Sulayman was interviewed. The ministry claimed that the organization held in person interviews with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine operatives over the years.

Knudsen also wrote a December 21 blogpost on the CMI website in which he shared that in his office he hung a gift from a Hamas operative, “a framed map of Mandatory Palestine with the Hamas emblem imprinted in the lower right corner.”

The CMI researcher wrote that Hamas’s pragmatism on accepting a provisional state along 1949 borders was overlooked, and accused the IDF of “targeted attacks on hospitals, homes, and schools breaching international war and human rights conventions.”

The Diaspora Ministry’s accusations against the independent review group’s lack of neutrality join other allegations that have dogged it since Secretary-General António Guterres announced its formation in a February 5 statement.

UN Watch director Hillel Neuer also claimed on Wednesday that  CMI was not impartial, citing Berg’s 2022 report. He wrote on X that Berg “devotes her life to Palestinians and echoes UNRWA talking points. Her book, Palestine: Facts on the Ground, argues for a Palestinian ‘right of return,’ which effectively means the destruction of the State of Israel.” Neuer said that Berg had deleted her X account since he wrote about her.

Neuer said that donor states will reinstate funding to UNRWA following the release of the report, which he said had a rigged investigation.

Med Israel head Conrad Myrland noted in The Jerusalem Post that 17 CMI staff members had signed an October 25 statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and release of hostages, which also condemned Israel for collective punishment through blockading the strip and “the ongoing acts of indiscriminate and large-scale violence perpetrated by the Israeli government against the people of Gaza.”