How the U.N. Weaponizes the Famine Narrative in Gaza - with Rich Goldberg

You are listening to an art media podcast.

70%

of the aid distribution in Gaza is non-United Nations.

30% is United Nations.

100% of the GHF trucks that are trucking aid reach their destination and deliver directly to civilians.

And according to the UN, 12% of their trucks reach their destination without being diverted.

Which model is more effective?

Obviously, it's the non-Hamas UN business model.

This is the change in the business model, and it directly threatens Hamas.

It directly threatens the UN operations and way of doing business in Gaza.

And let's be even more cynical and honest for one second: the UN's raising a lot of money on claiming famine in Gaza.

It's a cash cow for the UN system.

It's 11 a.m.

on Wednesday, August 27th in New York City.

It's 6 p.m.

on Wednesday, August 27th in Israel as Israelis wind down their day.

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Yesterday, on Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets urging the Israeli government to secure a hostage ceasefire deal rather than expand the war in Gaza.

This comes over a week after Hamas announced it had approved a hostage ceasefire proposal, but Israeli officials continue to insist that the government will only agree to a comprehensive agreement that would see the return of all hostages rather than a partial phased deal.

Also on Tuesday, Prime Minister Netanyahu held a cabinet meeting to approve operational plans for the takeover of Gaza City.

On Monday, the Prime Minister's office announced that Israel is ready to support Lebanon's efforts to disarm Hezbollah and will implement a phased reduction of IDF troops in Lebanon as a, quote, reciprocal measure.

This follows moves by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and other Lebanese leaders to establish a state monopoly on arms by the end of the year.

In other news, on Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused Iran of being behind two anti-Semitic arson attacks in 2024, one that targeted a kosher deli and the other a Melbourne synagogue.

Albanese announced that Australia is pulling its diplomats from Iran and will list the IRGC as a terror organization.

This comes just after Prime Minister Netanyahu sent a scathing letter to Albanese accusing him of abandoning Australia's Jews after the Australian Prime Minister announced his country would recognize a Palestinian state.

Now on to today's conversation.

On Friday, August 22nd, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, IPC, which is a global hunger monitor, which is organized by the UN and other NGOs, declared for the first time that famine had struck northern Gaza.

The report estimated that roughly half a million people, a quarter of Gaza's population, are experiencing famine.

Israel quickly denied the charge, accusing the IPC of, quote, biased and self-interested sources originating from Hamas, close quote.

Discerning between facts and disinformation about the food situation and the hunger situation in Gaza has proven difficult.

But one aspect is already quite clear.

The UN has played a pivotal role in weaponizing the famine narrative as part of its campaign against the Israel and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which you often hear referred to as the GHF.

The GHF supplanted the UN's and UNRWA's role and influence in Gaza.

To discuss this, we are joined by Rich Goldberg.

Rich is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

He served in both Trump administrations, including on the White House National Security Council staff and as a Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer with experience on the joint staff and in Afghanistan.

He also, and most relevant to this conversation, served for a decade on Capitol Hill, both in the House and the Senate in congressional foreign policy roles, providing oversight of all humanitarian aid programs from the UN in the Middle East.

Rich, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me back.

As I said in the introduction, you are someone who has been studying the UN, studying the UN's operations in the Middle East, specifically in Israel and Gaza, Gaza and the West Bank, for many, many years, especially when you were working in Congress.

And there's so many ways to get at this whole issue of alleged famine or starvation in parts of Gaza.

You know, what led to it and what trying to better understand what the facts are.

There's so many different angles.

But with you today, I think the only way to do this in the podcast is to do piece by piece.

And the piece I want to do today is on the UN.

So I just want to start by having you explain to us the UN aspect of the famine narrative.

And can you do so by first describing what the UN's operations were in Gaza before the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation took over a distribution?

Dan, I think this is a fundamental missed point in all of of this.

For 20 years now, we're 20 years in to a new paradigm in Gaza post-the Israeli disengagement when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and eventually Hamas very quickly took control of the strip, where the UN in Gaza is the Gaza-based economy largely for Hamas.

Hamas and the UN are in bed together in a business model that keeps the strip going.

The business model keeps Hamas in power and allows international aid to flow and be distributed and ensure that they control where all the world's money is going in with goods and services.

And the UN just creates this infrastructure, this organization that's totally embedded with Hamas in control of the strip to keep its own operations going.

Now, the hub, the flagship of this Hamas-UN business model for the Strip's economy was always UNRWA.

right?

The UN Relief and Works Agency.

This is the aid agency that goes back to post-independence war war of Israel that is supposed to be established for quote-unquote refugees, Palestine refugees of the conflict.

This is the political manifestation of the right of return.

The Arab armies aren't done with Israel.

Don't go anywhere, you know, Palestinian refugees.

Don't come to Arab countries the way that Jews who fled Arab countries came to Israel or other places.

You stay in camps.

You stay as refugees.

And we're going to build a UN infrastructure around you to care for you until such time as the Arab armies come back and we liberate Palestine.

This new Israel is gone.

We drive the Jews into the sea and you all come back.

Well, of course, that didn't happen.

67, 73, you keep going on.

UNRWA is still there.

UNRWA gets built out, by the way, not just in Gaza, but it exists within the existing Palestinian authority areas of the West Bank.

It exists in Jordan, in Syria, if you can believe it, in Lebanon, where the Lebanese really hate the Palestinians and treat them terribly.

But in Gaza, particularly after the Israelis withdraw, UNRWA is the game in town.

UNRWA is considering almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip, nearly 2 million people, to be refugees, quote unquote.

They've only known Gaza as their home, but they're refugees because they're supposed to come back and kick the Jews out of Israel one day, put them into the sea.

This is a larger, broader point on UNRWA and its problems, which you've covered with other guests and I think your listeners know about.

But understand from an economy perspective, you're talking about jobs.

You're talking about the people running UNRWA schools and working there and clinics and sanitation and all these different aspects of international aid all coordinated through UNRWA as the primary body there.

Interestingly, the UN has all these other agencies that do aid work around the world.

They also operate in Gaza to some extent now more than ever.

But they all have to coordinate through UNRWA.

UNRWA is the coordination body.

These people are refugees, supposedly.

They don't belong to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees like all other refugees, just UNRWA.

You have food aid coming in.

You coordinate the delivery through UNRWA.

The World Food Program is not actually in charge of it.

They might coordinate.

They'll contribute to it.

They run it through UNRWA.

You have some medical assistance, either from UNICEF for Children or the WHO, the World Health Organization.

Come on in, no problem.

You coordinate it through UNRWA.

That is the business model for Gaza.

And of course, because you're employed from the strip, you're employed from the Hamas government, you're working with Hamas, it's completely linked together and that business model was so corrupt and complicated because i just want to put a fine point on it because from your standpoint unra and hamas were basically interchangeable and if one of the objectives of the war post-october 7th is to dislodge hamas from gaza unra cannot keep functioning correct and another fundamental point not to be missed Hamas is not a terrorist organization in the eyes of the United Nations.

It is not.

It is a political organization.

Might be an armed group.

There's a political group.

There's a healthcare group.

There's an information group.

Right?

They're not terrorists.

They're not a terrorist group.

They're not on the UN sanctions list, nor is Islamic Jihad, which obviously partners as well and holds some of the hostages.

Key facts to always remember when people talk about neutrality in how they deliver aid.

Neutrality is a UN principle.

They are saying in code, we don't take sides against Hamas.

Hamas is simply a political actor that we have to deal with in the place where we work.

Okay, so now get to post-October 7th.

So post-October 7th, I mean, we've now transitioned and to go back through it, but you start seeing that aid distribution is not working through the UN model.

UNRWA is being exposed for all of its complicity with Hamas over the years, its employees being exposed, employees who participated in October 7th, but more so as the Israeli military operations are underway.

They're seeing the coordination going on between UNRWA and other UN agencies and Hamas itself with the aid deliveries, diverting aid, subjecting aid distribution to whatever Hamas wants to do in the areas where they control.

They see facilities being co-located with Hamas headquarters famously, you know, the power supply in a major UNRWA office, literally tied down into the tunnels for Hamas in one area.

Long dossiers on this.

The Israelis realize we're not going to be able to win this war in the aid distribution and control of territory and governance.

If the aid is completely co-opted and in coordination with Hamas, we're going to have to do something different.

Now, first is to isolate UNRWA.

And that's where you saw the Israelis finally take a step against international pressure to basically declare UNRWA to be a terrorist group and say, you're out of business in Gaza.

We will not work with you.

You're on the sidelines.

Welcome other UN agencies to step up.

Welcome other international NGOs to step up.

But UNRWA, you are persona non grata here.

We can't work with you.

Key important fact to remember of when this went down.

The United Nations said no way

over our dead body.

The UN Secretary General, and this is around the time that Congress is cutting off funding in 2024, as you recall, you know, while all this information is coming out.

Cutting off funding specifically for UNRWA.

For UNRWA, right.

The Biden administration halted it because of the political pressure and backlash from various exposés that were coming out.

Other countries remained in.

They still have money coming in.

But the Israelis held firm and said, we're not going to work with them.

The Secretary General of the UN organized this mass UN agency letter, this Declaration of Principles, where all the major organizations' heads, you think of UNICEF, you think of World Food Program, you think of WHO, et cetera, declared in unison: we will not participate in any activity, in any service that seeks to replace UNRWA.

UNRWA is here to stay.

It will come back.

We're not going to push UNRWA out of business.

Remember this.

It is the policy of the UN Secretary General to save UNRWA, to save the UN Hamas business model.

And there is direction given and commitment from the various heads of other organizations to not do anything that disrupts the business model long term.

Okay, Donald Trump's in office.

He has an executive order come out early on.

He's not going to fund UNRWA.

Okay,

it'll stay.

It'll be back.

We outlasted Donald Trump for four years last time, and we can outlast him again, and UNRWA will return.

And this is intrinsically tied because who's watching all of this?

Hamas.

They have an interest in maintaining this business model relationship.

So the negotiating posture of Hamas, the terms that Hamas puts forward, their tactics, all interlinked to this UN fight over who who distributes aid and whether it's a UN UNRWA-led or other UN organization-led model or a disruption of that model that will then disrupt Hamas's governance model as well.

So this brings us into sort of modern day May.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation emerges.

There's going to be a plan to actually dislodge the United Nations Hamas business model in Gaza and do it outside the UN potentially.

UN should participate.

A lot of money coming in.

The US taxpayer dollars continue to flow.

Well, hold on.

When you say the UN should participate, what do you mean by that?

There can be a model where private goods are coming in.

Maybe the IDF is providing security coordination and coordinate with the non-UN entities that are also working with local Palestinians who want to find non-Hamas aid distribution efforts and set up non-Hamas governance in Gaza so you can transition to a post-war governance situation.

And Hamas really finally gets put out of business financially, economically, and from extorting the population through aid.

Okay, so GHF is set up here, Dan.

One distribution in central Gaza, three in the south.

And you already see other NGOs coming, aligned NGOs that do support GHF, or let's call them GHF interested.

And a lot of them from the evangelical Christian community, which does incredible work around the world.

And they're saying, wow, we're going to send more aid.

We're going to be helpful.

Statistic, okay, I got this just this week from the Israelis, an incredible statistic.

As of this week, Dan, 70%

of the aid distribution in Gaza is non-United Nations.

30% is United Nations.

Totally upside down in how things used to be, a total threat to the business model.

And amazingly, which we can also talk about, 100% of the GHF trucks that are trucking aid reach their destination and deliver directly to civilians.

And according to the UN, 12% of their trucks reach their destination without being diverted.

Which model is Hamas-free?

Which model is more effective?

Obviously, it's the non-Hamas UN business model.

And there's a lot of food that's being wasted.

You've seen the videos of trucks just sitting around, trucks being raided because they refuse security coordination with the the IDF or private security from the UN.

Could you imagine if the World Food Program put more of its aid into GHF and had additional distribution times?

Lines would be shorter.

More people would have access to food.

This is the change in the business model, and it directly threatens Hamas.

It directly threatens the UN operations and way of doing business in Gaza.

And let's be even more cynical and honest for one second.

The UN's raising a lot of money on claiming famine in Gaza.

It's a cash cow for the UN system.

So let's just, I just want to break this down.

Israel and the U.S.

have a problem with UNRWA.

The U.S.

and Israel are not saying, I just want to be clear, that the UN is therefore barred from playing any role.

They just think that UNRWA has been seriously compromised.

And I think what you're saying is the U.N.

is saying we and UNRWA are either in charge of all of it or we're basically going to participate in none of it.

That is effectively how things are playing out.

But if you look at certain other elements of the UN in Gaza that have bases in Gaza, the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs called OCHA, which is supposed to be like, you know, sort of what UNRWA was in Gaza, this is what they do elsewhere, where they're like the chief coordinator of all the organizations.

And they've had to fill that role now increasingly as UNRWA's pulled back.

Those OCHA folks in Gaza, look at what they've said since October 7th.

These people are pro-Hamas.

They're in bed with Hamas.

WHO individuals in Gaza, not good.

Not good.

Okay, so these are traditionally organizations where we think well of them, even UNICEF, WFP.

We trust in the WFP all around the world, and that has broken on us in Gaza as well.

Okay, what would you say is a credible, you're, you know, you're following this closely.

What is a credible assessment of the actual conditions in Gaza as it relates to food and food security?

The way that I describe this, in my view, is it's not Sudan.

It's not paradise.

Okay.

Hamas in the UN want the media to paint Gaza like it's Darfur, okay?

Which is why I think you see the recycling of horrifying photos of certain children on front-page stories.

They're horrifying photos.

And that's what people want you to think of every child in Gaza, every person in Gaza, this is what's going on.

The face of Gaza are these horrifying photos.

What is the reality?

Well, nobody's going to sit around and say things are great, right?

There's clearly a lot of food in Gaza.

We know that from international aid, if we know that from the reports.

As of last week, the Israelis will tell you 8,000 trucks carrying food have entered Gaza since May.

Okay, by the way, that's two and a half times higher than what the UN data shows, because the UN wants the media to report only UN-connected trucks.

This is a lot of food being distributed.

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will say we've distributed more than 139 million meals since May.

On a daily basis, they're saying a million meals delivered just at two distribution sites.

That's a lot, okay?

But what the critics will say is, okay, well, that's mostly in the south, a little bit in central Gaza.

What's happening in northern Gaza, where that's really sort of where the UN and its aid mechanism is failing?

Are there pockets of people who are not getting enough food?

Yes.

I think it's crazy to deny that.

Of course, that's true.

Is it famine?

I don't see evidence of that.

Is it starvation policy?

Quite the opposite.

People would probably look at this in a warfare strategy manual and say, this is nuts.

You're feeding the enemy quite clearly.

So, of course, fundamentally, you're fighting an information machine, an infrastructure that is Gaza-based, Hamas-controlled, Hamas information conveyor belt.

The UN doesn't really have independent data.

It's a battlefield.

Of course, one of the most unique wars where you're not allowed to move people out of the battlefield, you have to keep them in the center of fighting as you're doing aid distribution.

They're not allowed to be refugees from this war.

Like the only war, you're not allowed to be a refugee.

Why?

Of course, because you have to keep them in their current refugee status so that they can be ready one day to destroy Israel, right?

But yes, I mean, I've talked to credible people who say they walked around, they're people who have been in Bosnia, they've been in Sudan, and they say, I think there could be more food here.

I see ration-type hunger.

I don't see famine-level hunger, certainly not systemic, not widespread, and not an intentional policy of an Israeli government.

Okay, so what role did the UN play in taking the conditions that you described, conceding where there are problems.

It may not be a famine, but there are definitely problems, and there's hunger.

We can go through all the reasons why it exists.

But then you're saying that the UN played a role in taking those conditions and blowing them way out of proportion.

So how did the UN do that?

Okay, what is the UN doing here?

How has it played a disinformation role?

Okay, remember this edict that has gone out from the Secretary General.

Do not do anything that dislodges our business model.

I have spoken to several high-placed officials who are connected inside the United Nations, people who have served in the highest levels of some of these international aid organizations in the past who are, let's say, more aligned with the United States policy at the moment.

And they all say the same thing.

The Secretary General has consolidated his power around all these major aid organizations and has continued to keep that policy going.

Do not do anything that lets GHF succeed, that renders UNRWA unable to come back.

Keep the business model intact.

We have, in fact, seen them try to deny that their trucks aren't moving, that there's just not enough aid.

The Israelis are the reason why aid's not getting to the people.

IDF restrictions, border crossing, customs things.

They won't allow the trucks in.

They won't allow the trucks to move.

Multiple times, this has been disproven, either by showing how many trucks get in more than the UN numbers, actually having to put a drone over a parking lot of all of their trucks sitting there, letting food waste and refusing to move.

And then, by the way, their agents, you know,

the UN folks who are all, you know, sort of wanting to keep the pressure on Israel, planted a story several weeks ago that Reuters took, CNN took, had a little bit of coverage in the New York Times.

They did a similar play with the Israeli side saying that USAID, Agency for International Development, which yes still technically exists under the State Department, had done an inspector general report and had disproven and briefed to many policymakers that, in fact, Hamas doesn't divert the aid.

If aid's not getting to the people the way that statistics show, it's because of Israel.

It's not because of Hamas.

This is why GHF has failed.

And so that was a massive story that sort of kicked off the narrative, the messaging arc of the last few weeks into famine declaration.

And I think it was really intended to be contributing to the starvation narrative.

Well, the Free Press reported a couple weeks ago.

They actually talked to the officials involved.

They found the documents.

That's not what the USAID investigation found at all, completely false.

They, in fact, simply couldn't establish the evidence to prove where Hamas was diverting the aid at all times.

They didn't say Hamas doesn't divert the aid.

In fact, we know Hamas diverts the aid.

We've seen the pictures.

We know that is happening.

Okay, that was an untrue story.

We have a whistleblower that has come forward to the Inspector General at USAID in the last couple of weeks.

You can find an exclusive report in Fox News.

This has shaken the earth beneath the UN.

There is a reason why Cindy McCain, the late Senator John McCain's former wife, who heads the World Food Program, and in my view, has become a real disinformation partner with Hamas, very sadly and tragically.

There's a reason why she is in Israel for the first time since October 7th right now.

The reason is she is under a massive pressure from the U.S.

government, the U.S.

taxpayer financed organization that she leads, is now standing accused by a very credible aid organization and aid worker witnesses that her people in Gaza have sat in rooms with the IDF and with the UN.

And when offered repeatedly security coordination, what do you need?

What can we provide?

How can we ensure that crowds don't come and take your food off of trucks?

How can we help you make sure that you get safely to aid distribution?

The World Food Program crosses its arm and says, we are not prepared to discuss that with you today.

Okay, this is under investigation.

And this whistleblower alleges that having surveyed it all and talked to all other sources, he also believes in this sort of coming from New York Secretary General view that this is all a scheme to collapse the GHF, not allow food aid distribution to work separate from GHF, and put pressure on a famine narrative.

And by the way, we have other things.

Michael Oren, okay?

You could see Michael Oren, former ambassador.

He's pointing to the fact that the Truckers Union, historically, has been controlled by Hamas in Gaza.

You can look that up.

They've won the elections for Truckers Union in the past.

Who are the drivers that the UN might be putting in their trucks?

Who's selecting them?

Who do they report to?

Or who are they under duress from?

Okay, another little factoid here.

So there's all of these pieces that put together, and it's horrific, okay?

Because you're playing with people's lives.

You're playing with the hostages' lives.

You're playing with an entire war that's going out, creating an entire world turning on Israel, making Israel the villain when this terrorist organization is the one that keeps hostages, keeps fighting, keeps trying to control aid distribution to the people.

And you're doing it to save your business model and to save UNRWA.

I call it the UN hunger games.

People can be offended by that.

It's what I call it.

I think it's a scandal.

I think it's as big as oil for food.

Which was the scandal between the UN and Iraq after the First Gulf War through the Second Gulf War.

Okay, let me hit you with two last questions, Rich, before we wrap.

The first is the availability of data.

And I think one issue that Israel keeps running into is that since data isn't collected by its own bodies and it's not collected by credible reporters, Hamas or Hamas-affiliated survey bodies step into the vacuum with corrupt data, some of which you're citing here.

And Israel doesn't have data.

So, how do you fight bad data with no data?

This is a critical question.

Okay.

I sort of wake up every day asking myself and people, who is the Gaza Ministry of Health?

Where are they?

Who are these guys?

What office are they sitting in?

Where's the server?

How is it possible after almost two years that either the United States, Israel, some, you know, whatever has not taken control of at least the back-end IT system to monitor all of this, to validate some of this, to understand what is happening.

There's complications in that because it's in the hospitals, and you're not going to go into the hospital.

Israel doesn't want to take control of the actual hospital system, right?

That could be part of the problem here.

But yes, the conveyor belt is Hamas's health ministry still to this day.

It is lunacy.

And there needs to be some sort of alternative data collection program, some sort of alternative way of assessing some some of these things.

If GHF is able to do certain assessments at its sites, if it can expand to certain outpatient sites where you have reliable measurements going on, perhaps that report in to the U.S., to the Israelis, that we know is free of Hamas, at least we will have factual information and data to some extent, even though there's an argument that you're not really getting an accurate sample size of just people who come to outpatient clinics.

They're already sick.

You're trying to extrapolate statistical data of what's happening in that apartment building over there that you can't get to, that you're not going to, you're not knocking on the door of.

You're in a war.

In the end, one of the colossal failures of the press corps is to accept Gaza Ministry of Health information as fact and never to say, you know, we can't verify this.

It's controlled by a terrorist organization.

We can't, the minute you say, oh, but we'll, we'll make, we'll at least put a comma connected or controlled by Hamas.

You know, that's what an editor will say.

Well, we're being fair.

We've at least said Ministry of Health controlled by Hamas.

Come on, we know what's going on here.

Okay.

If we want to assume that the UN is operating in good faith here, and again, I don't think they are.

But if you wanted to, I just, I just want to put this out there.

Because I've heard from international aid experts that, including Israeli international aid experts, who say that The way the UN or other NGOs do aid distribution in a war zone is they don't distinguish between bad actors that are participants parties to the war, in this case, Hamas.

They don't sit there saying, look, we can't deal with them or we won't deal with them.

Our job is to distribute food.

Everyone get out of the way.

Hamas, get out of the way.

Israel get out of the way.

We got to do what we got to do.

And as long as you don't give us a hard time and as long as you're not an obstacle, we'll sort of work with you, kind of work around you, but we're not going to be hostile to you.

Again, I'm not defending that approach, but I've heard this.

That's the doctrine of neutrality.

That's correct.

Total neutrality, right?

And so, if you assume that these international bodies are acting in good faith and they just want to be technocratic experts in the neutral distribution of aid, in which they don't take sides in a war, and their job is just to feed as many people as possible, then they could argue that Israel's approach is an approach they can't work with because Israel is saying we are not neutral.

We are a party, and we are a party that is trying to strike a balance between making sure that Palestinian civilians

aren't starving and not strengthening the enemy they're fighting, which is Hamas.

And if you just allow this UN body to roam around Gaza, doing it the way it's always been doing, they may or may not be feeding Gazans, who knows?

But one thing they are doing is strengthening Hamas.

Even if you're not doing it in bad faith, even if you're not trying to strengthen Hamas, even if you're not trying to hurt Israel, again, all the obvious caveats, because I think they are trying to do those things, but let's just assume that you're not.

By virtue of you doing it the way you're doing it, the way Hamas manipulates you, you are strengthening Hamas, and that is unacceptable to us, Israel.

So we are forced to find another way to do this.

And that is the core disagreement between Israel slash the U.S.

and those actors in the humanitarian aid ecosystem that are operating in good faith.

Would you agree with that?

I mean, I don't buy that narrative.

No, I think it's actually fundamentally different than that because there is an actual sympathy on the Hamas side.

There is not neutrality.

Sympathy for Hamas.

Yes, for that narrative, for that side, and viewing Israel as the bad actor.

If you weigh public statements, if you weigh demands, if you weigh reports of the United Nations, all the content that is put forward.

I agree with you.

What I'm simply saying is if a...

NGO affiliated with the UN came to Israel and said, we're not sympathetic to Hamas, We're not hostile to Israel.

If one came forward and said that, Israel would still have to say to that body, I hear you.

I don't think you are actively trying to hurt us.

You're saying you're not actively trying to hurt us, but it's still a problem because you're still, in the spirit of neutrality, are willing to work with Hamas.

And we cannot have any body work with Hamas.

Well, that's absolutely true.

Now, let me take you to Afghanistan, right?

And there's an interesting policy path in here, which reminds us that the UN doesn't always do what they're saying they do right now in Gaza.

There are many, many, many times throughout history where they will either ask UN peacekeepers to come in and be the armed force to help aid get through around armed actors who are interfering with aid, or in some cases, they even let the U.S.

military.

And that happened with ISAF in Afghanistan.

The Taliban would be raiding aid convoys, and they needed to get aid to the people, and they would cooperate and allow that.

Now, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are terrorist organizations for the United Nations post-9-11 certainly.

And so you do have a different policy for the United Nations there where, okay, it's not neutral to work with the Taliban.

At the time when we were delivering aid in like that, there was this understanding that, okay, we can't allow convoys to be raided by the Taliban.

That's happened in other areas as well.

And so there is a question here.

Why has the United States never put forward a resolution at the Security Council to to declare Hamas a terrorist organization and add them to the UN sanctions list since October 7th or before that?

That's crazy to me.

Let the Russians and Chinese veto that.

I would love to see that.

What a great first thing for Mike Waltz to do when he's confirmed as UN ambassador.

We should do it today, even before he gets there.

Now I don't understand that.

Oh, by the way, if I'm right, if our theory is right, this is all about waiting for UNRWA to come back.

And by the way, they keep raising tons of money at UNRWA.

They're there.

They're ready.

You need to kill that organization off for good in Gaza.

How do you do that?

You designate the organization as a terrorist group.

You put terrorism sanctions to the United States on it.

Nobody can contribute a dime to it unless we say so in certain circumstances and in certain areas.

You figure out what the timelines are and you say, they're dead.

They're on the sanctions list.

Get over it.

Move on.

And then you say to Cindy McCain, this is our taxpayer money going into WFP.

This is supposed to be the U.S.-led flagship aid organization.

Either you're going to get on a U.S.

policy playbook here that does not align with Hamas, that puts more aid into GHF, that makes sure aid gets to the people, that accepts security coordination to get your trucks through, that makes sure the truck drivers aren't Hamasniks, or we're going to do something different with WFP going forward.

We're going to go shopping for a new executive director.

That's something else we need to do very quickly.

Well, that's a very prescriptive note to end on.

I like that.

We're coming up with a to-do list.

And of course, Dan, you know, the White House is having a sit-down.

The president's meeting with Steve Wickoff.

They're having a strategy session.

Everything I just said could be, who knows, out the window in 24 hours.

But in the world that I see, in all the sources, everything I saw, being inside everything I see now, really taking a dive in, back into this portfolio, talking to every source, been up.

you know, throughout the various bodily cavities of UNRWA for many, many years in Gaza and elsewhere and the other organizations and seeing how they divert, how they can abuse.

This is what I believe is going on.

All right.

Rich, thank you for this.

Welcome back to the podcast.

And I look forward to having you back on soon.

We're going to need some more of these primers.

And this was a very important explainer on an extremely, if not the most central part of this story that's gotten completely out of control.

So thank you for providing a tutorial here for us.

My phone's back on.

Call me back.

All right, there we go.

This is it for our regular Call Me Back episode.

For those of you listening on the members only inside Call Me Back feed, I'm about to answer some pretty interesting and provocative listener questions.

We will discuss Israel's performance in the information war, how Gaza will be rebuilt, and more.

If you are not yet subscribed to Inside Call Me Back, you can do so using the link in the show notes or by going to arcmedia.org.

That's A-R-Kmedia.org to sign up.

Call Me Back is produced and edited by Elon Benatar.

Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin-Aretti.

Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo and Marian Khalis Burgos.

Our director of operations, Maya Rockoff.

Research by Gabe Silverstein.

Our music was composed by Yuval Semo.

Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Cena.