In our weekly chat Ya’akov and I get into the hostage dilemma that continues to tear apart the nation. It corrodes everything and Hamas understands this fully and leverages Israel’s psychic suffering brilliantly. But it feels like we are getting to a point where no victory is more important than bringing them home. Now. We then look at the spectacle of UNRWA imploding. Multiple exposures of UNRWA employees taking active roles in the murder and violence of October 7th and celebrating it since, have been made public and sparked outrage among many large donor countries. The weird part is – there is nothing new here. We’ve seen variations on this level of Hamas-UNRWA comingling for years, and no one really seemed terribly fussed by any of it. It’s hard to know what caused this mass response this time. But the end of UNRWA could be a very positive development, if tied to deradicalization of the population and reconstruction of the Strip.
S2 E8. Sundays with Ya’akov Katz: Hostages and the Slo-Mo Implosion of UNRWA