OCHA – The Office for the Creation of Humanitarian Atrocities

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories officially claims that it is a humanitarian organisation, that “alleviates human suffering” and “facilitates sustainable solutions” for the Palestinians. Yet in fact, this organisation is more bent on attacking Israel than helping the Palestinians, and it shows a clear bias in how it reports Israeli actions in the West Bank.

OCHA produces two regular reports. One, as we would expect from a humanitarian agency, lists all the money raised, homes built etc. by the agency. Yet this report comes out only once a month. There is a second, weekly report, which is simply a list of Israeli crimes (real and invented, as we shall see below).This report focuses entirely on the crimes Israel has done, and does not mention OCHA at all. (In the past 5 reports, the word OCHA has been mentioned just once.)

So here is the question – Why is a humanitarian agency producing a monthly report on its own humanitarian activities, but a weekly report on the “crimes” of the Israelis?

This obsession with attacking Israel can be found on OCHA`s Facebook page as well. Almost all the posts are about of Israeli “crimes,” with very little information about what humanitarian activities OCHA are actually doing to help the Palestinians.

Even the reporting of the crimes is absurd, reporting events that are not crimes at all. On 31st January, the IDF killed a Palestinian who was throwing Molotov cocktails at cars. Yet somehow, for OCHA, this makes its way onto a report that claims to report issues relating to the protection of Palestinian citizens. Surely, the IDF killing a man throwing Molotov cocktails does not constitute an attack against Palestinian citizens, but an act of self defence?! OCHA are not reporting humanitarian crimes – they are creating them.

We need to put pressure on OCHA to focus on their actual job of helping the Palestinians, and not their new job one of attacking Israel. We need to ensure they their statements are not given credibility, but that they are discredited due to their anti-Israel bias.

And once again, we need to repeat the message to the world. If you only focus on attacking Israel, if you divert resources and time from humanitarian goals to focus attention on Israeli actions, and if you spin every story to make Israel look like the villain – you aren`t pro-Palestinian, you are simply anti-Israeli.