The very existence of the UNRWA testifies to the notion, true or not, that a corollary of Israeli statehood is never-ending suffering for Palestinian refugees.

Those are really — really — bad optics if you’re Jewish. Like this: Here we are, a people who, more than any other, should be sympathetic to the plight of desperate refugees, condemning another people to desperate statelessness in perpetuity.

Israeli Jews are uncomfortable with that characterization of their state-building project, and they don’t love the idea that the descendants of Palestinians displaced three-quarters of a century ago count as “refugees.”

For Israel, and particularly for Israeli hardliners, the UNRWA perpetuates Palestinian misery in the same way racist, white Americans claim welfare perpetuates black victimhood. I’m reminded of the harangue by Ed Norton’s character in American History X: “I mean, Christ, Lincoln freed the slaves, like, what? 130 years ago. How long does it take to get your act together?”

The UNRWA describes its mission as “unique” in that the agency focuses only on “one group,” to quote from the official UNRWA raison d’être, which notes that the organization “has contributed to the welfare and human development of four generations of Palestine refugees, defined as ‘persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 War.'”

Again, that language is a source of extreme annoyance for Israelis. Imagine a UN-funded agency dedicated to aiding Native American refugees defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was any of the states now known as the United States of America during the period 12 October, 1492 to 4 July, 1776.”

Israel has argued that refugee status shouldn’t be extended to descendants of original Palestinian refugees, which is tantamount to saying millions of people should lose their refugee status. If, instead of the UNRWA, Palestinians’ refugee status were decided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Palestinians could lose any claim on a right to return to their lands in Israel.

Of course, Israelis don’t generally believe Palestinians have such rights in the first place. As Luhansk-born (note the emphasis, then look it up, because there’s some irony in here somewhere) Israeli lawmaker Yulia Malinovsky put it, in remarks to CNN, the UNRWA “is selling (Palestinian) kids stories that they will be able to come back to Israel. This will not happen.”

In addition to being an unwelcome, internationally-funded reminder that the modern state of Israel was founded in forced displacement, the UNRWA’s a national security threat, according to Israel. In simple terms: The agency’s vulnerable at the on-the-ground level to coercion and co-option by armed groups, including Hamas. A handful of UNRWA employees were implicated in the October 7 attacks.

Without apologizing for that, I’d gently note that even to this day, there are neighborhoods in New York and Boston, and to a lesser extent, New Jersey, where if you live there, you will be in some way, shape or form, complicit in mafia activity, even if that “activity” is just you being put in a trunk and dumped in a river for trying to be a hero. Should the US government bomb your apartment building because the lounge on the bottom floor is a Bonanno hangout?

Benjamin Netanyahu — who knows a thing or two about coercion and also about being a gangster — hates the UNRWA. He convinced Donald Trump to defund it in 2018, but the Biden administration overturned Trump’s decision.

That brings us to a pair of bills passed this week by the Knesset. One of the laws prohibits the agency from operating in Israel. The other bars Israeli officials from having any sort of contact with the group. This is news. Make no mistake about it.

In short, Israel’s banning the UNRWA. Slightly longer: The Knesset’s repealing a decades-old agreement that permitted the UNRWA to assist Palestinians living (or trying to live) in Israeli-controlled territory. The new laws take effect in three months.

The world’s unamused. Keir Starmer, for example, chided Israel for imperiling “the entire international humanitarian response” to the crisis in Gaza. The US State Department’s unlikely to issue an overt condemnation, but Antony Blinken will be stern all the same. Earlier this month, the US threatened to cut off weapons shipments if the IDF didn’t stop impeding the delivery of aid to the enclave.

It’s fair to suggest Israelis are emboldened by the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House. Trump was highly likely to defund the UNRWA. Again. And there’s exactly no chance of Trump supporting any sort of restrictions on arms deliveries to Netanyahu.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres — who’s come under withering attacks from Israeli UN envoy Gilad Erdan over the course of the war — warned that banning the UNRWA “would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”

Boaz Bismuth, the Likud lawmaker who drafted the legislation, was direct: “UNRWA equals Hamas, period.”

Hmm. And how about the three dozen women and children who died Tuesday when IDF warplanes struck a five-story building housing displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza, Boaz? I suppose they “equaled Hamas” too. “Period.”