The Canadian Jewish News reported this week that Paul Martin's Liberal government has decided to continue funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

UNRWA's commissioner-general, Peter Hansen, recently admitted to a CBC interviewer that Hamas members were on his organization's payroll. In May, 2004, UNRWA ambulances were caught smuggling out terrorists after they killed Israelis in Gaza. In that same month, Israeli news broadcast a video of armed terrorists using UNRWA ambulances to flee.

Hamas is a group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by our government. As a Canadian, I am ashamed that my tax dollars are bankrolling Hamas terrorists through the $10-million per year given to UNRWA. Why are UNRWA services to the Palestinians deemed so important by our government that they are worth the lives of innocent Israelis? We are sending tax dollars to an organization that we have outlawed.

Our government has also given a quarter-billion dollars to the Palestinian Authority while refusing to account for how it is spent. What Canadian interests are being served by such a policy?

UNRWA funding should be stopped until we are certain that the agency's activities are 100% humanitarian. By supporting UNRWA, an organization that employs Hamas terrorists, and by failing to pressure the Palestinian Authority to end its terror campaign against Israelis, Paul Martin and his government are proving to be neither friends of Israel nor friends of democracy.

Alastair Gordon, director of communications, Canadian Coalition for Democracies, http://CanadianCoalition.com