Unravelling Unraveling UNRWA

A movie screening attendee flips off protesters outside the library. Photo by Giancarlo Cininni

by Antonia Zwissler and Giancarlo Cininni

The protesters started gathering at 7 p.m. They wore keffiyehs and wielded signs like “NO PRIDE IN APARTHEID,” and “SELF DETERMINATION FOR A FREE PALESTINE.”

It was Sunday, June 14. The Atlantic Jewish Film Festival was getting ready to screen a documentary called Unraveling UNRWA at the Halifax Central Library. The film, by Duki Dror, describes the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), as dysfunctional. UNRWA provides services like education and healthcare to Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.

The documentary maintains that no other UN refugee organization has existed as long as UNRWA’s 77 years, and that it creates dependence in Palestinians, preventing the formation of a sovereign government. It also implicated UNRWA in radicalizing displaced people toward violence against Israelis.

UNRWA, for its part, has a page called “Facts versus claims,” dedicated to debunking misinformation against it. UNRWA writes that “these claims have put the lives of UNRWA staff at serious risk.”

While around 120 people attended the screening, including Clayton Park West MLA Adegoke Fadare, 46 people were outside trying to disrupt the experience. The protest included readings of violent quotes from Israeli officials and shouts of “shame” at those entering, but did not prevent anyone from getting in. Three police vehicles were parked near the protest. One filmgoer mockingly danced to the protesters’ chants. An elderly man walking with a woman pushed a protester out of the way before security at the entrance waved him in. A third man threw up his middle finger at protesters through the library’s glass wall.

Among the protesters was local professor and activist El Jones. She argued the film marks a new phase of pro-Israel messaging, moving from genocide denial to justification.

“It takes any twinge of conscience that might be felt, any twinge of doubt by someone who might possibly start to question Israel, and it tells them ‘no no no, put the blame back on the victim.’”

Jones stressed the importance of broadcasting statements made by Israeli politicians to the public, such as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comparison of Palestine to Amalek (an enemy nation of the Israelites in the Bible; God tells them to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven” in Deuteronomy 25:19). Jones argued these statements prove genocidal intent against Palestinians.

She said “I don’t want to hear from them a single word about ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘globalized intifada’ until they condemn each and every one of those statements.”

As the movie started, a Palestinian flag flashed through a gap in the curtains. The narration intermingled with chants of “intifada, intifada” (Arabic for “uprising”).
Jewish Agency’s Regional Director of Canada Yaron Deckel spoke after the film. In an interview with Grand Parade, Deckel declined to comment on what should replace UNRWA’s humanitarian aid. “We are working to get more Jews connected to Israel, I’m not here to solve the Palestinian problem,” Deckel said.

In an interview with Grand Parade on June 17, Unraveling UNRWA director Duki Dror placed blame on UNRWA and its international funders for Palestinian “victimhood.” But he also called the situation in Gaza “dire” and said now would be a bad time for UNRWA to completely withdraw, yet that it needed to be replaced by an organization with a focus on “deradicalization.”

So far, most reviews on Dror’s film have been limited to the Jewish media sphere. A softball interview in Haaretz did not challenge Dror’s ideas on Palestinian refugee status. Israeli American filmmaker Udi Aloni dismissed it as “propaganda” in an article for The Palestine Project.

In his book How to Sell a Genocide, Adam H. Johnson cites CNN, NBC News, and the Washington Post linking UNRWA to Hamas just days after the UN’s International Court of Justice ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza in Jan. 2024. Johnson wrote: “based on mere allegation by Israel and the UN rushing to fire those subject to the allegation, stories about UN aid workers in Gaza carrying out the October 7 ‘terrorist attack’ quickly crowded out stories of the ICJ’s live streamed condemnation of Israeli officials genocidal statements and their ongoing acts of ‘plausible’ genocide.”

As the sky darkened and fog rolled in, only a small group of protesters waited for the event’s end. Police guarded the exits, keeping watch as moviegoers left. One woman who attended the film got up close to the protester chanting “shame” at everyone leaving the library.

“You’re ridiculous,” she said, inches away from the protester's face.

“You know what I think is ridiculous? Bombing children indiscriminately,” the protester responded.

Fillmore on scandal watch

by Matt Stickland

Today, Halifax’s Audit and Finance Standing Committee is meeting to receive an unscheduled, unplanned audit from the Auditor General. The “Office of the Mayor Expenses Audit,” will be made public when Auditor General Andrew Atherton begins his presentation on Monday afternoon.

In an email the Office of the Auditor General said “this was a new audit based on concerns brought to our attention. We completed the audit in as timely a manner as possible and will report the details on Monday.”

In an email, a spokesperson from mayor Andy Fillmore’s office said that “we’re unable to comment on the Auditor General’s report until it’s publicly available on Monday. Once the report is published on the Auditor General’s website, we’ll be providing a statement in response.”

Grand Parade has learned from a few sources with knowledge of the situation that there are a handful of expenses included in the report, such as the $13,000 the mayor’s office paid for a speechwriter for last year’s State of the Municipality address. From 2013 to 2026, only last year’s speech came with a taxpayer invoice.

There is growing mistrust of the city’s consultation processes, as a senior was brought to tears at a committee meeting last week over the city’s waterfront vendor licensing process. Whereas the mayor’s office has helped coordinate two meetings between the Construction Association of Nova Scotia and council on Monday August 25, 2025 and June 19, 2026.

And on January 12, 2025, Uber delivered a presentation to Fillmore. On Jan. 13, Fillmore asked council to delay regulating Uber, which council did.

Monday’s AG report will drop less than a week after last Tuesday’s council meeting where Fillmore was the only vote against deputy mayor Patty Cuttell’s motion seeking a report on what meetings councillors could take, because as Cuttell told council last Tuesday “if the public thinks we’re having meetings of council in private with some stakeholder groups but not others, it’s going to continue to breed mistrust. We have a responsibility to ensure there’s public trust in our processes.”

Guelph outshines Halifax in road safety

by Matt Stickland

Last week at the Westin Nova Scotia on the waterfront, there was a Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals conference where Halifax’s team of road safety professionals were thoroughly embarrassed.

Part of the embarrassment came during a luncheon on Tuesday when Halifax’s city staff presented our Road Safety Strategy. Even though staff only used data that has been “finalized” ending with 2024, which omits 2025’s record number of road deaths, the other presenters very clearly have much better road safety strategies than Halifax.

For example, Edmonton’s goal is zero road deaths by 2032, whereas Halifax wants to “Maintain a downward trend in the rate of fatal and serious injury collisions per 100,000 residents.”

The planners in Guelph also came up with a much better road safety plan than Halifax did. The first major difference between the two plans is that Guelph has a whole section of their safety strategy titled “Driving is a risk factor.” The first sentence in that section reads “the more people drive, the more people die in collisions,” which cites a 2024 study by Todd Litman called A New Traffic Safety Paradigm.

In spite of Halifax’s plan purporting to be evidence-based, it claims roads can be made safer if all road users just try a little bit harder to be safer. This is not true, as explained by Halifax’s own Road Safety Strategy, which is supposed to be “built on the recognition that people make mistakes.”

Guelph’s road safety team think more carefully about safety than Halifax’s crew. At the conference, there was a Q&A, and one of the audience members asked what the presenters thought about distracted driving.

There was the normal rigamarole about how distracted driving is a risk factor, but Guelph’s planners pointed out that you can be distracted not just by a phone, but also by other factors like children in the car. And also, places that haven’t killed anyone with their roads like Helsinki and Hoboken also have drivers with smartphones. So clearly distracted driving is something that can be mitigated.

Compare that to Halifax’s executive director of public works, Lucas Pitts, who said Hoboken not killing anyone was “cheating” because they had narrower roads.
Guelph’s road safety plan says that “most serious injuries and deaths from collisions happen on arterial or collector roads—wide roads designed for higher volume and higher speeds.”

In closing, Guelph’s planners advised the room of road safety professionals that “we own the recommendation, council owns the decision.”