UNRWA Fires Workers Accused of Working With Hamas On Oct. 8
Several countries have suspended payments to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency after Israel presented evidence that several of its employees played active roles in the Palestinian Hamas massacre of Jews.
“The Israeli authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on October 7,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General.
“To protect the agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay. “Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” he said.
“Any UN employee involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterresf said in a statement. “The Secretariat is ready to cooperate with a competent authority able to prosecute the individuals in line with the Secretariat’s normal procedures for such cooperation.”
A senior Israeli official told the Axios news site that the Shin Bet and the IDF provided information that pointed to the active participation of UNRWA staffers along with the use of the agency’s vehicles and facilities in the October 7 terrorist attack..
“This was strong and corroborated intelligence,” the official told Axios. “A lot of the intelligence is a result of interrogations of militants who were arrested during the October 7 attack.”
The New York Times published a dossier detailing the charges against the 12 UNRWA employees thus far confirmed to have been involved in the October 7 Hamas massacre and its aftermath. Here are some quotes:
“One is accused of kidnapping a woman. Another is said to have handed out ammunition. A third was described as taking part in the massacre at a kibbutz where 97 people died.”
“The UNRWA workers have been accused of helping Hamas stage the attack that set off the war in Gaza, or of aiding it in the days after.”
“The most detailed accusations in the dossier concerned a school counselor from Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, who is accused of working with his son to abduct a woman from Israel.”
“A social worker from Nuseirat, in central Gaza, is accused of helping to bring the body of a dead Israeli soldier to Gaza, as well as distributing ammunition and coordinating vehicles on the day of the attack.”
Of the 12 individuals identified in the dossier, seven were reported by the NYT to be teachers in UNRWA schools and two worked in the schools in other capacities. The others were an UNRWA social worker, a clerk, and a storeroom manager.
(source: JNS)
Ten of them are members of Hamas. One is a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
They were largely implicated by their cell phone use. Half of the individuals’ phones were traced to southern Israel on October 7. Others received text messages ordering them to rallying points ahead of the attack and “one was told to bring rocket-propelled grenades stored at his home.”
There are 13,000 UNRWA employees in the Gaza Strip. It is highly implausible that these are the only employees who were involved in the October 7 massacre. The NYT reports said to “expect more revelations in the days and weeks ahead.”
The U.S. State Department said it was extremely troubled by the allegations, which it said pertained to 12 UNRWA employees. It said it would provide no additional funding to the agency until the allegations were addressed.
“The Department of State has temporarily paused additional funding for UNRWA while we review these allegations and the steps the United Nations is taking to address them,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Canada, Britain, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Italy, and Australia announced that they would be taking similar measures.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said, “How symbolic that precisely on International Holocaust Remembrance Day it was proven what we have been claiming for years: that UNRWA employees are collaborators of the terrorist organization Hamas and that the UN has become not only a place where the existence of the State of Israel is delegitimized, but that its employees physically participated in the attempted extermination of Israel and the murder of its citizens.”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz tweeted that UNRWA should be investigated:
Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, stated that he he is “appalled, but I am not surprised.”
“The U.N. is a cesspool of anti-Israel hatred, and UNRWA is one of the primary organs associated with normalizing and institutionalizing international antisemitism,” he added. “Reinstating funding for UNRWA was a mistake. We knew UNRWA was complicit in Hamas’s antisemitic indoctrination of generations of Gazans, but it’s clear they’ve taken the next logical step: joining Hamas’s terrorist ranks.”
David Bedein, an investigative journalist whole stablished the Israel Resource News Agency and runs Israel Behind the News, noted that the response to UNRWA’s complicity in the massacre was being misrepresented in the media.
“No one canceled their funding,” Bedein told Israel365 News. “What they announced was a pause which, practically speaking, doesn’t exist. It gives the appearance that they are looking into it. But there isn’t and there will not be any cut backs.”
Bedein testified to a Knesset committee earlier this month about UNRWA, stating that the organization uses its $1.6 billion budget, 58% of which is earmarked for education, to perpetuate the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Bedein presented a five-point plan to deal with UNRWA’s anti-Israel agenda he calls the UNRWA PEACE INITIATIVE:
- Cancellation of the new UNRWA curriculum, based on Jihad, martyrdom and “right of return by force of arms”, which have no place in UN education, whose theme is “Peace Begins Here”.
- Disarmament of UNRWA schools and cessation of paramilitary training connected to all UNRWA schools. It is an absurdity that UNRWA, a UN agency with a purported commitment to “peace education”, allows such arms training and missile fire in proximity of its premises.
- Insisting that UNRWA dismiss employees affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Fatah in accordance with laws of donor nations that forbid aid to any agency that employs members of a terrorist organization.
- Introducing UNHCR standards to advance resettlement of fourth- and fifth-generation refugees from the 1948 war who have spent seven decades relegated to refugee status. Current UNRWA policy is that any Arab refugee resettlement would interfere with the “right of return” to pre-1948 Arab localities. By adopting the stance of Arab maximalists, UNRWA flouts its commitment to assist the Arab refugees from 1948 and their descendants.
- Demanding an audit of donor funds that emanate from 68 nations. This would address documented reports of wasted resources, duplication of services and an undesired flow of cash to the terror groups that dominate UNRWA operations.
It should be noted that there have been several reports of UNRWA personnel expressing support for the attack. The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) documented several examples of teachers and students at UNRWA schools in Gaza praising the attacks on social media, and found ties between Hamas terrorists and UNRWA schools. The report also found that more than 100 Hamas terrorists were confirmed to have graduated from UNRWA schools, and stated that is statistically likely that the majority of the 3,000 terrorists who perpetrated the October 7 massacre attended UNRWA institutions, which make up half of all schools in Gaza. In one terrorist’s car, a diploma from an UNRWA-run school was found.
One of the Israeli hostages that was released in November told Israeli authorities that he was held for nearly 50 days in an attic by a teacher from UNRWA, stating that he was barely provided food or medical attention, and was locked away by the teacher. UNRWA denied the claims, labeling them as “unsubstantiated”.
In addition, Hamas weapons and tunnels have been found in or under UNRWA schools, including under UNRWA crates and in UNRWA sacks and Hamas has attacked from inside UNRWA schools.
Former US president Donald Trump cut off all American funding for UNRWA in 2018. President Biden restored the funding in 2021, giving nearly $750 million to UNRWA over the past three years.
UNRWA was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to provide relief to all refugees resulting from the 1948 conflict. It is the only UN agency dedicated to helping refugees from a specific region or conflict.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established in 1950 to aid and protect refugees which it defines as, “people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country.”
This definition does not include the descendants of refugees. Palestinian refugees living in the regions covered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are not under the care of UNHCR. Part of the reason for this is that the UN definition of a Palestinian refugee differs significantly from that of the UNHCR.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established in 1949 solely to “support the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees.” At the time of its establishment, UNRWA defined a Palestinian refugee as “persons whose regular 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 conflict.” This was later amended to include the 1967 refugees. Even later, this was amended to include the descendants of Palestine refugee males, including adopted children.
Palestinians are the only nationality for which the status of refugee is ancestral. It is important to note that the UNHCR definition states that if a person fleeing persecution has acquired citizenship or the rights of citizenship in a country in which they have sought refuge, he or she would not be eligible to receive refugee status. Under the UNHCR definition, almost all of the people served by UNRWA would lose their refugee status.
In 2018, a State Department report disclosed by the Washington Free Beacon recorded that around 20,000 of the original refugees are still alive today. If the UNHCR definition were applied universally, the claim that there are currently 5.8 million Palestinian refugees is 193 times too high.
Due to this multi-generational addendum, UNRWA has created a situation in which the conflict between the Jews and Palestinians will be perpetuated indefinitely and actually increase with time as new generations are born. This clause is also problematic as the Palestinian Authority has demanded that the right of return be a non-negotiable pre-condition to negotiations with Israel. An influx of 5.7 million Arabs would present an existential demographic threat to Israel as the Jewish state. It is precisely this UNRWA definition of refugee status that has proven to be one of the insurmountable obstacles to a peace agreement.
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