Last week, news broke that 12 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency tasked with providing assistance and protection for Palestinian refugees, were personally involved in the October 7 Hamas rampage. One UNRWA employee was armed with an anti-tank missile; another filmed a hostage being taken captive; yet another, an elementary school teacher, served as a Hamas commander and participated in the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri. Another UNRWA employee kidnapped an IDF’s soldier’s body. (Corpses are valuable to Hamas because Israel is known to release large numbers of prisoners to secure the return of its soldiers’ remains.)
UNRWA’s involvement in the atrocities did not end on October 7. One of the hostages recently released from Gaza revealed that he was held captive in an attic in Gaza for nearly 50 days by a teacher employed by UNRWA.
A second even more disturbing report disclosed that 10% of UNRWA employees have ties to Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad; while about 50% are close relatives to people with ties to those terrorist organizations.
These reports, provided by the Israeli government, were deemed “highly, highly credible,” by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Other governments agreed on the reports’ reliability. After their release, 15 nations suspended their financial contributions to UNRWA.
While the revelations may seem shocking, the most shocking thing about them is the fact that they shock. For anyone familiar with the history and performance of the agency should not have been surprised.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini insists that the agency is dedicated to “upholding the values of the United Nations” and that it conducts its business with “zero-tolerance policy for hatred.”
The first claim is actually true. UNRWA does uphold the values of the United Nations, an international body that regularly targets Israel for condemnation. A few years ago, its General Assembly passed a resolution dismissing any Jewish connection to the Old City of Jerusalem. A UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women has blamed the tendency of Palestinian men to beat their wives on Israeli settlements. The Palestinian Authority’s UN delegation has blamed Israel for global warming. As Abba Eban, a former Israeli Foreign Minister, once quipped: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”
But the second part of Lazzarini’s statement – that UNRWA has “zero-tolerance for hatred” – is a lie. UNWRA was founded upon hatred of the State of Israel, and it has lived to up its disreputable origins ever since.
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