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Media Outlets Continue to Conceal the Appalling Truth About UNRWA
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.
Following the release of evidence by Israel that Palestinian UNRWA employees took part in the Hamas massacre on October 7, most of the organization’s major donors have suspended funding to the Palestinian refugee agency.
The United States, UNRWA’s biggest donor, was the first to announce its decision to withdraw aid, in a statement that said officials were “extremely troubled” by the allegations that Palestinian agency workers participated in the kibbutz atrocities, kidnapped Israeli hostages, and helped coordinate the movement of weapons that were used in the attack.
According to a dossier handed over to the US State Department, at least 1,200 UNRWA employees were found to be members of either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
When it comes to @Refugees, most are looked after by the UNHCR. However, Palestinians have their own agency, @UNRWA.
So what’s going on here? pic.twitter.com/WGoZE9qQzX
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 27, 2024
None of these revelations, however, will come as a surprise to anyone who’s a bit more clued up about UNRWA’s chequered history.
What we (and other organizations) have repeatedly demonstrated over the years, is how UNRWA is completely rotten to its core.
From UNRWA employees discovered to be members of terrorist groups, to teachers in its schools who encouraged students to murder Jews, and the agency’s facilities being used as terror bases, UNRWA has repeatedly shown that it is corrupt, inefficient, and, as the evidence indicates, exacerbating the plight of Palestinians.
Despite all of this — specifically, the disturbing truth about UNRWA being laid bare — a strange incredulity emerged among media outlets regarding the latest revelations. This was followed by a rush to either downplay the findings or engage in excessive handwringing about the potential consequences for Palestinians without UNRWA.
The BBC, for example, obscured the horrifying accusations against UNRWA that resulted in it being defunded, by referring to the situation as a “diplomatic storm” in the headline of a piece that suggested heartlessness by donor states that have removed the “lifesaving assistance on which two million Gazans rely…”
Indeed, the whole piece reads as a sort of press release for UNRWA, which is described in positively glowing terms as running Gaza’s “medical and educational facilities, including teacher training centres and almost 300 primary schools — as well as producing the textbooks that educate young Palestinians.”
While the BBC does reference some of UNRWA’s troubling history, it frames these issues as mere accusations from Israeli governments, which have “long denounced the agency’s teaching and textbooks for, in their view, perpetuating anti-Israel views.”
A note to the BBC: children’s textbooks that explicitly call for the genocide of Jews, encourage youngsters to become suicide bombers, and glorify Palestinian terrorists go beyond “perpetuating anti-Israel views.”
Is UNRWA finally facing a reckoning? Maybe.
The US has pulled funding and the UN Secretary-General is allegedly horrified, despite knowing UNRWA’s history. What happens next? We’ll have to wait and see, but we’re not holding our breath. pic.twitter.com/As4J7gzK95
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 27, 2024
The BBC also dismisses criticism of UNRWA as suggestive of the agency becoming “something of a political football” while its “very existence is criticised by Israel as entrenching the status of Palestinians as refugees, encouraging their continued hopes of a right of return to land from which they were driven in 1948 or during successive wars.”
Unsurprisingly, given its sympathetic tone, the piece fails to clarify that barely any of the 5.9 million Palestinians deemed “refugees” worldwide were actually alive in 1948. Additionally, it omits that UNRWA’s definition of refugee status diverges from all accepted definitions, being so broad that it allows inheritance of this status from parents and grandparents.
Likewise, Newsweek also steered its coverage away from the unmasking of UN workers as terrorists to focus on UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ plea for donors to carry on funding the organization on the grounds that humanitarian workers in the region “should not be penalized.”
While the piece quotes Guterres at length, including his praise of UNRWA’s Philippe Lazzarini, Newsweek doesn’t actually bother to go into any real detail about the latest allegations or any of the other claims made against UNWRA over the years.
The Guardian went even further, to emphasize how “outraged” aid agencies are at UNRWA’s defunding.
With no mention in the headline of what prompted the funding cut — details of which are buried toward the bottom of the story — the piece also ignores the many other accusations against UNRWA that stretch back years.
Meanwhile, Sky News’ Diplomatic Editor Dominic Waghorn was apparently so desperate to rehabilitate UNRWA’s image that he desperately attempted to discredit one of the journalists who wrote a Wall Street Journal exclusive that revealed some 10 percent of UNRWA’s 12,000 staff members in Gaza have links to terror groups.
Is the @cjkeller8 behind WSJ report that 10 percent of UNRWA staff have Islamist links the same Carrie Keller Lynn who served in the Israeli military and is a close friend of a pioneering IDF propagandist? https://t.co/Rr26a1hcuD
— Dominic Waghorn (@DominicWaghorn) January 30, 2024
UNRWA benefits from the halo effect. We’ve repeatedly observed how the media portray UNRWA as a paragon of virtue while simultaneously failing to scrutinize it as rigorously as they would any other organization receiving substantial public funding.
However, the incredulity displayed by numerous news outlets in response to the latest allegations is astonishing.
What more could it possibly take for UNRWA’s halo to finally fall in the eyes of the international media?
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Pro-Palestinian Rapper Leads ‘Death to the IDF’ Chant at English Music festival
Revellers dance as Avril Lavigne performs on the Other Stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, in Pilton, Somerset, Britain, June 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Dylan Martinez
i24 News – Chants of “death to the IDF” were heard during the English Glastonbury music festival on Saturday ahead of the appearance of the pro-Palestinian Irish rappers Kneecap.
One half of punk duo based Bob Vylan (who both use aliases to protect their privacy) shouted out during a section of their show “Death to the IDF” – the Israeli military. Videos posted on X (formerly Twitter) show the crowd responding to and repeating the cheer.
This comes after officials had petitioned the music festival to drop the band. The rap duo also expressed support for the following act, Kneecap, who the BCC refused to show live after one of its members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh – better known by stage name Mo Chara – was charged with a terror offense.
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Rubio Holds First Meeting with Hostage Families, Urges End to Gaza War
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
i24 News – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio held on Friday his first meeting with the families of the hostages still held in Gaza since taking office in January, telling the loved ones that a “real victory” can only occur in Gaza when the remaining hostages are returned.
Those in attendance included Omri Miran’s brother-in-law; Evyatar David’s brother; Hadar Goldin’s brother; and Iair Horn, who himself is a freed hostage, with his brother Eitan still held by Hamas in Gaza.
According to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, they urged the current US administration for a “bold decision.” “We’ve waited long enough,” the family members said. “It’s time to make brave decisions and bring all our loved ones back—all at once.”
Rubio, in turn, expressed the Trump administration’s “unwavering commitment” in rescuing the 49 remaining hostages, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive.
This meeting comes after U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he believes a ceasefire will be reached between Israel and Hamas “within the next week.”
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Trump Says He Would Consider Bombing Iran Again, Drops Sanctions Relief Plan
US President Donald Trump speaks at a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (not pictured), at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
US President Donald Trump sharply criticized Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamanei, on Friday, dropped plans to lift sanctions on Iran and said he would consider bombing Iran again if Tehran is enriching uranium to worrisome levels.
Trump reacted sternly to Khamanei’s first remarks after a 12-day conflict with Israel that ended when the United States launched bombing raids last weekend against Iranian nuclear sites.
Khamanei said Iran “slapped America in the face” by launching an attack against a major US base in Qatar following the US bombing raids. Khamanei also said Iran would never surrender.
Trump said he had spared Khamanei’s life. US officials told Reuters on June 15 that Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan to kill the supreme leader.
“His Country was decimated, his three evil Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED, and I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life,” Trump said in a social media post.
“I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH,” he said.
Iran said a potential nuclear deal was conditional on the US ending its “disrespectful tone” toward the Supreme Leader.
“If President Trump is genuine about wanting a deal, he should put aside the disrespectful and unacceptable tone towards Iran’s Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, and stop hurting his millions of heartfelt followers,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in a post on X in the early hours of Saturday.
Trump also said that in recent days he had been working on the possible removal of sanctions on Iran to give it a chance for a speedy recovery. He said he had now abandoned that effort.
“I get hit with a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust, and immediately dropped all work on sanction relief, and more,” he said.
Trump said at a White House news conference that he did not rule out attacking Iran again, when asked about the possibility of new bombing of Iranian nuclear sites if deemed necessary at some point.
“Sure, without question, absolutely,” he said.
Trump said he would like inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency – the U.N. nuclear watchdog – or another respected source to be able to inspect Iran’s nuclear sites after they were bombed last weekend.
Trump has rejected any suggestion that damage to the sites was not as profound as he has said.
The IAEA chief, Rafael Grossi, said on Wednesday that ensuring the resumption of IAEA inspections was his top priority as none had taken place since Israel began bombing on June 13.
However, Iran’s parliament approved moves on Wednesday to suspend such inspections. Araqchi indicated on Friday that Tehran may reject any request by the head of the agency for visits to Iranian nuclear sites.
Trump said Iran still wants to meet about the way forward. The White House had said on Thursday that no meeting between the U.S. and an Iranian delegation has been scheduled thus far.
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