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The Washington Post Covers for UNRWA, Again
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.
A United Nations agency has been caught helping Hamas. The Washington Post, however, is here to help both the genocidal terrorist group and the corrupt organization that shares its ultimate objective: the destruction of the Jewish state.
A Jan. 30, 2024 Post column entitled “Biden’s cutoff of Palestinian aid is inhumane and strategically stupid” was a veritable whitewash of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose employees took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of Israel, the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.
On Jan. 26, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, acknowledged that Israeli authorities had provided the organization with “information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel.” Lazzarini stated that he had “immediately terminated the contracts of these staff members.”
Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin noted that “12 U.N. employees in Gaza” allegedly participated in the attack, noting that, “if found guilty” they “deserve no sanctuary and no mercy.” He also said that “UNRWA has big questions to answer about this and other instances of some of its 13,000 employees seeming support for violence against Israelis.”
But Rogin declined to elaborate on what some of these “other instances” were. No additional facts were given. Instead, Rogin devoted most of his column to calling Biden administration cuts to UNRWA “cruel” and counterproductive. Cuts to UNRWA, he warned, “will have ripple effects that will make solving all of the Middle East’s problems more difficult.”
It is far from certain whether solving “all of the Middle East’s problems” should be a US objective, let alone whether that is obtainable.
However, what it is certain is that eight decades after the end of World War II, UN employees helped carry out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And far from being outliers, their behavior is reflective of UNRWA itself. The UN agency’s support for murdering Jews is endemic. It is also extensively documented. And Rogin declined to provide examples that were already in the public domain.
Indeed, as The Wall Street Journal reported before Rogin’s column ran, intelligence reports indicate that no fewer than a dozen UNRWA employees “had connections” to the Oct. 7 massacre, and at least six took part in the attack. At least two others helped kidnap Israelis, and others “were tracked to sites where Jewish civilians were shot and killed.” The Journal also noted that “others coordinated logistics for the assault, including procuring weapons.” UNRWA vehicles and facilities were also used.
Far from a case of “a few bad apples,” as both UNRWA and its apologists in the press would have the world believe, UNRWA’s complicity is extensive. Intelligence estimates shared with the Journal indicate that no fewer than 1,200 of its employees in Gaza “have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, about half have close relative who belong” to these US-designated terror groups.
Put another way: how many UN employees aiding and abetting the systemic slaughter of Jews is too many before US taxpayers quit the footing the bill?
Indeed, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has documented, UNRWA’s terror ties are not only extensive, but they’ve long been public knowledge. In 2014, for example, terrorists were caught using UNRWA facilities to launch attacks. The UN’s own internal investigation acknowledged as much. And then the UN did what it does best — nothing. No real changes were made, and the problem went unaddressed.
Indeed, a 2014 report by the Center for Near East Policy research found that Hamas and Islamic Jihad “control the UNRWA stations in Gaza.” Two years earlier, in 2012, “UNRWA in Gaza elected Hamas to all 11 seats in UNRWA’s teachers’ union.”
All of this, of course, is as unsurprising as it is disturbing.
UNRWA’s core mission is the destruction of the Jewish state. While all of the world’s other refugee populations fall under the jurisdiction of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNRWA is the only entity devoted to a sole category: “Palestinian refugees.” Uniquely, UNRWA’s definition of what constitutes a “refugee” includes people who are generations removed from the 1948 War of Independence, people who are citizens of new states, and people who live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — places that Palestinians themselves claim as part of a future Palestinian state.
In contrast to the UNHCR, UNRWA’s definition of “refugee” is not aid dependent. The UNHCR seeks to settle refugees — that is its mission. By contrast, UNRWA seeks to perpetuate the Israel-Islamist conflict, not only by actively aiding Hamas but by maintaining the fiction that one can be a millionaire, American-born model like Gigi Hadid and be a “refugee.”
According to UNRWA’s doctrine, these “refugees” will maintain their “refugee” status until they settle in Israel, a land that many weren’t even in born in. The sole purpose of this doctrine is the destruction of the Jewish state.
UNRWA perpetuates the conflict in other key ways. In addition to being massively corrupt — pound for pound UNRWA receives more money than UNHCR despite dealing with far fewer refugees — the organization is openly antisemitic. As a recent UN Watch report revealed, antisemitism is rife among UNRWA teachers and staff.
Indeed, entire books, such as 2020’s The War of Return by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwarz, have extensively — and irrefutably — profiled the pernicious role that UNRWA plays.
Nor can UNRWA’s promises of an “investigation” be trusted. As Eitan Fischberger documented, several of the groups chosen by UNRWA to review UNRWA have expressed support for groups like Al-Haq, the legal arm of the Popular Front For Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), itself a terrorist group.
All of this important context is omitted in the Post’s column, which calls for American taxpayers to keep funding a UN Agency that both condones, and commits, the murder of Jews.
But Rogin needn’t worry. UNRWA USA is still a 501 (c)3, capable of receiving tax-deductible donations. And more importantly, UNRWA continues to receive copious funds from the US. As Victoria Coates and Brent Sadler of the Heritage Foundation revealed, “99.8 percent of U.S. funding to UNRWA has already been delivered, leaving only .2 percent to be ‘paused’ by the Biden administration.”
Both Hamas and The Washington Post should be happy: UNRWA will almost certainly keep functioning just as it always has.
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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