RSS
‘UNRWA Gives Rise to Palestinian Terrorism’: Experts React to NYT Expose Revealing UN Staff Active Hamas Members
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini in Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Dozens of senior staff at UNRWA, including school principals, are active members of Hamas and other terrorist groups, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday, in revelations that sparked renewed calls to shutter and defund the controversial United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
The allegations exposed in the Times, based on firsthand testimonies as well as internal documents seized by the Israeli military from Hamas offices in the Gaza Strip, assert that at least 24 senior administrators and teachers employed by UNRWA at 24 different schools are registered members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Many were also involved in armed activities, with some possessing weapons like rifles and grenades or engaging in combat training conducted by these groups.
However, UNRWA expert Einat Wilf — who previously served in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset — argued that the Times‘ exposé detracted from the real issue: that UNRWA perpetuates the conflict by entrenching the refugee narrative and fostering a new generation committed to terrorism.
“UNRWA is not infiltrated by Hamas; UNRWA is the soil that constantly gives rise to more violent Palestinian organizations,” Wilf told The Algemeiner.
Residents of Gaza told the Times that Hamas’s presence in UNRWA schools was “an open secret,” with one example of an UNRWA teacher “regularly seen after hours in Hamas fatigues carrying a Kalashnikov.”
The report noted Hamas tunnels running beneath UNRWA schools and referenced internal Hamas communications identifying specific schools as locations for concealing weapons, with some texts describing schools and other civilian areas as ideal shields, or, in their terms, “the best obstacles to protect the resistance.”
In one notable incident, UNRWA uncovered a tunnel running beneath one of its schools in central Gaza. The agency reported at the time that it had protested to Hamas about the tunnel’s presence and moved to seal the entrances. However, the seized documents revealed that the school’s principal, Khaled al-Masri — who UNRWA did not fire — is a Hamas member who had been issued weapons by the terrorist group, including an assault rifle and a handgun. Photographs on social media showed him standing before a Hamas banner.
“The UN has been unable and or unwilling to eliminate Hamas militants and their supporters, as well as those from other terrorist groups, from their ranks,” James Lindsay, who served as UNRWA’s general counsel until 2007, told the Times.
“UNRWA hiring practices and the makeup of the labor pool from which UNRWA draws its employees suggests to me that the numbers the Israelis are talking about are probably pretty close to the truth.”
UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini claimed that the organization “lacked the resources” to independently investigate the allegations, according to the report.
He also said that it was “extraordinarily interesting” that Israel shared the documents with the Times rather than UNRWA, but failed to mention that the agency had rejected evidence of terrorist activities on the part of his staff on several occasions in the past.
After being confronted with footage showing UNRWA employees loading the corpse of a murdered Israeli into a vehicle during Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, the organization responded by stating that some of its staff “may” have been involved with Hamas.
“The UN seems intent on portraying this problem as a few bad apples, rather than acknowledging that the tree is rotten,” Amir Weissbrod, the Israeli foreign ministry’s deputy director for international organizations, told the Times.
The findings add to long-standing accusations that UNRWA’s operations in Gaza facilitate radicalization rather than fostering peace. Last month, Israel passed legislation banning the agency from operating within Israeli territory and prohibiting any Israeli authority from engaging with it.
Wilf commended the Israeli government for finally taking decisive action against the agency, saying that last month’s bill and the decision to expose the agency to the press marked an end to “decades of serving as UNRWA’s Iron Dome and protector.”
However, she went on to argue that the real issue with UNRWA is not limited to its staff’s ties to Hamas but its broader role in perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that while Palestinians often separate UNRWA employment from direct terror activity, “the wife will work as a teacher and get paid directly by UNRWA, and the husband will be a Hamas operative.”
The critical question, Wilf said, is not how many terrorists are paid by UNRWA but rather how many have been educated by the agency or falsely registered as refugees.
“How many of the terrorists, the butchers, not just of Hamas, but Palestinian terrorists over the years, how many of them have been educated by UNRWA? How many of them were living in neighborhoods that were misnamed refugee camps, even though they’re not camps and no one there is a refugee?” she said, adding that the answer is “practically everyone.”
UNRWA “secures the next generation of people who believe that it is their noble duty by any means necessary to ensure that Jews do not and will not have a sovereign state,” she concluded.
Marcus Sheff, CEO of the NGO IMPACT-se, which monitors UNRWA’s educational curricula, responded to the Times‘ report by saying it confirmed what the world has known for years. “Quite simply, Palestinian children are subjected to indoctrination on a grand scale — and UNRWA is one of the driving forces behind it,” he told The Algemeiner.
According to Sheff, the curriculum in UNRWA schools glorifies violence and promotes deeply antisemitic narratives. “UNRWA educates the majority of schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “They teach students that Jews are liars and fraudsters, that Jews spread corruption which will lead to their annihilation. They are told to ‘cut the necks of the enemy,’ that a massacre of Jews on a bus is to be celebrated as a BBQ party. Terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi, who murdered 38 people, including 13 children, are held up as role models. Many of the people running the schools, teaching, and creating educational content are members of terror organizations. UNRWA is not fit for purpose and should not be allowed to educate children.”
In 2018, the Trump administration cut all funding to UNRWA, calling the agency “irredeemably flawed,” a decision reversed by the Biden administration soon after taking office. Apart from the US, UNRWA receives funding from Canada and several EU states.
Fleur Hassan Nahoum, special envoy for Israel’s foreign ministry, called on those countries to cease all funding to the agency, which she described as an obstacle to peace.
“UNRWA was infiltrated by jihadi terrorists a long time ago,” she told The Algemeiner. “The world is now unearthing what we already knew. It is a poisonous organization taking us further away from peace. The question is now why are countries still funding them.”
The post ‘UNRWA Gives Rise to Palestinian Terrorism’: Experts React to NYT Expose Revealing UN Staff Active Hamas Members first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
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.
RSS
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.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
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.