The United Nations on Wednesday decried comments by a spokesman in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office about Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the UN’s agency for “Palestinian refugees”.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric was responding to comments made by spokesman David Mencer who called Lazzarini “one of the bad guys, a terrorist sympathizer, a Jew-killing enabler, a liar”, according to The Associated Press.
Mencer issued the denunciations of Lazzarini on Tuesday after saying that Israeli forces have retrieved “millions of documents and captured enemy material” exposing the involvement of UNRWA employees in Hamas’ attacks on October 7 in southern Israel.
He said the documents also showed “the deep and systemic infiltration by those terror organizations, Hamas, but also Palestinian Islamic Jihad into the ranks of UNRWA.”
Dujarric said in response that “there have not been a million documents handed over to the secretary-general,” Antonio Guterres, and that a letter sent to him with about a hundred names was immediately sent to the Office of Internal Oversight Services, the watchdog known as OIOS.
He added that Mencer’s “inflammatory language” to describe Lazzarini “in an environment that’s already extremely volatile is reprehensible and downright dangerous because it puts at risk senior UN officials whose only focus is on helping civilians in Gaza and to alleviate their suffering.”
The UN spokesman stressed that it was UNRWA that first announced the list of staff potentially involved in the October 7 attacks, which Lazzarini has repeatedly denounced.
UNRWA has come under fire over allegations of cooperation with Hamas. Israel said in January that 12 UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks. In the weeks that followed, numerous donor states suspended or paused some $450 million in funding to UNRWA.
Some of those countries, including Germany, Sweden, Canada, Japan, Norway and Austria, have since resumed funding to the agency.
Israel said that the UNRWA workers who participated in the Hamas massacre kidnapped a woman, handed out ammunition and actively taking part in the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri, where 97 people were murdered.
After Israel presented the accusations against the UNRWA staff, Guterres announced the creation of a review group, headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, to look into the Israeli allegations.
The group recently released its report which found neutrality-related issues" in UNRWA but also claimed that Israel had yet to provide evidence for allegations that a significant number of its staff were members of terrorist organizations.
Lazzarini has resisted Israel’s calls for him to step down, has insisted he had no knowledge of how deep Hamas is involved in UNRWA, and has instead continued to level accusations at Israel.