UNRWA worker drags dead Israeli - Be'eri 10/7
UNRWA worker drags dead Israeli - Be'eri 10/7Screenshot: South First Responders

The last week has been awful for UNRWA, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Which means it was a good week for humanity.

The Dutch Parliament passed a bill to gradually cut off funding to UNRWA. They join 12 other former donor nations that already have.

Next, UNRWA on Monday was caught red-handed again permitting Hamas to conduct terrorist operations from within a school in Gaza. The IDF blew it up.

Last week, the New York Times – no close ally of the Jewish State – reported without equivocation for the first time that there was independent evidence UNRWA employees doubled as armed terrorists. They called attention to 24 of the UN agency’s staff. Israeli officials (and anyone with a cerebral cortex) hold that the number is two orders of magnitude higher.

The best piece of news came from Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who says that he and eight co-sponsors are preparing to shut off US Taxpayer funding of UNRWA again. The US accounts for about 30% of UNRWA’s budget.

That is a good step, but not enough.

UNRWA crossed the line on October 7, 2023. According to established US criminal law and federal regulations, when UNRWA employees raided, raped, murdered, and abducted Israeli civilians it became a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Officially declaring it to be an FTO will bankrupt and destroy it.

Let’s start by reviewing the facts:

1. UNRWA employees committed acts of terror on October 7, 2023

It is now beyond dispute that UNRWA employees took part in the October 7, 2023 massacre, rape, and kidnapping of 1,200 innocent civilians. In August 2024 the UN agency issued a mealy-mouthed admission that attempts to minimize their involvement.

In April 2024, the Israeli government issued a report on UNRWA’s participation on October 7, 2023. As of the date of the report, Israel had identified 12 UNRWA employees for whom they had photographic and other evidence. That doesn’t mean there were 12. That means 12 were caught on camera, including other terrorists’ bodycams.

Of the 12 UNRWA shooters, rapists, and kidnappers, seven were teachers, two were school counselors and the others were humanitarian aid warehouse managers.

On October 24, 2024, the IDF also eliminated Mohammad Abu Itiwi. He was a Hamas commander. He led an attack in the area of Re'im on October 7, 2023, where he and his men murdered and abducted Israeli civilians seeking shelter after fleeing from the Nova music festival. His day job? He drove UN vehicles for UNRWA.

UNRWA social worker, Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami, was caught on camera dragging the body of Jonathan Samerano, 21, who he murdered in the rear of an SUV.

In another case, an UNRWA teacher was caught holding hostages. They had been held for 50 days in brutal conditions.

At least 30 more UNRWA staff members served in support roles for Hamas on October 7, 2023. There is a growing mountain of evidence against other individual assailants. It will probably take years to process.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the evidence of UNRWA staff involvement in murder and kidnapping as “highly, highly credible.”

UNRWA’s admission, and the sheer number of UNRWA employees who participated in acts of terror seem to make this an open and shut case. Yet let’s continue to peel the next putrefied layer of UNRWA’s onion.

2. UNRWA employees are members of another FTO’s military wing

Israel’s report next details 485 UNRWA employees who are (or hopefully were) active members of Hamas’ armed military wing.

War is chaotic. An UNRWA employee’s name in this bucket does not necessarily mean they are innocent. It just means they did not get caught yet. Here are some examples:

-Youssef Al-Hawajara, is an UNRWA teacher who worked for Hamas’ military wing, and who boasted about kidnapping Israeli women.

-Another UNRWA employee, Sharif Abu al-Amin, was the chairman of UNRWA’s teacher’s union. His side-hustle: He was Hamas’ top military commander in Lebanon. The IDF eliminated al-Amin on September 30, 2024.

-Next, please meet Ahmad Samir El Khatib, an UNRWA deputy principal of Al-Maghazi Boys Preparatory School in Gaza. His other job: squad commander in Hamas's Khan Yunis Brigade.

-Another school principal, Mohammad Juma Shuwaideh, works at the Al-Zaytun Boys Preparatory and Elementary Schools. His side gig: squad commander in Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade.

There are simply too many others to include here. Last week, the Israeli government released a video highlighting even more UNRWA employees working for Hamas’ military organization.

Since Israel’s April report dozens more UNRWA employees have been confirmed to be Hamas military wing members and commanders. Before October 7, 2023, UNRWA continued to employ many of them even after Israel warned the UN Agency that they had terrorists on their payroll.

3. UNRWA employees are confirmed members of FTOs

The next layer of the UNRWA onion is employees confirmed to be members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), or other FTOs that took part in the October 7 massacre. This is a big number: 1,468 and counting, according to Israel.

The UN does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization. Hamas terrorists are therefore not disqualified from UNRWA employment.

“Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don’t see that as a crime,” said former UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen in 2004.

Following the breach in the Gaza security barrier and the beginning of atrocities, an UNRWA Telegram group erupted in support. About 3,000 UNRWA employees, mostly educators, cheered on the rape, murder, and kidnapping of innocent civilians. The messages were painstakingly collated by the group, UN Watch. They created the 68-page document and included photographic evidence.

While UNRWA might not care that its employees work for and collaborate with Hamas and other FTOs, the United States does. The US designated Hamas an FTO on October 8, 1997.

One counterargument we have heard is that it was UNRWA rank-and-file, not the agency’s leadership, which supports terror.

Wishful thinking.

Last month, we learned that in 2019, UNRWA’s last commissioner-general, Pierre Krähenbühl, held a secret meeting with the heads of several FTOs in Lebanon. His guests included Hamas, the PIJ, and the PFLP, all US designated FTOs.

When the meeting started, Krähenbühl asked his invitees to please keep the meeting “out of the public sphere,” and reassured them: “we are one.” Here is the evidence.

In addition to the perhaps thousands of UNRWA members who work for FTOs, even more support them. Most of UNRWA’s 30,000-member workforce is toxic and spreads hate, anti-Americanism, and antisemitism among children.

4. UNRWA permits FTOs to use its facilities for terrorism

UNRWA also permits FTOs to use its facilities as hideouts, for weapons storage, and for planning attacks against civilians. Here are representative examples:

A trove of Hamas weapons was found inside a UNRWA medical clinic. UNRWA schools are used as military bases from which to fire upon Israeli forces. The IDF discovered another Hamas war operations center under an UNRWA school.

The IDF even found a Hamas data center, war room, and terror tunnels directly under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters.

Hundreds of UNRWA staff worked at the location before October 7. Israel destroyed the campus on July 14, 2024.

5. UNRWA is funding FTOs

There are two ways in which UNRWA is using US taxpayer dollars to help fund FTOs and terror activities. The first is by skimming. The second is by creating thousands of jobs for FTO members while they pursue their real career: jihad.

Let’s look at the skimming method first.

A group of Jewish families whose loved-ones were murdered by UNRWA employees (and terrorists who received US taxpayer money through UNRWA) is suing the UN agency in New York. They claim that the UN agency is skimming donor funds and sending them directly or indirectly to terrorists and terror organizations.

Can UNRWA be so brazen? I looked at their August, 2017 annual budget and their Operational Report. That was the year President Trump cut them off.

The first thing I noticed is that UNRWA does not prepare its reports according to generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP) or the European equivalents (IFRS and IASB). The UN agency’s financial statements are not audited. Nor are they even casually reviewed by an outside accounting firm. That is disgraceful for a public agency with a $1.6 billion budget in 2022.

I next looked at the expense reporting. It is opaque. UNRWA’s expense categories are so vague and general that they are useless to draw meaningful conclusions.

The use of overly general, omnibus expense categories in financial statements is precisely the strategy a bad actor would employ to hide transactions.

Is it a stretch to believe that an organization whose employees raided, murdered, raped, and abducted innocent Jewish civilians on October 7, 2023 might also want to help pay for it too?

Between April 2021, when President Biden turned the UNRWA funding spigot back on, and the massacre of October 7, 2023, the US gave UNRWA $1.02 billion dollars.

Accordingly, how many US taxpayer dollars helped buy the guns, ammo, training, housing, and expenses for the terrorists who participated in the massacre?

Let’s turn to the second method. Evidence presented above suggests that at least two thousand terrorists in Gaza hold UNRWA jobs, pull regular UNRWA paychecks, but work for FTOs.

Some of these employees are showing up at their UNRWA jobs. Others are phoning it in. Still others do not show up at all.

UNRWA had a 4.7% daily absenteeism rate the last time it was measured. That is three times higher than a typical employer. That is what they admit to.

The suspicion is that large numbers of UNRWA jobs – thousands perhaps – are doled out to terrorists. It affords them a comfortable living and a steady income while they participate in Gaza’s biggest industry: terror.

Through this system UNRWA jobs are therefore a tool to launder US, EU, and global taxpayer dollars to FTOs.

6. Prior US Policy and the Biden administration’s reversal

While UNRWA and Hamas murders and kidnappers are solely to blame for their vicious crimes, some of this could have been avoided.

In 2018, following extensive investigations and fact-finding by the US government and watchdog groups around the world, the US concluded that UNRWA was not only a lost cause; it was a dangerous organization.

At the time, the US was UNRWA’s biggest donor. From 2007 until 2017, US contributions to UNRWA totaled nearly $3.6 billion. It is a staggering figure.

In August 2018, the US government announced it was defunding UNRWA. This was a bold first step, good foreign policy, and a nod to Israel, who has been forced to reap the lethal crop that UNRWA has been sowing for generations.

Regrettably, Democrats reversed course. UNRWA funding advocates included Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib, Samantha Powers, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and Anthony Blinken. Strangely, President Biden never publicly supported (or even mentioned) resuming UNRWA funding. Yet his administration started writing checks again in April of 2021 and never stopped.

Whereas the move to defund UNRWA was principled, fact-based, and deliberative, the Democrat reversal lacked any rational basis. The Biden Administration cited no changes in UNRWA’s behavior, no end to UNRWA’s support of terror, nor any new measures by UNRWA to root out historic corruption.

Indeed, they could not. UNRWA’s antisemitism, radicalization, corruption, and ties to terror had increased, not decreased from 2018 until 2021. In light of UNRWA’s involvement in the massacre of October 7, 2023, the US decision to reinstate funding for UNRWA was a significant blunder.

7. Application of US Anti-Terror Statutes

Terrorism is defined in Sec.140(d)(2) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act. It is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” This definition is codified under 22 U.S.C. Sec. 2656f(d)(2).

When terror is undertaken by a group like UNRWA, the US Secretary of State, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury, has the power to declare that a group is an FTO, pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1189.

Were this to occur, UNRWA would be financially paralyzed. Their accounts would be frozen. Their assets would be blocked. They would be unable to use mainstream or western banking institutions. Private and even sovereign donors would potentially transgress US law by contributing funds. UNRWA’s culpable employees would be subject to arrest.

Nor is there immunity under US law in this situation. The dead have no titles. Under US law UNRWA and its staff have no immunity as murder, rape, and abduction of Jewish civilians is outside the scope of UNRWA’s official duties.

For decades we have said that UNRWA schools, teachers, and textbooks are the mother’s milk feeding Palestinian radicalization and terror. Even before October 7, we said that UNRWA had become an active supporter of terrorism, not just a malignant actor.

Following UNRWA’s direct involvement and support on October 7, 2023, there is no other reasonable conclusion: the UN Agency has become a foreign terrorist organization according to US law.

For the sake of humanity, destroy it.

Rami Chris Robbins focuses on Middle East issues and foreign policy.