A United Nations agency handling Palestinian aid ought to be closed down for good due to its long-standing connections to the terrorist group Hamas, a former Israeli lawmaker testified.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency has faced renewed scrutiny from Congress over its entrenched terrorism ties after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack against the Jewish state of Israel, when more than 1,200 people were killed. Dr. Einat Wilf, who served in the Israeli Knesset for the Labor and Independence parties, said earlier this month before the assembly’s foreign policy and information committee that UNRWA’s presence in Gaza paved the way for the massacre last year, All Israel News reported on Wednesday.
“UNRWA was taken over by the Arab refugees, to turn into a Palestinian organization for their benefit,” Wilf, co-author of the book War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, testified. “Hamas is a product of today’s UNRWA, but the perpetrators of the massacre of [Israeli] athletes in Munich [in 1974] were also children of the camps, they were also the product of UNRWA schools.”
Wilf’s comments come as UNRWA is under the spotlight, particularly because of its staff celebrating and justifying the Oct. 7 massacre, as well as a report that a U.N. teacher kept an Israeli hostage taken on Oct. 7 “for almost 50 days in the attic of a house.” Concerns about the U.N. agency’s ties to terrorism have for decades dogged UNRWA, which has received at least $730 million in U.S. taxpayer funds during the Biden administration — despite former President Donald Trump cutting off funds to UNRWA in 2018 over concerns about antisemitism and terrorism ties.
UNRWA is led by Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, who was appointed by the U.N. in 2020 and was previously deputy U.N. special coordinator and resident and humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon.
UNRWA was originally created in 1949, one year after Israel’s independence, “to carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestine refugees.” However, 75 years later, the U.N. agency is often accused by foreign policy experts of boosting Hamas, which controls Gaza. UNRWA “provides cover for terrorist activity and perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.
UNRWA’s schools “radicalize Palestinian children,” the think tank said in a report. Meanwhile, the U.N. agency has been investigated by lawmakers due to Hamas tunnels discovered in close proximity to UNRWA schools, the Washington Examiner reported.
Wilf testified this month that UNRWA has raised generations of Palestinians who believe they have a religious mission of returning to the “lost paradise” and seek to “free Palestine” at all costs — leading to acts of terrorism.
UNRWA has two goals, according to Wilf.
“First, keep a question mark over the Jewish state until there is a return,” the ex-lawmaker said. “That is the only thing that ends the refugee status, the end of Israel. So this is an organization that keeps the conflict alive generation after generation until the Jews don’t have a state anymore.”
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“The second goal that became very clear in the wake of Oct. 7, it’s to free up the murderers to be able to murder Israelis,” she continued.
Rather than replacing the U.N. agency, Wilf testified that the agency simply needs to go.
“We need to make clear that the responsibility is on [the Palestinians], and we don’t need to help them or transfer money to them, and of course not find a replacement for UNRWA,” she said.
