JERUSALEM – The new year has brought no respite for the United Nations and its various agencies – especially UNRWA – with regard to the hits, which keep coming, emphasizing its deep ties with Islamist terrorist organizations, according to a recently published report by U.N. Watch.
The explosive report reveals years of coordination and close collaboration between Islamists and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, up to and including the collusion of at least its two most recent commissioners-general – current head Phillippe Lazzarini, and previous chief Pierre Krähenbühl, who held the role from 2014-2019.
Our report in NY Post: “We are calling on the new Trump administration to impose crippling sanctions on terrorist-infested UNRWA and its leaders, and to pursue legal action to hold them accountable in a court of law for enabling crimes against humanity.” https://t.co/TDa8AomTxs https://t.co/NPNU5VSjjs pic.twitter.com/68fnxX1wgh
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) January 7, 2025
The report starts strongly, arguing how despite its claims to be a humanitarian agency, UNRWA “has forged an unholy alliance with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations.” It continues that this relationship has allowed Hamas unprecedented influence in the policies and practices of a “UN agency with 30,000 employees, and a $1.5 billion annual budget that is funded primarily by Western states.” Indeed, UNRWA is the largest of all the U.N. agencies.
U.N. Watch called for UNRWA’s dismantlement, describing the organization as “a conduit for terrorism and a facilitator of violence in the Middle East.” “UNRWA’s failure to maintain neutrality, combined with its susceptibility to influence from terrorist groups, undermines its credibility as a humanitarian agency and perpetuates conflict in the region,” the group said. “It is time for donors to reconsider their support, dismantle the Agency, and seek alternative frameworks to provide effective aid to Palestinians in need.”
And U.N. Watch’s report was not mere speculation, it also brought the receipts. It listed dozens of instances – with images obtained from open sources – of senior UNRWA officials meeting with terrorist leaders.
Examples included Lazzarini meeting with Fathi al-Sharif, a teachers’ union chief and Hamas leader in Beirut. He had for years openly glorified Hamas terrorist attacks, including on his personal Facebook page. It was only after an unnamed government protested to UNRWA about al-Sharif’s activities did the U.N. body suspend him. Hamas and other terrorist organizations immediately shut down UNRWA in Lebanon, prompting Lazzarini to fly to Beirut in June 2024 to smooth out the situation. The IDF eliminated al-Sharif in a missile strike on Sept. 30.
Krähenbühl, who was forced to step down from his UNRWA position in 2019 following a corruption and sexual abuse scandal – and who was absurdly appointed to head up the International Red Cross in 2024 (are you seeing a pattern yet?) – met with terrorist leaders from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in February 2017, where he emphasized the “spirit of partnership” between them and UNRWA.
In June 2021, former deputy commissioner-general Leni Stenseth went cap-in-hand to Gaza to kiss the ring of Oct. 7 terrorist mastermind and Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar. Hamas had been angry with UNRWA after its then Gaza Director Matthias Schmale, an ardent supporter of the Palestinian narrative, unwittingly admitted in a TV interview that Israeli strikes on Hamas, during the May 2021 war, were “very precise.” While supporters of Israel routinely shared the footage, Hamas was furious, declaring Schmale persona non grata in the Strip. Stenseth, who is now director-general of Norway’s foreign ministry – and it cannot be a coincidence this is the nation which most ardently supports the Palestinian cause – threw Schmale under the bus calling his interview “indefensible.”
“People need to understand that UNRWA isn’t the firefighter, it’s the arsonist. The U.S. and other Western nations who have given billions to UNRWA need to wake up.. Your money is being used to employ terrorists, indoctrinate children, and build the infrastructure of hate and violence. The U.S. alone has given more than $1 billion to UNRWA over the past four years. This is a betrayal of your taxpayers and your values,” Neuer said.
The report paints a picture of a symbiotic relationship, and one in which UNRWA officials cannot bend over backward enough to facilitate the whims and wishes of Gaza’s various terrorist organizations. The report concludes, “While it was created by the United Nations and has ‘U.N.’ initials in its title, it is essentially a Palestinian-run organization whose purpose is to perpetuate Palestinians as refugees with the aim to one day dismantle Israel.”
UNRWA is the only refugee agency dedicated to solely one people, the Palestinians. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is responsible for all the others, and yet only has a workforce around two-thirds that of UNRWA. Indeed, the report accuses UNRWA of perpetuating and enshrining the idea of the “right of return,” which does not apply to any other group of refugees on the planet. Also, UNRWA schools point to the example of Oct. 7 as how their aims can be achieved by “resistance.”
And there is yet another twist in the tale. On Tuesday, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters in a briefing, that the world body’s officials “appreciate information being given to us directly, instead of done through the media.” This take, albeit extraordinary, is unsurprising.
UN “Will Not Respond” to Investigation Exposing Agency’s Ties to Islamic Terror Groups
“The audacity of the UN is staggering,” said Hillel Neuer. “It’s a shameful abdication of accountability, especially given the serious nature of the allegations.”https://t.co/iFN3wIc7yv
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) January 9, 2025
Neuer, who personally tried to meet with Lazzarini at least twice while the latter was in Europe last summer, and hand over evidence of UNRWA’s terrorist ties, was surgical in his dismantlement of the U.N. position. “The audacity of the U.N. in refusing to respond to our detailed report, while dismissing our efforts to engage directly, is staggering… It’s a shameful abdication of accountability, especially given the serious nature of the allegations.”
