The truth about UNRWA
[First Published: December, 2023]
There is likely nothing as harmful in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the openly corrupt UNRWA, and yet somehow the agency managed to persevere for decades.
UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is the organization that runs schools in both West Bank and Gaza, but explicitly teaches kids to hate Jews and Israel. Many of its staff members are members of terrorist groups such as Hamas. Its facilities are used by Hamas to launch attacks and build terror tunnels. Employees have been accused of celebrating Oct. 7 and even holding some of Hamas’s Israeli hostages in their homes.
To better understand the scale of UNRWA, consider its sister agency, UNHRC - the UN agency for non-Palestinian refugees worldwide. UNHRC has about 18,000 employees for an estimated number of 36.4 million refugees around the world. By contrast, UNRWA has about 30,000 employees for about 5.9 million Palestinians, or about 1.5 times the number of employees, for 1/6 the number of civilians. UNRWA runs 706 schools, employs 19,725 educational staff and reaches 533,000 students across Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank (source). It is also present in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
More than $6Billion has been donated by the United States government to UNRWA over the agency’s lifetime. Over $1billion has been donated to the agency every year by the UN member states. In 2019, the UNRWA's budget was $1.17 billion. That is more than the combined budget of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Criminal Court, and the World Trade Organization for that year.
UNRWA does not submit the names of its staff, contractors or beneficiaries to the U.S. for counterterrorism vetting. There is no accountability in terms of who has access to that money. For 70 years that system was used to fund lavish lifestyles - often of Hamas-linked members (see the next section). Consider average UNRWA annual salaries:
Admin at $60,888
Product at $162,738
Communications at $238,166
Engineering at $142,068
This is in sharp contrast to the $450/month (or $5,400/year) average non-UNRWA salary in Gaza (the majority of UNRWA employees in Gaza are people from Gaza).
Following the early October 7th revelations and the role of UNRWA in them, the Swiss government suspended its donations for the agency. U.S. also halted its UNRWA funding. Such suspensions, however, have been done in both the USA and Switzerland before only to have the decisions reversed and the payments continue shortly after - sometimes in the same year that they were suspended.
Swiss government suspended its donations for the agency. Such suspensions, however, have been done before
It is about time the world comes to terms with what UNRWA is. The amount of money going to the agency has created a perverse incentive to keep the conflict active.
Corrupted from the Beginning
UNRWA was established in 1949 after the end of the Israeli independence war, for the purpose of "finding a solution" for the Palestinian "refugees" who fled during that war. The number of such refugees by UNRWA’s own estimate was 711,000. Like many other UN agencies dealing with refugee problems after World War II, it was intended to be temporary.
A year later, in 1950, a similar agency was created in the form of UNKRA (UN Korean Reconstruction Agency) to help settle nearly 2 million Korean refugees. It, unlike UNRWA, dissolved quickly. Five years after the end of the Korean war, all refugees were settled and the agency’s operations ended.
Two means by which UNRWA has managed to exist for 75 years are 1) giving itself international legitimacy (the agency initially was called REWA, but the Arab nations insisted on the letters UN), and 2) inflating the number of Palestinians it registers as refugees (Dr. Einat Wilf).
While multiple generations of Palestinians have now grown up as locals in the countries of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, UNRWA continues to operate out of those regions, and officially provides benefits to descendants of original refugees in those regions. Descendants living in Europe or the United States similarly are counted as refugees and are eligible for UNRWA benefits.
Despite UNRWA’s official prerogative to stay neutral, the agency is anything but that. In the West Bank, UNRWA is controlled by Palestinian National Authority (PA), whose curriculum there is educating 320,000 students (source). In Gaza, UNRWA is controlled by Hamas.
Consider this June 2021 incident in which one of UNRWA reps described IDF’s strikes as “precise”, to which Hamas reacted by having UNRWA fire that employee.
Or these official letters signed by Hamas telling the Education Administration to release some of the Hamas militants from teaching duties, so that they could participate in military training.
When recently questioned about the possibility of Hamas tunnels under UNRWA buildings, the UN representative flatly denied it. But earlier in 2021 and 2022 UN itself admitted to having found such tunnels:
The relationship with Hamas can be traced all the way back to 2006. When Hamas won Gaza elections, UN issued advice to its agencies not to meet with Hamas political leaders. Despite this advice, the American head of UNRWA said “her agency will not scale back contacts with the new Palestinian government and will meet with Hamas leaders as part of its aid work”.
“Karen Koning AbuZayd said her agency planned to meet this weekend with the Palestinian minister of refugees. The minister, Atef Odwan, is a senior Hamas leader. An UNRWA spokesman said AbuZayd would personally attend the meeting with Odwan. John Ging, head of UNRWA's Gaza operations, met recently with Palestinian Interior Minister Saeed Seyam, Seyam's office said. Seyam is a senior Hamas leader who used to work as a teacher for UNRWA." (source)
Basically, Palestinian terrorist organizations have been exploiting UNRWA for military purposes - keeping their militants on the agency’s employment, and storing weapons and equipment inside the facilities.
Celebrating October 7th Attacks
The first signs of UNRWA direct involvement in October 7th attacks came when a story surfaced that one of the abductees, who was held hostage for almost 50 days, had been held at a house of UNRWA teacher. Soon after, evidence emerged of weapons present in the agency’s facilities. "There is not an UNRWA site, school, mosque, or kindergarten in which we didn't find weapons. None." - Col. Elad Shushan, Head of IDF's 646th Brigade (source)
But since the world media organizations are not known for trusting IDF, the bigger revelations ultimately became known when the world gained access to UNRWA’s internal Telegram chat group, which had >3,000 members (UNRWA teachers).
UN representatives initially denied that any of its employees belonged to the chat group, but UN Watch, an organization focused on monitoring the performance of the United Nations, has inspected the list of members in the group and was able to directly link many with official roles in UNRWA.
Altogether, UN Watch uncovered at least 20 officially registered UNRWA teachers sharing celebratory posts about Hamas massacre post Oct 7th in the Telegram channel; 15 other UNRWA employees were proven to be Hamas members.
15 UNRWA employees were proven to be Hamas members.
UN Watch is currently working to bring its case before the U.S. Congress.
Generations of Children are educated to Hate
“We need to understand that UNRWA is not an organization that provides education, welfare and health care. That's merely the façade,” said Dr. Einat Wilf, co-author of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream has Obstructed the Path to Peace.
A joint publication by United Nations Watch and the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) reported that teachers and schools regularly call for the murder of Jews, and create teaching materials that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis, and incite anti-Semitism.
Textbooks and learning materials taught in UNRWA schools include WW2 Nazi-like antisemitic propaganda written in Arabic.
UNRWA Education: Reform or Regression describes 47 cases of incitement by UNRWA staff through various platforms and materials taught in classrooms in violation of the agency’s stated policies (i.e. zero tolerance for racism, discrimination, or anti-Semitism).
Ultimately, all that teaching translates to corruption of Palestinian youth towards celebrating violence and armed struggle:
Who is Responsible?
IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) defines anti-semitism as:
“[A] certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
It is very telling that officially UN hasn’t adopted IHRA definition of antisemitism. Because if it did, UN would have to acknowledge that by that very definition UNRWA and UN itself are anti-semitic. To quote Hillel Neuer:
3,000 UNRWA teachers belong to chat group that cheered the October 7th massacre.
UN Women deputy chief Sarah Douglas liked 153 tweets attacking Israel.
UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese believes America is controlled by “the Jewish Lobby.”
In order to start somewhere, the following is a very short list of people directly complicit and responsible in keeping this charade going this long:
Thomas White Director of UNRWA Affairs - Gaza
Sarah Hendriks Deputy Executive Director UN Women (not to be confused with another UN Women deputy chief, Sarah Douglas)
Catherine Russell UNICEF Executive Director
Sima Bahous - UN Women Director
Phillippe Lazzarini - UNRWA Commissioner General
Ted Chaiban - Dep. Exec. Director Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations
Kitty Van Der Heijden - Dep. Exec. Director - Partnerships
Leni Stenseth - UN Assistant Secretary General/Commissioner General for UNRWA
Francesca Albanese - UN Rapporteur
Antonio Guterres - UN Secretary General
- Gaza is the prison.
- The UN are the prison wardens.
- Hamas are the prison guards.
- Palestinians are the prisoners now serving their 75th year of their never-ending prison sentence. @Cheryl E
Additional resources about UNRWA can be found here