More than 100 victims of the Hamas attack, including the former hostage, Ditza Heiman, are suing UNRWA.
More than 100 victims of the Hamas attack, including the former hostage, Ditza Heiman, are suing UNRWA.
A n 84-year-old Israeli woman held hostage and deprived of her diabetes medicine allegedly by a U.N. teacher in Gaza broke her silence about the ordeal today, months after officials with the teacher’s agency tried to kill a story about its connection to the 10/7 attacks.
Her testimony was included in a landmark lawsuit filed this morning in federal court in the Southern District of New York against the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. She’s among a group of more than 100 victims of the October 7 terrorist attacks — including other former hostages, the wounded, families of the dead, and hostage families — suing UNRWA and several of its current and former leaders.
The woman, Ditza Heiman, told the story of her abduction from the Nir Oz kibbutz and 53 days in Hamas captivity under the watch of an UNRWA teacher, until her release as part of a temporary cease-fire deal last year.
“UNRWA knew it was hiring terrorists and that its funds and facilities were being used for violence, but UNRWA’s complicity in paying and empowering terrorists to teach and radicalize a generation of Gaza’s children was perhaps even more evil and tragic,” Heiman said in a press release that announced the lawsuit. Several of her children and siblings are also plaintiffs in the case.
The suit alleges that Heiman was deprived of medications that she takes to treat diabetes, thyroid problems, and venous inflammation. It says that she was hospitalized upon her release and “is still not completely stabilized to this day.”
“The Heiman Family suffered immense injuries that are ongoing and permanent.”
The agency has become the public face of the international organization’s extensive ties to the terrorist group. Earlier this year, UNRWA fired several staff members after Israel presented evidence that they were directly involved in carrying out the October 7 massacre. And throughout the Gaza campaign, the Israel Defense Forces has uncovered evidence that Hamas used UNRWA facilities to store weapons and that the terrorist group operated tunnels and even a high-tech command center under at least one of the agency’s Gaza facilities.
The lawsuit was filed under the Torture Victim Protection Act and a law that allows foreign plaintiffs to bring civil cases in federal court for violations of international law. It’s not clear how far the lawsuit will go, considering that the defendants are a U.N. agency and foreign nationals who have likely been granted certain legal immunities in connection with their work for the U.N.
But the lawsuit raises new allegations against the agency, including that it ran a “billon-dollar money-laundering operation” that fueled Hamas’s operations by allowing the terrorist group to skim up to 20 percent in money-changing fees off aid funds that the agency disbursed in Gaza.
UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told National Review that while the agency is aware of reports about the lawsuit, “it has not been served with any legal process and, therefore, is not in a position to comment at this time.”
The description of Heiman’s experience contained in the lawsuit states that she was captured by terrorists in Nir Oz and driven to Gaza. She “could see other terrorists riding bikes all around them. It looked like a mob in every direction,” the filing states.
When they arrived in Gaza, people cheered, and the terrorists made her put on a traditional jellabiya dress. Hearing Hamas anthems after she was taken to a house “haunts her to this day,” the suit says.
She was taken to a different house, still clad in a jellabiya, the next day. Along the way, she passed buildings that featured UNRWA’s logo.
Upon her arrival at another apartment, where she spent the rest of her time as a hostage, Heiman noticed a notebook in the kitchen with the agency’s logo. At another point, the owner of the apartment told her that he was a teacher at a boys’ school run by UNRWA.
The lawsuit also said that Heiman was initially given food three times a day but that that “was torturously reduced to two times a day, and eventually to once a day.” She was also “often given snacks that had the UNRWA label on the package.”
Heiman’s experience loosely resembles that of an anonymous hostage, as reported last year by Almog Boker, a journalist with Israel’s Channel 13 News. “One of the abductees, held for nearly 50 days in an attic, reveals he was held by a UNRA teacher — a father of ten children,” Boker wrote, referring to UNRWA, presumably after interviewing a hostage released in November. It’s not clear if this referred to Heiman or a different hostage held by Hamas.
After Boker posted that to X, UNRWA issued an unusual statement requesting that Boker “immediately deletes the post,” asserting that he had not provided enough substantiating information. It said that Boker’s post “may amount to misinformation.” Boker subsequently said that he stands by his reporting.
Senator Marsha Blackburn wrote to UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini demanding answers last year, citing Boker’s reporting.”UNRWA has a long history of antisemitic behavior,” she said in a statement to NR. Referring to the recent indications that UNRWA staffers took part in October 7 and the U.N.’s subsequent move to fire several agency staffers, she added: “Despite this admission, the UN has refused to hold the UNRWA fully accountable for propping up Hamas, and I’ve introduced legislation that would halt all funding for the UNRWA to ensure the U.S. government is not financing terrorism.”