Recent reports suggest that at least 12 UNRWA staff participated in the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel in October.
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer is demanding information related to the Biden administration’s 2021 decision to restore U.S. funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), amid reports that at least 12 UNRWA staff participated in the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel in October.
Comer sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday saying the new reporting “warrants greater scrutiny of the Biden administration’s decision in April 2021 to partner with the agency.”
The U.S. and at least eleven other countries have suspended payments to UNRWA while the U.N. investigates reports that the UNWRA include participation in the kidnapping of Israelis and foreign nationals visiting or residing in Israel, procuring weapons or coordinating logistics for Hamas, and participating in the murder of civilians at a kibbutz.
Additional reports suggest a Hamas compound is located under a UNRWA building in Gaza City.
The Trump administration previously cut off funding to the agency in 2018 after it found the organization’s operation was “irredeemably flawed.” Then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley led the effort to end the use of taxpayer dollars to fund the organization’s spread of antisemitic hate and terror in the region. The U.S. first froze one-third of the money appropriated for UNRWA in early 2018. After the agency failed to reform, the U.S. axed all its funding months later.
Now, Comer notes in his letter that Israeli intelligence estimates roughly 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff has links to Hamas to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, while 23 percent of its male employees have ties to Hamas. Nearly half of all its employees have close relatives with official ties to militant groups.
“Israeli intelligence further links cell phone data to six UNRWA staff in Israel on October 7, 2023, and one at a kibbutz where ninety seven people were murdered. Other UNRWA staff surveilled in Gaza discussed their involvement in the attacks, while others received text messages ordering them to gather weapons and prepare to attack,” Comer writes in the letter, obtained exclusively by National Review.
“In addition to participating in the terrorist attacks, the dossier reveals that UNRWA employees held hostages captive, agency vehicles were used to ferry terrorists across Israel’s border, weapons for Hamas have been stored in agency buildings, Hamas tunnels run under UNRWA facilities, and UNRWA staff tried to conceal Hamas’ theft of fuel, medicine, and humanitarian aid,” he adds.
But he notes “suspicions that UNRWA staff have ties to Hamas and other terror groups have existed for years,” even before the Biden administration chose to reinstate funding in 2021.
In 2015, agency staff posted on social-media encouraging the stabbing of Israelis and promoting sermons encouraging other violence against Israelis and in 2017, the head of UNRWA’s union in Gaza was fired after he was found to be a member of Hamas’ leadership.
A main component in the Trump administration’s decision to halt funding to the UNRWA was the organization’s use of its classrooms to promote antisemitism and martyrdom, including through the use of the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum, despite the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination having found that the textbooks “[f]uel hatred and may incite Violence.”
UNRWA’s own teaching materials are not without controversy either: last year, UNRWA posted exam lessons that taught students that Al-Aqsa mosque must be “liberated.”
“All of these allegations, many of which predate the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, call into question whether the Biden Administration adequately reviewed its decision to renew funding to UNRWA,” Comer writes.
He gives the administration a March 1 deadline to turn over documents related to its decision to restore the funding. The request covers all documents and communications from January 2021 to present between or among any State Department official and the White House relating to the decision and all documents or communications detailing what safeguards are in place to prevent U.S. aid designated for UNRWA from funding or providing material support for terrorists or terrorist organizations.
Finally, Comer requests all documents and communications related to or discussing the diversion of UNRWA funds or resources by Hamas or any other foreign terrorist organization.