UN employees are said to have helped Hamas

The New York Times has reported previously unknown details about the alleged involvement of employees of the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees in the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th. A UNRWA employee was involved in the kidnapping of a woman from Israel, another was handing out ammunition, and a third was involved in a massacre in a kibbutz in which 97 people died, the newspaper reported on Sunday (local time) with reference to a corresponding Israeli dossier that is available to the US government.

In total, the dossier contains allegations against twelve UNRWA employees. More than half of them were working as teachers or in other functions at UN aid agency schools on October 7th. Of the twelve accused, ten are members of the terrorist organization Hamas. The employees are accused of having helped Hamas in the attacks on October 7th or of supporting them in the days afterwards. There is currently no confirmation of the allegations by the US government, wrote the New York Times. But Washington considers them credible.

Germany and other countries are stopping payments

The serious allegations against twelve of several thousand UNRWA employees caused outrage around the world. After Israel provided the aid organization with relevant information, numerous Western countries temporarily stopped their payments to the aid organization, including the USA , Germany, Great Britain and France . According to its own information, the federal government supported the UN relief organization with more than 200 million euros in 2023 alone. Here you can read more about it.

According to the dossier now evaluated by the New York Times, the allegations are based on information from the Israeli secret service. Among other things, he traced the movements of six UNRWA employees within Israel on October 7th using their phones. Others had telephone conversations monitored in which they discussed their involvement in the Hamas attack. One person was asked by text message to bring rocket-propelled grenades that had been stored in his house.

UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza

In the massacre on October 7, terrorists from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian groups murdered more than 1,200 people in Israel. More than 130 Israeli hostages are still believed to be held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including children and women. Israel responded with massive air strikes and a ground offensive. According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, more than 26,000 people were killed.

The United Nations founded UNRWA in 1949 to help Palestinian refugees. The Palestinians who fled or were expelled in 1948 and their descendants are entitled to their services. According to the organization, there are now around 5.9 million people. UNRWA has more than 30,000 employees, most of them Palestinian. The aid organization employs around 13,000 people in the Gaza Strip alone. It also operates in Jordan and Lebanon , among other countries .

Repeated accusations of ideological proximity to Hamas

The organization provides basic services such as education and healthcare to Palestinian refugees. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, it has also provided shelter for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people and provided humanitarian aid.

However, the organization is repeatedly accused of having ideological proximity to Hamas. An investigation showed, for example, that textbooks at UNRWA schools denied Israel’s right to exist. School teachers were also noticed with anti-Semitic posts on social networks. The Simon Wiesenthal Center subsequently ranked UNRWA fifth in the top ten global anti-Semitism in 2018.