UNRWA Says All Donors Except U.S. Have Returned After Employees Caught Participating in October 7 Atrocities

The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) told reporters on Tuesday that “all the donors have come back” to fund the agency, with the exception of America, following the revelation of evidence that UNRWA employees engaged in atrocities against Israelis on October 7.

UNRWA is the official United Nations agency to address the Palestinian territories and has faced years of accusations of aiding the expansion of terrorist organizations such as Hamas, the group responsible for the October 7 siege, through the indoctrination of children with jihadist textbooks and allowing Hamas to use its allegedly humanitarian facilities as terrorist infrastructure.

In January, the Israeli government revealed that it had obtained evidence that at least 12 UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 slaughter, in which Hamas terrorists killed an estimated 1,200 people, abducted about 250 (116 of which are still missing at press time), and engaged in widespread acts of torture, gang rape, and the desecration of corpses. According to the radical leftist publication the New York Times, one UNRWA employee reportedly helped kidnap an Israeli woman, another participated in the massacre of nearly 100 civilians at Kibbutz Be’eri, and another “handed out ammunition” to terrorists. UNRWA did not deny the reports, instead vowing that it would open a probe and firing the employees in question.

The identification of 12 UNRWA employees engaging directly in the slaughter was a separate scandal to the publication of a trove of text messages from a UNRWA group chat featuring thousands of employees that showed them celebrating on October 7. The non-governmental organization (NGO) U.N. Watch published text messages in which the UNRWA workers celebrated the killing of Jews and prayed for the terrorists.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have also uncovered multiple instances of Hamas using civilian UNRWA facilities for storing weapons and other terrorist activity.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini continued to refer to the evidence that his employees engaged in terrorism as “allegations” on Tuesday, lamenting to reporters that the embarrassment had compromised the agency’s funding. Claiming that UNRWA had “suffered from the absence of attention given to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over the last ten years” before October 7, he claimed that UNRWA struggled even more profoundly to fund itself after the attacks.

Conceding that, after October 7, “we had a good support,” Lazzarini said much of that support evaporated after “the allegations with our 12 staff.” As of this week, however, that money has returned, he stated.

“Since, all the donors have come back, we have some new donors, we have a strong generosity from the public,” Lazzarini confirmed. “But all this does not compensate for the suspension of our main donor, the United States. And even if we would have the United States, we would definitely not be in a sustainable path when it comes to predictable funding for the Agency.”

Lazzarini referred to funding woes as an “existential threat” to UNRWA, as UNRWA is “asked to provide government-like services” such as health care and education.

Following the identification of UNRWA employees among the terrorists engaging in wanton violence on October 7, a host of countries announced a pause in their funding of the agency, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Finland, Japan, Germany, Italy, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands, among others.

The United States – which paused its funding of UNRWA under President Donald Trump in 2018 in recognition of its terrorist affiliations but had restored the funding under current President Joe Biden, also paused the funding. Prior to that pause, Biden’s America had been the top donor to UNRWA in 2022, gifting the agency over $340 million in 2022. Between 2021 and 2023, Biden donated nearly $700 million to UNRWA.

While that funding has not yet returned, other money began flowing following the initial pauses and some pro-Hamas world leaders made open calls for the world to give UNRWA more money. Less than a month after the revelation that UNRWA employees engaged in terrorism, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the pro-Hamas president of Brazil, delivered a screed in Egypt announcing a “new financial contribution to UNRWA” without specifying how much, demanding other countries give more.

In April, the government of Japan announced it would resume funding UNRWA, without directly addressing its links to October 7.

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, who supports Hamas despite engaging in an ongoing genocide against Muslims at home, announced in May that the Communist Party would give UNRWA a meager $3 million and called for other countries to facilitate more funding.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Lazzarini claimed that UNRWA faced “smearing campaigns” around the world and urged sympathetic countries to “politically shield” the Hamas-linked agency from criticism. Lazzarini also emphasized that UNRWA did not want to lose control of educating children in Gaza.

“I also do believe that the day we will start a transition, the day in between, the day leading to the day after, the Agency will have absolutely critical contributions to do,” Lazzarini said, “especially when it comes to the resumption of education and primary healthcare. And we had a full session dedicated to education to look at how this could be rolled out in Gaza.”

UNRWA’s oversight of education in Gaza has been disastrous for the people of Gaza. Independent research agencies have obtained UNRWA-used textbooks for years from Gaza that promote the genocide of Jews and glorify jihadist terrorism.

A 2023 report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) found that UNRWA teachers “regularly call for the murder of Jews, and create teaching materials that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis, and incite antisemitism.”

Lazzarini warned on Tuesday that if “attacks” on UNRWA for its jihadist links result in the United Nations shutting the agency down, “there will also be other entities which will then be exposed,” without elaborating.

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