U.S. House hearing on UNRWA mission after Oct. 7 Hamas allegations

Jan 31, 2024 –

UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer presented UN Watch’s new report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs on January 30th and asked the U.S. to take the lead in dissolving the agency.

For years we have been told that UNRWA and its supporters that the agency performs lifesaving work. That its teachers offer Palestinians students an education that promotes human rights, tolerance, equality and non-discrimination.

Today more than ever before and I mean literally today, in light of the bombshell news reports in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Reuters and elsewhere, we now know this has been a lie. From these and other revelations of the past few days, we know that in Gaza, at least 12 UNRWA employees personally participated in the massacre of October 7th, which involved the murder of 1,200 Israelis along with mass rape, torture and mutilation.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday these intelligence reports are highly credible.

The world also learned yesterday that 1,200 UNRWA employees in Gaza are part of Hamas or Islamic Jihad meaning actual operatives within the political and military organisations and finally an estimated 6,000 UNRWA employees being half of the workforce in Gaza have close family members in these terrorist organisations now. UNRWA’s top donors, the United States, Germany, Britain, Canada and many others have just announced their freezing funds now.

$300 million a year of U.S. Aid

Accordingly, I’ve come here from Geneva to bring before the Congress our case against UNRWA. I’ve come here to ask the Congress of the United States which is the largest donor to UNRWA at over $300 million a year to not just suspend, but to end the funding for good and to take the lead in dissolving an organisation that is riddled with incitement to hate involvement in terrorism and the perpetuation of War. Members of the committee will find all of the evidence that I present here on our website at unwatch.org under the case against UNRWA.

On Friday, Secretary General António Guterres announced that he was “horrified” to learn that members of his UNRWA staff were implicated in terrorism.

Members of the committee I’m here to bear witness and testify that Secretary General Guterres, the head of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini, their predecessors, their senior colleagues could not possibly have been shocked that UNRWA employees are implicated in terrorism.

How UN schools use US tax money to teach Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews

For the past 9 years and chairman Smith knows this very well because he’s been on this issue and he’s invited me to testify we’ve been uncovering publishing and submitting to the UN, to UNRWA, evidence of widespread and systematic incitement to Jihadi terrorism, the praise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, calls to slaughter Jews on the part of UNRWA teachers, school principals and other employees.

These reports range from 10 to 200 Pages e.g. just in November we sent a report on 20 teachers who celebrated the October 7th massacre.

In March together with Impact-se, we identified 133 UNRWA teachers and staff who promoted hate and violence and social media.

In June 2022 we released a report called UNRWA’s teachers of hate. It included a Facebook post by Elham Mansour, an UNRWA teacher as described in the video below.