The Scale of UNRWA Support for Hamas

Controversy is raging over employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) taking part in the 7th October attack upon Israel. Evidence of this has led the UK and 14 other countries to suspend their funding of UNRWA until an investigation is completed.

That has prompted a major campaign by UNRWA and its supporters to restore the flow of aid money. Central to their campaign is a claim that it was only twelve members of staff who were involved and nine of those have already been dismissed from the agency.

However, that claim ignores the role of UNRWA teachers and the long-running controversy over the education that UNRWA provides in its schools. Those schools use textbooks developed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) which have repeatedly been shown to promote hatred of Jews and glorify martyrdom in the struggle against Israel.

Christian Friends of Israel UK joined the Zionist Federation in March 2020 to lobby the UK Parliament about the use of UK aid money to support this corrupt UNRWA education system. Particularly troubling on that day was one MP’s comment that concern over the PA’s education curriculum was raised in Parliament as long ago as 2001, and there had been no improvement in it.

Despite promises of reform, recent reviews of the PA curriculum have shown the same troubling content. In addition, social media posts on the Telegram platform have revealed that many UNRWA teachers support Hamas. They celebrated its success on 7th October and glorified the “education” that the terrorists had received as children.

This continued misuse of international aid money has gone on far too long and has severely damaged the prospects for peace in the Middle East. Whilst there is clearly a great need for humanitarian aid to be supplied to the ordinary citizens of Gaza, UNRWA is not the right agency to deliver it. UNRWA’s close ties to Hamas may explain why so much aid has failed to reach the people who need it most.

Update 31st January 2024

Here is UN Watch`s presentation to the US Congress hearing on UNRWA:

"This is not a problem of a few bad apples, it`s rotten to the core.
We`ve talked about incitement we`ve talked about acts of actual violence
and finally let`s get to the core problem."