House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer is once again demanding information related to the Biden administration’s decision to restore U.S. funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
Comer first sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in February amid reports that at least 12 UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel. The Kentucky Republican said at the time that the reporting “warrants greater scrutiny of the Biden administration’s decision in April 2021 to partner with the agency.”
Now, Comer says the department’s May 31 response to that letter was “inadequate” and does not fully address the committee’s concerns.
“As we wrote previously, the Committee is concerned by the Biden Administration’s decision to renew funding for UNRWA. The underlying concerns have not changed,” Comer writes in the new letter to Blinken, obtained exclusively by National Review.
Comer reiterated his request for documents and information and goes on to request a transcribed interview with assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Julieta Valls Noyes, who signed off on the framework funding agreement with UNRWA.
The U.S. and at least eleven other countries have suspended payments to UNRWA while the U.N. investigates reports that the UNRWA 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.
Comer noted in February 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 wrote at the time.
“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 added.
But he noted “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.”
“Many of these allegations and the pattern of extremism and antisemitism from UNRWA teachers and staff date back a decade. Yet, the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration signed a Framework for Cooperation with UNRWA in May 2023,” Comer wrote in his letter on Tuesday. That framework fails to provide any evidence that the State Department took steps to ensure accountability for use of funds sent to the organization, Comer argues.
“Importantly, the State Department still has not explained why it decided to renew funding to UNRWA. The list of safeguards and oversight mechanisms provided in your response only underscores the Committee’s initial concerns,” he adds.
Comer gives the State Department a June 25 deadline to respond to its request for additional information.
The committee seeks 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.