Witnesses for a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee urged the Biden administration to eliminate funding for the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee aid agency following a temporary pause amid reports that its employees joined Hamas in killing and kidnapping Israelis on Oct. 7.
The panel witnesses testified that the terror group’s massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis — and 33 American citizens — and the kidnapping of more than 240 civilians had long been a looming threat given the UN Relief and Works Agency’s mandate, curricula and staff.
“UNRWA is a horror show that has been decades in the making, co-produced by the United States taxpayer,” Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability in a Tuesday hearing.
“The organization is built from its core mission, its mandate to indoctrinate generation after generation to hate Jews, to destroy Israel, to be ready to manifest themselves as those that will come to wipe the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea,” he said. “Oct. 7 is the logical conclusion of UNRWA.”
Marcus Sheff, the CEO of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), said UNRWA’s “educational infrastructure” was also to blame.
“Textbooks teach that Jews are liars and fraudsters who spread corruption, which will lead to that annihilation; Students are taught about cutting the necks of the enemy, that a fiery massacre of Jews on a bus is celebrated as a barbecue party,” Sheff said.
“One of our reports confirms that at least 100 Hamas members who carried out terror attacks in the past were educated celebrated by being part of the UNRWA system,” he added.
“And the stark truth, given that over half the schools in Gaza are UNRWA-run, is that the majority of the Oct. 7 terrorists are more likely than not to have been UNRWA school graduates.”
Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, which has conducted joint investigations of UNRWA schools with IMPACT-se, called on the Biden administration to “end the funding for good.”
“The very purpose of the agency is to perpetuate the War of 1948, to send the message to Palestinians that the War of 1948 is not over,” Neuer said. “Don’t use cement to build homes, hospitals and schools here in Gaza, use it to build hundreds of miles of terror tunnels to tunnel into Israel, to invade Israel, to go back to what your homes are — that is the message of UNRWA.”
Neuer revealed a new January 2024 report from his organization had also found 3,000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza sharing “messages, photos and videos cheering and celebrating the massacre of Oct. 7.”
“By supporting UNRWA, we keep the conflict alive,” he added. “And I’m here to say if the United States and other governments that fund UNRWA truly care about helping Palestinians and Israelis, it’s time to put an end to this perverse logic. We’re asking Congress to take the lead in dissolving this agency.”
Panel members and witnesses also cited a recent report from the Wall Street Journal that revealed at least 1,200 UNRWA staffers have ties to Hamas — roughly a tenth of its workforce in the Gaza Strip.
Seven of the 12 employees known to have participated in the terror attack have since been identified as UNRWA elementary or high school teachers, according to an Israeli intelligence dossier that formed the bases of the report.
Republican and Democratic agreed that such reports were damning, with Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) describing the evidence as “deeply disturbing” and that it “only underscores the already clear need for reform.”
“I am not here to defend UNRWA, which has many shortcomings well-documented, including here today,” said minority witness Mara Rudman, a national security expert at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
But she qualified that statement by pointing out the agency is “the single-largest employer in Gaza” and there was “no substitute at this time” to provide food, shelter and other humanitarian assistance to refugees.
“US aid to UNRWA is key to meeting basic needs of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, and that’s critical to Israel security and to US security,” Rudman added. “For that aid to resume, we need a framework to assess what has gone so terribly wrong with the agency and whether it can be righted with internal reform or requires a transition of responsibilities to another organization, within or outside the US.”
Subcommittee chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.) said he appreciated that the Biden administration had since paused US funding to UNRWA but added it was “outrageous” the announcement apparently came two days after a disbursement of tens of millions of dollars to the agency.
“The barbaric hatred that we see from Hamas as they butchered, raped Jews on Oct. 7 is in part the result of a Frankensteinian monster of the United Nations agency that the United Nations created,” Mast added. “And the United States remains the top donor of that agency.”
Mast on Tuesday also introduced a House bill to disband the organization.
President Biden’s administration has given more than $730 million to UNRWA, but the US, and Germany, which account for a majority of its annual budget, pulled funding last week, after the Trump administration had cut off the aid in 2018.
UN officials have since called on the countries to reconsider the decision.