The Prime Minister’s Office slammed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees a day after Israel’s Foreign Ministry revealed that the aid agency is employing hundreds of terrorists.
The Foreign Ministry attached a list of the names and ID numbers of 108 UNRWA employees who are also Hamas terrorists in a letter to UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini on Wednesday.
It was a “small fraction” of a much larger list including hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) members who also worked for UNRWA, the letter said. The wider list could not be released due to security considerations.
“Israel has told donor countries that hundreds more of UNRWA’s 13,000 local staff are active Hamas terrorists, including school teachers,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer told press on Thursday following the revelations.
“We have provided much evidence that UNRWA works hand-in-hand with Hamas,” he said, referring to the discovery of a Hamas server farm underneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, the UNRWA employees who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre and the Hamas tunnels underneath UNRWA schools, among other examples.
“We gave this evidence again and again to UNRWA. Israel also sent the names to countries that fund UNRWA. Many like the U.S. and the U.K. froze their funding to UNRWA,” he said.
Mencer indicated that UNRWA continues to deny its many connections to Hamas, noting that on Wednesday, Sam Rose, UNRWA’s director of planning, denied to BBC’s Newshour any evidence his organization supported Hamas.
“Our message to media is when using Sam Rose as your on-the-ground expert, please introduce him as ‘Sam Rose, spokesman for Hamas,’” Mencer said.
Mencer stressed that the days of UNRWA in Gaza are numbered.
“UNRWA are useless at aid distribution. UNRWA are useless at education, except glorifying suicide bombers and encouraging Jew-killing, and Israel sees no role whatsoever for UNRWA in Gaza after this war ends,” he said.