23% of UNRWA Men Tied to Hamas

49% also had close relatives who also had official ties to the militant groups, especially Hamas.

As I wrote ten years ago..

“The UNRWA’s Gaza staff has its own union. In the 2012 election, a pro-Hamas bloc won the support of most of the union with 25 out of 27 seats on a union board.

“I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll,” a former UNRWA Commissioner General said, “and I don’t see that as a crime.”

When there was talk of reforming the UNRWA by removing Hamas members from its ranks, the editor of a Hamas paper wrote that, “Laying off the agency employees because of their political affiliation means laying off all the employees of the aid agency, because…they are all members of the ‘resistance,’ in its various forms.”

So if anything these numbers out of Israel probably underestimate the real ties to Hamas.

Two officials familiar with the intelligence said the Unrwa employees considered to have ties with militant groups were deemed to be “operatives,” indicating they took active part in the organization’s military or political framework. The report said 23% of Unrwa’s male employees had ties to Hamas, a higher percentage than the average of 15% for adult males in Gaza, indicating a higher politicization of the agency than the population at large.

Nearly half of all Unrwa employees—an estimated 49%—also had close relatives who also had official ties to the militant groups, especially Hamas, the intelligence reports said.

Again. Not surprising. This is just how it works.

Any charity or aid group operating in a terrorist area is going to provide money and employment to the terrorists. Those are the only conditions on which it will be allowed to operate. (That means if you’re donating money to any charity doing work in Yemen, Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, etc, you’re funding terrorists. It doesn’t matter if the group is UN, Christian, Jewish, internationally famous, they’re paying and employing terrorists. Or they wouldn’t be allowed to operate on the ground.)

The Taliban were making more money from our foreign aid than from anything else. They still are.

UNRWA is Hamas because it has to be. Yes, it provides benefits by handling the social services Hamas doesn’t want to do. But there’s no way that it would ever be allowed to operate without having a payroll full of Hamas members.

This is the structural issue with letting Islamic terrorists control Gaza or anywhere else.

Meet some of the UNRWA teachers.

A math teacher belonging to Hamas was close enough to a female hostage in Gaza that he took a picture of her. Another teacher was carrying an antitank missile the night before the invasion.

One Unrwa employee set up an operations room for Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Oct. 8, the day after the attack. Three other employees, including another Arabic teacher at an Unrwa school, received a text from Hamas to arm themselves at a staging area close to the border the night before the attack. It was unclear whether they went.

A different elementary school teacher did cross into Israel and went to Reim, a district where a kibbutz, an army base and a music festival were attacked.

And yes, UNRWA aid is going to Hamas.

Since Oct. 7, Hamas has stolen more than $1 million worth of Unrwa supplies, including fuel and trucks, according to the intelligence report. The intelligence assessment alleges that Hamas operatives are so deeply enmeshed within the Unrwa aid-delivery enterprise as to coordinate transfers for the organization.

Funding UNRWA funds Hamas.