Hezbollah has rained down rockets and drones in the months after Oct. 7th with thankfully minute casualties and injuries due to mass evacuations by the IDF in the early days of the conflict.

Destruction of Bank Leumi branch in Kiryat Shmona seen after a Hezbollah attack on Wednesday – thankfully, it was closed due to the security situation and no one was harmed

Credit: 27A of Israel’s Copyright Law pic.twitter.com/OleIEY4uaB

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The post WATCH: Kiryat Shmona’s Bank Leumi branch completely destroyed by Hezbollah attack appeared first on World Israel News.

Bank Leumi’s risk management system received alerts of unusual activity in the UNRWA account. 

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Israel’s Bank Leumi has frozen UNRWA’s account after it failed to provide credible explanations for suspicious transfers, giving rise to concerns the organization may be funding terrorist activities.

This follows a finding that 12 employees of the United Nations Refugee Workers Agency directly participated in the October 7th massacre in Israel that left 1,200 dead, 250 as hostages.

In response, over a dozen countries suspended funding of the UN organization.

Bank Leumi’s risk management system received alerts of unusual activity in the UNRWA account.

The bank asked the UN organization to provide more details of transactions, since there was no concrete information about the precise identities of the senders or recipients or an indication of how the money was being used.

Bank Leumi said they didn’t receive satisfactory explanations from UNRWA and have frozen the organization’s account.

There is a grave concern over these suspicious transactions, especially given the possibility UNRWA may be funding terrorist organizations.

UNRWA’s annual budget is $1.2 billion of which 75% has been suspended after many countries pulled their funding over revelations about UNRWA’s participation in the Hamas massacre.

For years, Israel has said that UNRWA has been involved with educating children in Gaza schools to hate Israel and has been colluding with the Hamas terrorist group.

These allegations are standing up to scrutiny as more details come to light about the extent of UNRWA’s involvement with Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

UNRWA has admitted that it was aware Hamas was storing weapons underneath Gaza schools and that Hamas had built tunnels underneath UNRWA buildings and civilian facilities.

The former head of UNRWA’s union in Gaza was fired in 2017 after Israel found out he had been elected to Hamas’ top political leadership.

The IDF found letters from Hamas’s military wing to Gaza’s education ministry requesting teachers be given the day off for training sessions leading up to October 7th.

A clearer picture is also emerging about the 12 UNRWA employees who participated in the attacks.

Seven were primary or secondary school teachers, including two math teachers, two Arabic language teachers, and one primary school teacher.

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The bank piled numerous difficulties on survivors and heirs looking to get their money back after World War Two, says a parliamentary auditor.

By Raheli Bindman, CTech

An expert opinion submitted to an Israeli court claims that Bank Leumi is hoarding between NIS 172 million (approximately $50 million) and NIS 414 million (approximately $118.5 million) belonging to Holocaust survivors, victims, and their heirs.

On the eve of the Second World War, many European Jews deposited money with the Anglo-Palestine Company, founded in 1902 as a subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust Ltd., renamed Bank Leumi in 1950 following the establishment of Israel.

In 2007, after a parliamentary committee on the rights of Holocaust survivors produced its findings and a legal amendment was passed regarding the assets of Holocaust victims, the bank was accused of holding on to much of that money.

In 2015, the son of two Lithuanian Holocaust survivors filed a NIS 150 million (approximately $38.5 million at the time) class-action suit against the bank, claiming that the bank had returned only 30% or less of the money to the rightful owners. The bank refused to accept expert opinions in the case, leading to the involvement of Israel’s attorney general. In August, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Rahamim Cohen agreed to accept an expert opinion from accountant and auditor Yehudah Barlev, who was the investigative auditor for the parliamentary committee in 2000-2005.

In his recent response, reviewed by Calcalist, Barlev gave the above-mentioned estimate and stated that in order to calculate the exact sum being held by the bank, he would need to get access to the bank’s documentation.

Barlev further stated that the bank unequivocally benefited from the money Jews deposited before the Holocaust, which carried almost no interest, and that the bank used it to achieve a 330% increase in net profit between 1933 and 1950.

Following the Second World War, he added, the bank imposed bureaucratic stumbling blocks on survivors or heirs who wanted to withdraw those funds, or if they returned money, it was only in nominal values caused by high inflation rates.

There is no doubt that Leumi undertook a policy of concealment and made any attempt to find relevant documentation on the issue more difficult, Barlev wrote. Over a period of decades, the bank did not take any action to find the rightful owners of the money it was holding, nor did it take any action to make the matter known publicly, he added.

A spokesperson for Leumi told Calcalist that the bank will study the matter and respond in court.

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