UNRWA employees took part in massacres, kidnapped Israeli woman

Of the twelve named by Israel, at least one directly participated in the massacres, another kidnapped a woman while a third stole an Israeli soldier’s body; two are dead.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Some details about the UNRWA employees who participated in the Hamas invasion of Israel were revealed Monday in a report by The New York Times (NYT).

Of the twelve men whose names and positions in the UN’s Palestinian refugee aid agency were listed in an intelligence dossier Jerusalem provided to the White House Friday, one had directly participated in the massacre of residents in one of the kibbutzim on the Gazan border.

The Palestinian terrorists slaughtered over 1,200 people in over 20 communities on October 7, 2023, including the elderly and infants, burning whole families alive and raping untold numbers of women before killing them in a series of war crimes that have been meticulously documented over the last three and a half months.

Seven of those named were teachers in UNRWA schools that are the main sources of education in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier this month, UN Watch published that it had found that the internal Telegram channel used by 3,000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza was “replete with posts” celebrating the slaughter starting “minutes after it began.”

According to the dossier that the NYT obtained, a school counselor in Khan Younis together with his son abducted a woman during the rampage, one of the approximately 250 hostages the terrorists took back into Gaza on what Israelis call “the black Sabbath.”

A social worker is listed as helping to abduct the body of an Israeli soldier, handing out ammunition and “coordinating vehicles on the day of the attack,” the report said.

Others were accused of helping Hamas in the days following the attack, which led Israel to declare all-out war against the terror organization that has ruled the Gaza Strip for the last 18 years.

Ten in all were designated as Hamas members, and one as belonging to the much smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, a direct Iranian proxy that also participated in the invasion.

Cellphones played a large role in incriminating the employees.

The Israeli file said that six of the men’s movements in Israel were tracked through their cellphones.

Others’ phones were tapped into and they were heard talking about what they had done, while still others got an SMS telling them to report to gathering areas just prior to the attack.

One, the Israelis wrote, was ordered to bring along the rocket-propelled grenades he had been keeping in his home.

UN Secretary General António Guterres, who said he was “horrified by these accusations,” noted that two of the men were already dead, and nine had been immediately fired, even though the internal investigation on the Israeli charges had barely begun.

The U.S. had found the evidence in the dossier sufficiently convincing to immediately suspend aid to UNRWA, a significant blow considering that Washington provides the largest chunk by far of the agency’s budget.

So far, ten other countries have joined the American move: Australia, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the UK.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz has called on other UN members to suspend their aid as well, posting on X that “We have been warning for years: UNRWA perpetuates the ‘refugee problem,’ distances peace and serves as a civilian arm of Hamas.” Considering the latest evidence, he wrote, the agency’s leadership “should be dismissed and thoroughly investigated for their knowledge of these activities,” and argued that UNRWA could have no future role in Gaza after the war.

António GuterresHamas atrocitiesHamas terroristsIsrael-Hamas warUNRWA