Hamas and UNRWA

UN fires additional staffers linked to possible involvement in Oct. 7 attack on Israel

[...] UNRWA previously fired 12 staffers and put seven staffers on administrative leave without pay over the claims. The group of nine staffers the U.N. announced it had fired Monday includes some from each group, said Juliette Touma, communications director for UNRWA. The U.N. did not clarify how many have now been fired from the agency in total ...

UN says 9 UNRWA employees ‘may have been involved’ in Oct 7 attack, have been fired

[...] Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan branded the OIOS investigation “a disgrace,” noting that it had focused only on 19 UNRWA employees, despite Israel having provided the UN with “detailed information” about 100 UNRWA employees that Erdan said were Hamas members ....

“The UN investigation, which focused solely on 19 UNRWA employees, is a disgrace!” said Erdan following the UN announcement on Monday ....

“Israel provided the UN with detailed information regarding over 100 UNRWA employees who were direct members of the terrorist organization Hamas,” he said. “Despite Israel’s extensive cooperation with, and provision of information to, the UN, its investigation’s conclusions are yet another disgrace.” ....

When I see media reports of Israel striking an UNRWA school in Gaza, I am reminded not only that the school is not currently functional and full of children, but also that UNRWA schools are sites used by Hamas and other terrorist groups for staging attacks on Israeli forces.

The US Congress passed legislation that keeps our country from contributing to UNRWA until next year, but many other countries are still funding what is essentially a terrorist frornt.

And this isn't a new thing. Here's a bit from The Washington Post and from Reuters from 2014 ...

The controversial U.N. agency that found rockets in its Gaza schools

[...] Critics from Israeli officials to Middle East experts to local analysts say the U.N. agency, which is internationally funded, serves a one-sided Palestinian narrative that is biased, implicitly anti-Israel and exhaustively emotional. And fueling even greater criticism, it recently discovered rocket caches of unknown provenance in three of its schools.

Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Ron Prosor, has called for spokesman Gunness’s suspension, according to the Algemeiner, a U.S.-based Jewish newspaper. Among other complaints, he accused Gunness of “an ongoing pattern of anti-Israel bias,” adding: “He has abused his position to promote incitement against Israel and present a one-sided view of reality…. UNRWA staff members have repeatedly failed to abide by the UN’s principles of neutrality and impartiality.”...

U.N. chief alarmed as rockets found in Gaza school go missing

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm on Wednesday that 20 rockets found hidden in a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip had gone missing and directed the world body to deploy experts to deal with the situation.

The main U.N. agency in Gaza, UNRWA, found the rockets in one of its vacant schools a week ago. It found a second batch in a vacant school on Tuesday, but said in a statement that because staff were withdrawn quickly, they were "unable to confirm the precise number."

In both cases UNRWA said it "informed the relevant parties," but did not identify who had been contacted. Islamist militant group Hamas is the dominant group in the coastal enclave and has been fighting with Israeli troops for the past two weeks ...