Watchdog finds UNRWA workers praised Hamas massacres in internal Telegram channel
UN Watch probe uncovers messages by UN-employed teachers, urges United Nations to recognize that the relief agency incites to terror
An investigation by the UN Watch monitor group found that United Nations workers in Gaza used an internal Telegram channel, which was meant to facilitate their work, to praise the Hamas massacres on October 7.
The probe, released Wednesday, found that many of the workers at the United Nations Relief Works Agency — the UN body for Palestinian refugees — explicitly praised the onslaught, in which some 3,000 terrorists crossed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, most of them civilians.
“This is the motherlode of UNRWA teachers’ incitement to jihadi terrorism,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the prominent pro-Israel monitor UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the world body.
He said the Telegram channel showed UNRWA teachers celebrating the Hamas massacre shortly after it began, praising the perpetrators as “heroes,” and glorifying the “education” the terrorists received. He said channel members shared photos of dead or captured Israelis and urged the execution of hostages.
The report provided examples, including UNRWA teacher Waseem Ula who shared a post of a suicide bomb vest wired with explosives, with the caption: “Wait, sons of Judaism.”
The Telegram channel is used to assist the teachers and contains UNRWA staff names, ID numbers, schedules, and curriculum materials, UN Watch said.
“In addition, UNRWA teachers regularly share videos, photos and messages inciting to Jihadi terrorism, and openly celebrating the Hamas massacre and rape of civilians,” it accused.
Meet UNRWA teacher Waseem Ula. He runs a chat for 3,000 UNRWA teachers: https://t.co/0ECeat8qr2 His username: “Handsome” (أ. وسيم).
Ula posts info on salaries from UNRWA Gaza education chief Sami Abu Kamil.
He also calls to kill Israelis, and glorifies the Oct. 7th massacre. ???? pic.twitter.com/zK8vahbmW3
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) January 10, 2024
Another UNRWA teacher, Abdallah Mehjez, explicitly called on civilians not to heed IDF evacuation orders and remain as human shields for Hamas.
In another example cited, UNRWA teacher Shatha Husam Al Nawajha responded to a message from a colleague who wrote “They breastfed jihad with their mothers’ milk,” by adding “May Allah grant them victory.”
“All these acts are gross violations of the UN Code of Conduct,” Neuer said in a post to X. “We call on the UN and Member States to recognize that UNRWA is infested with incitement to terror.”
In November, UN Watch published a lengthy report on UNWRA teachers celebrating the Hamas massacres under the title “UNRWA: Hate Starts Here.”
Israel responded to the Hamas attack with a military campaign to destroy Hamas, remove it from power in Gaza, and free the hostages of whom over 130 remain in captivity.
Last month, Channel 12 reported that Israel is hoping to push UNRWA out of Gaza once the war is over.
According to the report, a high-level, classified Foreign Ministry document recommends three stages to the move. The first involves a comprehensive report on alleged UNRWA cooperation with Hamas, which rules Gaza, and the entanglement of the UN body, which provides welfare and humanitarian services for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars and their descendants, with the terror group.
The next stage would see reduced UNRWA operations in the Palestinian enclave, amid a search for a different organization to provide education and welfare services. In the third stage, according to the report, all of UNRWA’s duties would be transferred to the body governing Gaza following the war.
