Hillel Neuer, center, presenting UN Watch’s latest report to Germany’s Bundestag, Sept. 17, 2025
UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer traveled to Berlin last month to release the organization’s 200-page report, Schools in the Grip of Terror, uncovering how for decades Hamas terror chiefs controlled UNRWA’s education system. Germany is the top funder of UNRWA, at some $200 million per year.
At the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, Neuer presented new evidence that Hamas terror chiefs simultaneously served as UNRWA school principals, union leaders, and senior educators — while publicly glorifying terrorism, recruiting children into militant activity, and blocking Holocaust education.
German lawmakers were briefed on how the UN’s top officials were aware of Hamas’s control over its schools yet failed to act.
Neuer’s visit and the UN Watch revelations were reported by Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Berliner Morgenpost, Juedische Rundschau, Hamburger Abendblatt, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Thueringer Allgemeine, Braunschweiger Zeiting, Westfalische Rundschau, Harz Kurier, OstThuringer Zeitung, and Neue Ruhr Zeitung.
Read UN Watch’s full report exposing UNRWA here.
UN Watch in Neue Zürcher Zeitung : “UNRWA’s entire local management is involved with Hamas”
On the eve of his appearance before the German Parliament, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung interviewed Hillel Neuer on UN Watch’s latest report exposing UNRWA. Following are highlights.
NZZ: Mr. Neuer, your report is titled “Schools in the Grip of Terror.” Reading it, one encounters familiar accusations: that UNRWA employs staunch Hamas supporters who indoctrinate students with hatred of Jews. What is new about your research?
Hillel Neuer: Our report documents in detail that the entire local management of UNRWA is involved with Hamas – not just a few ordinary employees. Take Lebanon, for example: there, Fateh al-Sharif, the head of Hamas in Lebanon, was in charge of UNRWA’s educational infrastructure. The situation is not much different in the Gaza Strip. Although Hamas official Suhail al-Hindi left UNRWA in 2017, he has continued to exert influence on the organization ever since.
NZZ: You are considered one of the harshest critics of UNRWA in the Western world. What is going wrong at the UN relief agency?
Hillel Neuer: The very structure of UNRWA is questionable. Swiss UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini leaves operational business almost exclusively to the approximately 30,000 local employees. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, 10 percent of them in Gaza alone have close ties to the terrorist organizations Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad…
There is no other conflict in the world in which refugee status has been passed down to the fourth generation. Astonishing, isn’t it? For the approximately 900,000 Jews who had to flee to Israel from many countries in the Arab world after 1948, there was and is no such separate relief agency. They integrated into their new homeland.
Instead of contributing to the solution of the Palestinian refugee problem, UNRWA perpetuates it for all eternity. It also contributes to the political radicalization of the people.
UNRWA teachers tell schoolchildren that one day they will be able to “return” to Israel by taking the land from the Israelis. The UNRWA leadership stood by and watched. Then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas cruelly fulfilled this promise.
Hillel Neuer in Berliner Morgenpost: “UNRWA is a nihilistic death cult”
The briefing at the German Bundestag and UN Watch’s new report were also covered in the Berliner Morgenpost. The article was syndicated across numerous other newspapers in Germany.
Berliner Morgenpost
October 15, 2025
By Madeleine Janssen, Head of Foreign Desk
“Germany is currently the largest contributor to UNRWA with $200 million a year,” said Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of the Geneva-based UN Watch.
At a recent briefing in Berlin, the Canadian lawyer emphasized: “UNRWA teachers are terrorist leaders.” What once began as an altruistic project to educate children in Gaza has since become “completely corrupt.” As evidence, Neuer presented research on several high-ranking UNRWA teachers.
One of them: Suhail al-Hindi. UN Watch paints a picture of an established terrorist – photos show al-Hindi with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. He is also said to have maintained close ties with the long-time leader of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh.
The NGO investigation further suggests that he was part of the Hamas delegation in Qatar. “When he was finally suspended by the United Nations because of his connections,” says lawyer Neuer, “the UNRWA schools closed in protest – for three months!”
Al-Hindi was subsequently allowed to continue working. According to Neuer, UNRWA claimed to have been unaware of the man’s involvement with Hamas.
It would have been interesting to know what former UNRWA representatives had to say about the allegations. German UN diplomat and former UNRWA chief Matthias Schmale did not respond to a request for comment from this newsroom.
According to legal scholar Hillel Neuer, there is a reason why the Palestinian population clings so vehemently to UNRWA: “While any other aid organization can distribute food and medicine, only UNRWA promises Palestinians a “right of return.”
“UNRWA is perpetuating the conflict,” said Hillel Neuer. He added that they are allowing the organization to “poison the Palestinians with a nihilistic death cult.”
