UN Watch was quoted in media outlets around the world in the first half of January 2025 on numerous topics, including our bombshell investigative report exposing the disturbing links between UNRWA and Palestinian terror organizations.
Featured in The Baltimore Sun by Armstrong Williams, the newspaper’s part-owner, “Report lays out UNRWA’s links to terror groups,” January 9, 2025:
Officials from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) met “routinely” with Lebanese and Gazan terror groups, “mutually praise each other for ‘cooperation’ and describe each other as ‘partners.’” That’s according to the December 2024 report “The Unholy Alliance: UNRWA, Hamas and Islamic Jihad” from UN Watch, based in Geneva.
Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general, “and his colleagues knowingly allow Hamas and other terrorist groups to infiltrate UNRWA’s employee base, indoctrinate impressionable Palestinian children to pursue a path of terrorism against Israelis and Jews and install military infrastructure underneath or next to UNRWA facilities,” per the report.
The report noted that more than 10% of UNRWA’s senior educators in Gaza are members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israel has said hundreds of UNRWA’s 13,000 Gazan staff members, including teachers, are active Hamas terrorists. The cooperation between UNRWA and terror groups involves the U.N. agency complying with the demands of the terror organizations, according to the report.
Featured in Colombia’s El Espectador, “Colombia in the Human Rights Council,” January 8, 2025:
A light in the darkness of the Human Rights Council is provided by the participation in the sessions of some NGOs that expose the states whose human rights violations are shamelessly ignored. One of these, UN Watch, has put the regimes of Venezuela, Iran, China, Pakistan and others against the wall. [Translated from Spanish]
Featured in the New York Post, and syndicated in MSN, “UNRWA ‘knowingly’ let Hamas infiltrate and ‘indoctrinate’ children to ‘pursue a path of terrorism’: UN Watch report,” January 8, 2025:
The cooperation between UNRWA and terror groups involves the U.N. agency complying with the demands of the terror organizations, according to the report. “This secret relationship allows the terrorist organizations to significantly influence the policies and practices of a U.N. agency with 30,000 employees, and a $1.5 billion annual budget that is funded primarily by Western states,” the report states.
“UNRWA allowed Hamas leader Fathi al-Sharif to remain as principal of a major UNRWA school, and as the head of the UNRWA Teachers Union,” per the report. “Contrary to its claims of robust neutrality mechanisms, UNRWA for years allowed al-Sharif to occupy a senior position overseeing thousands of UNRWA teachers and students,” it adds.
Featured in the New York Sun, “UN Watchdog, in New Report, Exposes Aid Agency’s ‘Unholy Alliance’ With Hamas, Islamic Jihad,” January 8 2025:
A UN watchdog group, UN Watch, is exposing the agency’s “unholy alliance” with terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad in a new report. The 51-page dossier offers a new trove of evidence supporting UN Watch’s claim that top UNRWA officials “routinely” meet with terrorist groups in Lebanon and Gaza and “mutually praise each other for ‘cooperation,’ and describe each other as ‘partners.’”
The chummy relationships between UNRWA officials and terrorist leaders are brought to life via a series of 68 newly uncovered images included in the dossier. One picture shows a smiling Mr. Krähenbühl [UNRWA’s former commissioner-general] standing among a gang of terrorist leaders, including Hamas’s chief of foreign relations, Ali Baraka, who was sanctioned by America in 2024 for “heinous crimes.”
The report offers yet more evidence of the UN-backed group’s complicity in terror and further challenges Unrwa’s prevailing claim that any examples of corruption are isolated incidents.
Appeared on Fox News Radio, January 8, 2025:
Read the transcript of the full interview HERE.
Featured in Brazil’s O Antagonista, “UN chief in Gaza met with terrorists,” January 10, 2025:
An investigation conducted by the NGO UN Watch points out that employees of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) regularly met with terrorist leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad who intervened in the operations of the organization, which receives 1.5 billion dollars from the United Nations to maintain its activities in Palestinian territory.
The document includes images of terrorist leaders with UNRWA officers, including UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, who, in May 2024, attended a meeting in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, to allow Fathi Al-Sharif, one of Hamas leaders, to remain as director of a major UNRWA school and head of the UNRWA Teachers’ Union.
Since 2019, when he took office, Lazzarini has also met with other terrorists, such as Jamal Khattab, one of the leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad; Khaled Zuaiter, a member of the Hamas political wing in the Ain al-Hilweh camp; and Mahmoud Khalaf, a member of the central committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). [Translated from Portuguese]
Appeared on The Daily Wire’s Morning Wire, January 12, 2025:
Read the transcript of the full interview HERE.
Quoted in Italy’s Il Messaggero, “Iran releases Nahid Taghavi, the activist who spent 4 years in prison,” January 13, 2025:
Good News: Iranian political prisoner Nahid Taghavi is free and back in Germany, after the Islamic Regime imprisoned her for more than four years. Thank you to all who joined us in demanding her freedom.
Featured in a television segment on Israel’s N12 News, January 7, 2025:
Featured in Israel’s N12 News, “A serious report reveals: UNRWA officials meet regularly with the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” January 7, 2025:
In a comprehensive and troubling report published this week by the organization UN Watch, headed by Hillel Neuer, the intricate network of connections between the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and terrorist organizations in Gaza and Lebanon is revealed for the first time.
The report, supported by documentation from open sources, shows how senior officials of the agency, which employs 30,000 workers and manages an annual budget of $1.5 billion, not only meet regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also yield to their pressures and allow them to dictate policy. [Translated from Hebrew]
Interviewed on Israel’s Kan 11 News, January 7, 2025:
Featured on Israel’s YNet News, “Regular meetings and ‘advice’ on bypassing decisions: The secret connections between UNRWA and terrorist organizations,” January 7, 2025:
The organization UN Watch, which monitors the activities of the United Nations, published a report today (Tuesday) revealing how UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has forged alliances with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other organizations.
The report further indicates that regional managers in the agency routinely met with local terrorist leaders for “collaboration and coordination.” During a meeting in November 2017, local terrorist leaders told UNRWA’s manager in Sidon, Fawzi Kassab, that UNRWA must remain operational until Palestinian refugees “return to their homes.” They threatened that if donors ceased funding, Palestinians would launch a “popular revolution.” [Translated from Hebrew]
Featured in a television segment on Israel’s Channel 13 News, January 8, 2025:
Featured in Israel’s Maariv, “New Report: The Secret Connection Between UNRWA, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad,” January 7, 2025:
A new report by the organization UN Watch reveals how UNRWA, despite presenting itself as a humanitarian organization, has formed an unholy alliance with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations.
MK Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beiteinu), who initiated the legislation to sever ties with UNRWA, responded: “The UN Watch report on UNRWA’s close cooperation with Hamas and Islamic Jihad proves once again that the UN agency for terrorist affairs is, in effect, a terrorist organization. This report is definitive proof of the national interest in cutting all possible ties with this terror arm and expelling them from both Judea and Samaria and Gaza.” [Translated from Hebrew]