How the Oct 7 Hamas terror attacks exposed long-running concerns about UNRWA, new film charges

"As Israeli bulldozers razed structures at the UNRWA headquarters on Tuesday after Israel enacted legislation last year banning the agency’s operations on Israeli territory, a new documentary sheds light on the controversial U.N. agency for its close relationship with Hamas terrorists and its lax controls of allowing antisemitism to be taught to generations of its students...

The development comes weeks after the United Nations General Assembly voted to renew UNRWA’s mandate through 2029, despite growing opposition and abstentions from several Western countries.

The renewal followed months of controversy surrounding the agency after Israeli authorities provided videos that show UNRWA employees participating in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. Those allegations remain under investigation, and UNRWA has said it dismissed several staff members following the claims.

During the war in Gaza, the Israeli military has also discovered weapons, tunnel shafts and other Hamas infrastructure in UNRWA facilities, including schools.

Fox News Digital reported last week that UNRWA USA acknowledged reports that the Trump administration is considering designating UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization and that agency officials urged congressional staffers to oppose the move.

Last October, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, talking to reporters in Israel, reiterated the Trump administration's policy to the U.N. and UNRWA. ‘The United Nations is here. They’re on the ground. We’re willing to work with them if they can make it work, but not UNRWA. UNRWA became a subsidiary of Hamas.’

The new documentary titled ‘UNraveling UNRWA’ is now drawing renewed attention to the agency’s structure, history and political role...

Zlatko Zigic, former director of the U.N. migration agency from 1997 to 2017, says in the film that ‘the problem of UNRWA is the concept of endless struggle of Palestinians to return,’ adding that maintaining a right of return to Israel has ‘become a tool to perpetuate the conflict.’

The documentary also includes scenes filmed inside UNRWA schools, showing classroom lessons in which children are taught that they will one day return to land inside Israel. In one scene presented in the film, Jews are referred to as ‘the wolves,’ and a teacher asks elementary school students, ‘What did the Jews do to us?’ before telling them they were expelled and deported, that their families were killed, and they should be grateful to UNRWA, who built refugee camps for them.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, former UNRWA legal adviser James Lindsay, who also appears in the film, said that dynamic lies at the heart of what he believes is a systemic problem.

‘The main problem in oversight has to do, I’m pretty sure, likely at the ground level where the local authorities, in this case we’re talking about Gaza, so we’re talking about Hamas,‘ Lindsay said. ‘The people who work for UNRWA are subject, yes, to UNRWA, but they are even more importantly subject to the local authorities,’ in this case Hamas.

Lindsay said that while donor governments may see detailed paperwork and reporting, the reality on the ground can look very different.

He said UNRWA leadership historically did not attempt to bar Hamas members from employment, arguing that the organization viewed Hamas as part of Palestinian political life.

‘UNRWA has made no effort to keep Hamas out,’ Lindsay said. ‘The position for the commissioners-general has been that UNRWA does not have a problem with Hamas.’..."