UN Arab refugee agency under scrutiny for terror links

"Over the last few years, our agency has filmed and documented that Hamas conducts military training for UNRWA children in it weapons training camps.

Kids are handed machine guns and schooled for war, while top Hamas officials on site encourage jihad, and lecture on the importance of taking back their villages – by force of arms...

Without batting an eye-lash, a bonafide UN agency violates the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which states that 'children should not be forced or recruited to take part in a war or join the armed forces.'

One might think that UNRWA would object to Hamas recruiting students to become terrorists. The opposite is the case. On the record, the Hamas Minister of Religion told us in a filmed interview that 'Hamas' relationship with UNRWA is good, very good!' In addition, Hamas has a long history of promoting UNRWA educators and admistrators to top positions. Its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was a teacher in the UNRWA school system for 17 years. And its unions have been controlled by Hamas for decades. Last spring, UNRWA's former union head Suhail al-Hindi was named to the Hamas cabinet, along with UNRWA's infrastructure chief Muhammad al-Jamassi.

US Leading Donor but Little American Oversight

While the US is the leading Western donor to UNRWA, doling out $400 million each year to this Palestinian refugee agency, there has been little American oversight of UNRWA.

On paper, binding legislation was passed by the US Congress back in 2003 requires UNRWA to vet personnel to see if there are terrorists on the payroll.

Yet the US has never asked UNRWA to vet its personnel.

US Congressional Research Service reports that the US has never checked to see if its humanitarian funds wind up in the coffers of Hamas, which had controlled the UNRWA administrators and teachers unions in Gaza since 1999.

Now the US Congress has taken off the gloves, directing the General Accounting Office, the GAO, to determine if UNRWA is fomenting terrorism.

The question that the GAO has been asked: Is UNRWA in violation of US penal code § 2339B – providing material support a designated FTO, a 'foreign terrorist organization'?

Senator James Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the US Senate Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs, told this reporter that his office made the official request of the GAO, the US General Accounting office, to launch an unprecedented investigation of the alleged terror involvement of UNRWA..."