Teachers working for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) cheered as Hamas terrorists raped and murdered Israelis on October 7, according to recently divulged transcripts of a UNRWA Gaza online group.
More than 3,000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza belong to the social media group, which is hosted on the instant messaging platform Telegram and was exposed by the watchdog group UN Watch. The digital forum contains posts celebrating the massacre of October 7 just moments after it began.
“This is the motherlode of UNRWA teachers’ incitement to Jihadi terrorism,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
UNRWA teacher Waseem Ula — username “A. Handsome” — administers the chat. Ula has posted information on salaries from UNRWA Gaza education chief Sami Abu Kamil. He has also called for the execution of Jews: “Let’s execute the first settler lives near [sic].”
At one point in the chat, Ula informs the group’s 3,000 UNRWA teachers that “salaries will be paid on Sunday.” Later on, he shares a video glorifying Hamas attacks and posts a photo of a suicide bomb vest wired with explosives, with the caption: “Wait, sons of Judaism.” Ula also praised terrorist Akran Abu Hasanen who died during the October 7 attack as a “Qassami martyr,” “friend” and “brother.” He prayed to Allah to “admit him to paradise without judgment.”
Another UNRWA teacher, Abdallah Mehjez urged Gazans to ignore Israel’s warnings to evacuate war zones and move out of harm’s way. “We call on citizens not to respond to text messages and audio recordings that call for the displacement of residents from the north and Gaza to the south [sic].” According to his LinkedIn, Mehjez has worked as an English Language Teacher for UNRWA since 2021. His profile also states he worked as a journalist for the BBC from 2018 to 2022.
Shatha Husam Al Nawajha, a UNRWA teacher who often shares information of how to receive UNRWA salaries, praised the work of Hamas in psalms. In response to her colleague’s praise of Hamas — “They breastfed Jihad and resistance with their mothers’ milk” — Al Nawajha wrote: “May Allah strengthen them, may Allah support them, may Allah grant them victory, and may Allah protect them.”
The United States, along with Canada, Australia, the European Union, and other UN Member States, fund the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, which has an annual budget of over $1 billion.
The Biden administration has funneled more than $730 million to the UNRWA for “refugee assistance” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Trump administration stopped funding UNRWA in 2018 after it came to light that the agency was distributing textbooks with antisemitic content, calling it an “irredeemably flawed operation.” President Biden reversed that decision at the beginning of his term, and the U.S. is now the agency’s largest funder.
The UN Watch report comes after the watchdog group highlighted social-media posts by UNRWA teachers celebrating the Hamas massacre of Israelis.
The agency has come under fire in the wake of the October 7 attack for failing to prevent humanitarian aid from falling into Hamas hands.