UNRWA Explained | How a UN Agency Became a Hamas Front
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Israel sent UNRWA recently a list of 100 names and IDs of UNRWA staff who are Hamas terrorists. UNRWA hasn't done anything about this.

Hello and welcome to State of a Nation. I'm Alon Levy. When the clock struck midnight in Israel on January 30th, UNRWA was officially banned from the country. According to Israeli law, military and government agencies are now prohibited from cooperating with this UN agency. It is unprecedented for a member state of the United Nations to ban cooperation with the UN agency. But guess what? It is also unprecedented

for the staff of a UN agency to massacre the citizens of that member state. This law, passed in the Knesset three months ago, has now come into full effect. And the reason is clear, at least for everyone in Israel, if it is not for people around the world. UNRWA is a Hamas front organization. On today's episode of State of a Nation, we expose the truth about UNRWA, its role in enabling Hamas

and why Western democracies continue to prop it up despite overwhelming evidence of its collusion with terror. Overwhelming evidence that is beginning to seep through to some policymakers asking: Why on earth are we paying and subsidizing Hamas? This episode is a compilation of past conversations with three expert voices who have been at the forefront of raising public awareness about this critical issue.

I sit down and talk with Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a one-man machine who has been leading the charge against UNRWA. I talk to Melanie Phillips, journalist and commentator.

And I speak with Jonathan Konrikas, former IDF international spokesman, who reveals shocking revelations about how at the beginning of the war, UNRWA blocked Israel's efforts to try to evacuate Palestinian civilians to safety, insisting that they remain inside Hamas strongholds. Yes, they have blood on their hands. Through their insights, we break down what's really happening at the UN and why the system is stacked against Israel,

How UNRWA has become a tool for Hamas, not just through a handful of bad actors, but as part of its very structure. The problem is not a few bad apples. The whole barrel is rotten. And we talk about why it is a dangerous illusion to attach moral authority to the United Nations and how the institutions of the body set up in the wake of the Holocaust and the Second World War have been weaponized to wage war on Israel.

We talk about whether the UN is beyond reform and what Israel and its allies must do in order to fight back and in order to stand up for the international rules-based order that we clearly care about much more than those who are scrambling to secure funding for a UN agency that acts at the behest and the service of terrorists.

If you want to understand how Israel ended up at war not just with Hamas in Gaza, but with a whole network of international institutions running interference for Hamas, you won't want to miss this conversation. Let's dive between the lines.

and beyond the headlines. Breaking news out of Israel this morning. Shocking hostage-taking. Hundreds of Israelis are dead. I want to bring in Israeli government spokesman. What happens when a four-day court... Have you resolved this? Where does this go? I think that's a big deal. Why are you asking that question?

Bill Noyer, welcome to the State of a Nation podcast. Thank you for having me. Have I ever told you you're my hero? No, first time. So you're my hero. Thank you. You've done a terrific job in standing up to bullies, speaking truth to power, standing up as the little guy on the big stage of the United Nations, and we'll watch a couple of the clips that you've made, and really telling them the truth to their faces. Thank you. One of the things that's really been bothering me in the course of this war is...

Seeing some of the really vile opinions and behavior coming out of the United Nations. We're recording this podcast after Israel announced that it would deny entry to Francesca Albanese, who is the UN special rapporteur for occupied Palestinian territories, after she denied the anti-Semitic character of the October 7 massacre.

claimed it was some act of resistance to Israeli oppression. And I wonder, how does the UN get filled with so many people with such repulsive opinions? They have to get appointed. And the case of Albeneze is a good example. She was appointed by the president of the Human Rights Council with the approval of all 47 members, including many democracies. I'm not going to name them today, but I may name them soon on Twitter. Stay tuned.

And, you know, we told them she was a known case. The fact that she's comparing Israelis to Nazis. This was known before she was appointed. This was known before she was appointed. We published a dossier on her. The fact that she was...

not just anti-Israel, but anti-Semitic, comparing the plight of the Palestinians to the victims of the Nazis. She's been engaging some really horrific Holocaust inversion as well during this war. During this war, but again, yeah, before she was appointed. So we told the UN, we published a dossier. It was called Mandate to Discriminate. We wrote a report about the...

the position she had and the different candidates. The world knew exactly who she was. The Palestinians knew who she was. That's why they wanted her. That's why the Arab and Islamic states wanted her. And enough other countries joined in in appointing her. You're saying it's not a fault in the system. It's not a bug in the system. It's a feature. It's a feature. It's a feature. And certainly in her case, yes. So what I want to do today is talk to you about that feature, how it is that this anti-Israel bias has become...

so deeply ingrained at the United Nations, the level that it is institutional. It's not systemic rot. The system is the rot. Try to understand how we got here. Try to understand how we deal with it. Because I find as a government spokesman, one of the biggest challenges is waking up every morning and essentially declaring war on the whole world.

Because in order to make the case for Israel, I have not only Hamas and the Palestinians telling me that I'm a liar, I have all the United Nations agencies that have been covering up for Hamas saying the same, and a whole alphabet soup of human rights organizations also echoing their message. And they all seem to have been completely mobilized

against Israel in this war, running interference for Hamas, essentially. Yes, it's true. I mean, certainly the UN does produce a disproportionately anti-Israel outcome, even if several countries that belong to the UN may not be that hostile, but the net result, because in part of 56 Islamic states who historically didn't have much to unite them, you know, Iran and Saudi Arabia, for example, are historic rivals,

But the thing that unites them when the Islamic group meets is the struggle against Israel, historically. Of course, now we're at a time when the Gulf Arab states are looking towards peace with Israel and the Abraham Accords. But putting that aside, up until a few years ago, when the Islamic countries would meet to talk about the organization of Islamic countries, the sole unifier, the common denominator, was Jerusalem and Israel. That's the only thing that really united them. Or, you know, they would also accuse the West of Islamophobia. That became an add-on around the time of 9-11.

So the Islamic countries with 56 states at the UN, you know, if you're a country that doesn't have a dog in this fight, you're a country that doesn't necessarily hate Jews or Israel. But there are 56 Islamic states telling you, if you don't vote for our resolutions against Israel, our commission of inquiry against Israel, our special rapporteur, Francesco Albinezzi, we will punish you.

If you're a small country or a large country, they could punish your country in not getting investments. Qatar may invest billions or not, depending on how you vote. But as an individual ambassador, maybe you'll get appointed to some high UN position, which many aspire to in New York or Geneva, or you won't get it because you angered the Arab group of people.

22 countries and the Islamic group of 56 countries. That is a big role in what happens at the UN. Because 56 countries is more than a quarter of the entire UN membership. And sometimes I think people have a habit of looking at the United Nations, treating it with a great degree of reverence as if it is this independent institution that has sworn an oath to the sacred UN charter, when in fact it is

essentially the sum of its parts, and those parts are not particularly liberal and not particularly democratic. That's right. I think certainly in Europe and many other countries, I grew up in Canada, when the headline says the United Nations Human Rights Council said, people imagine, and the Lord said to Moses at Sinai, they imagine men in long white beards dressed in white robes

strolling along Mount Olympus making their decisions based on facts, logic or morality. And I find that so often being interviewed where the interviewer will say, according to the United Nations or the UN special rapporteur, and it just has this hatred.

halo of sanctity around it that you cannot touch. Absolutely. There's this impression that it's the decision of Socrates, Aristotle, or Plato, when in fact those sitting around the table are historically Gaddafi, Castro, and the House of Saud sitting around the Human Rights Council. So let's slaughter that sacred cow and have a look at what the United Nations really is as an institution removed from the very lofty and noble values that were supposed to have led it into an institution that has...

Would it be fair to say, I mean, essentially hijacked by non-democratic states? Yes. The Human Rights Council is now 60% full on tyrannies or other non-democracies. Qatar, China. And the Human Rights Council condemns Israel with a frequency of? Of, you know, more than any other country in the world. Combined. More condemnations against Israel, certainly than Iran, Syria, North Korea combined. There's one agenda item on the list.

the whole world at each session and one agenda item on Israel alone. No other country, not Russia and Ukraine, not North Korea, not Syria has its own agenda item. Only Israel. Truly astonishing. So we're talking about an institution that has this deeply embedded institutional bias and obsessive focus against Israel.

Because that is what helps all the Islamic countries mobilize together for collective action. It's the one thing they can do. But not only, but not only, you know, I don't want to give a free pass to the European countries, for example, and many others. You know, the Islamic and Arab countries lead the resolutions, but they are automatically joined by all the other dictatorships that are not Islamic. Russia joins them.

Cuba joins them. North Korea joins them. That's for sure. But in many cases, sadly, even our own democracies... Abstain. No. In New York City at the General Assembly, the EU countries and the UK too will typically support two-thirds of the resolutions against Israel. They will vote yes. Why?

If you ask them, if you ask them, they'll say, well, it's a resolution condemning Israel for violations of international law. And that's our position. And we support that. And if you say, well, OK, I understand your position. But, you know, there's one resolution on Iran and 15 on Israel. You support 10 of those. Why would you support 10 resolutions against Israel? Isn't it obsessive and counterproductive for the UN? One of the things that's also been disturbing me about the way the United Nations has been acting in this war

is how Hamas has essentially used it to launder information for global consumption. Now I'm going on every day giving interviews, press conferences, so I see how this information is getting circulated around the world. Hamas will make a claim. It gives it to UNRWA. UNRWA releases the same claim with a UN stamp on it, even though UNRWA is a Hamas front. It's an organization that is 99% Palestinian and the 1% international leadership buy into it.

The next thing we know, that statement is getting quoted at the International Court of Justice. UN figures. Exactly, UN figures. These are Hamas figures get passed on to UNRWA. They're then getting quoted at the ICJ. And then you have someone like Francesca Albanese accusing Israel of violating something the ICJ has told it to do on the basis of...

The claims that are getting from UNRWA, which come from Hamas, and it appears that we're just confronting judge, jury, and executioner all together. And Hamas is able to use the United Nations and its moral authority to launder its information, and people keep falling for it. And you're quite right, and you mentioned Albanese. It should be noted that the ICJ

cited, in addition to UNRRA, they cited a statement by UN experts. And the person who wrote that statement, accusing Israel of genocide, was Francesca Albinezzi. There's about 50 UN human rights experts. They communicate together, and she is the one who is pushing them and writing these horrific, false statements

Orwellian statements and then the same thing who claims that Israel has no right of self-defense in the wake of the October 7 massacre and that this wasn't an anti-semitic massacre and it was condemned for that by at least France and Germany and let's hope for more so and that actually brings me on to my next and I want to say that every other country that voted for her on that day we're going to release the list it was two years ago every country that joined consensus has a moral obligation to condemn her now and going forward there are

Two problems that I hope we can tackle in order to deal with this problem that we're facing from the United Nations. First is whether it's possible to dent its moral authority, the halo that it enjoys in the West, that, as you say, these are the men with the long white beards.

And the other is whether it is actually possible to reform this institution in a way that makes it live up to the lofty and noble values that were set out in the UN Charter. Do you see a prospect either for serious reform or for making people look at the UN seriously for what it is if it cannot be reformed?

Two good questions. On reform, to some extent our focus is not on institutional reform, which is extremely hard to do. Security Council is a relic from World War II. Try to change it and give other countries the veto. Well, why would you give it to South Africa and not to Nigeria? Why would you give it to India and not to some other, not to Pakistan? So it's a very big mess, and I think it's very hard to change the Security Council. And much of the UN is very hard to reform, and I don't even think that's the right focus right now.

Let's start with what our democracies are doing. You know, in New York at the General Assembly every year, there is one resolution on Iran, one on Syria, one on North Korea, and 15 against Israel. As I mentioned, most Western countries support two-thirds of the resolutions against Israel, like 10 of them. Yet those same countries, France, Ireland, Italy,

have not initiated a single resolution on China. 1.5 billion people denied any form of human rights against Cuba, a police state. Pakistan, where women will have acid thrown on their faces and the regime does nothing. And you go through the list: Zimbabwe, Venezuela. None of these regimes has ever had a UN General Assembly resolution introduced against them by Western countries.

in my opinion, so much more could be done with the existing structure, but with political will, with backbone. And our Western countries need to find the backbone and that could, won't necessarily change the UN entirely, but that moral minority voice would be heard because at the end of the day, we look to what our democracies say and do. Well, let's have a look now at this graphic that we've set up and I'll use this as another opportunity to plug the show on YouTube so people can watch it instead of having me describe it. Uh,

General Assembly resolutions, let's have a look at the number of condemnations of different countries. We have one for North Korea, two against Russia, one against the United States, one against Iran, and how many against Israel do we have here on the infographic? This is 14. 14. How is that possible? How is it possible that Israel finds itself condemned by the General Assembly more than

all other countries put together and how is it that it doesn't strike other western democracies as obscene that this is what the world assembly is doing

I don't have an answer for you on why countries could allow that to go along and who go along with it. Again, Western countries, most of them, the European countries and the UK typically vote for two-thirds of those 14 or 15, depending how one counts each year. And they come up with frivolous justifications saying, well, we don't introduce the resolutions and it's international law.

In any other situation, even against a terrible dictatorship, if someone were to bring 14 resolutions against North Korea, they would say it. As we say in Hebrew, exempt him. You went too far. You went too far. We have one, maybe two if there's an ongoing war. Like on Russia, there might be a handful. But...

something that's a protracted situation to have two resolutions on the Golan where there's a handful of Druze who are allegedly their human rights being violated the whole thing is absurd but even if it were true to have two resolutions about the Golan Heights when there's not one resolution for 1.5 billion Chinese people it's absurd there's always a way for countries to distract from their own failures and not take responsibility and deflect I want to show here two uh

of your most viral moments at the United Nations. You've landed a good few punches over your years at UN Watch. It's been how long? 20 years next month. 20 years at UN Watch. Let's have a look at a speech you gave in 2007, the famous banned speech. Let's have a look at what you said and then I want you to tell me what happened after this. I now give the floor to a representative of United Nations Watch. Thank you, Mr. President.

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, René Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here on the banks of Lake Geneva to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today we ask: what has become of this noble dream? One might say in Harry Truman's words that this has become a do-nothing, good-for-nothing council. But that would be inaccurate. This council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another, condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements, and there will be three more this session, Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world, millions upon millions of victims in 191 countries, continue to go ignored.

Hillel, a speech you remember well, and I know because when we were waiting to go on air, you were lip syncing the whole speech word for word. What happened after this moment? Tell me what the context for this is. This happened, I believe, in March 2007. It was right after the creation of the new and improved Human Rights Council. We had the Commission on Human Rights for 60 years, from 1946 to 2006.

The founding chair was Eleanor Roosevelt. By 2003, the chair was Colonel Qaddafi's regime, so the rise and fall of human rights. And it was so embarrassing that the head of the UN at the time, Kofi Annan, said, you know, we need to replace this Human Rights Commission and create the new and improved Human Rights Council. They did. June 2006, the new and improved Human Rights Council was

All they did in the first year was condemn Israel. Gilad Shalit had been kidnapped. They met to condemn Israel. A good reason to condemn Israel, the abduction of an Israeli soldier. The Second Lebanon War began. They condemned Israel. Hezbollah attacks against Israel, another good reason to condemn Israel. And the Western countries were actually playing by a different set of rules where they said, we haven't created the...

sort of the rule book yet for this new human rights council so we're not going to bring any resolutions against north korea or sudan or what have you so all they did for the first year was condemn israel and i this is the new and improved and the chairman every time he would appear at a cocktail he was the ambassador of mexico was the founding chair of the human rights council he'd get applause and we were calling out the absurdity of this new body and and i gave this speech and

And he, actually, if you look in the video, he folds his arms like this before I begin the speech. And in his memoir, he says that actually he was told by the bureaucrats, it was presumably Eric Testounet was the

top bureaucrat at the Human Rights Council, to stop the speech from before it was given. Because they used to ask for me, not others, but for me to give the text in advance because they were so sort of in fear of what I might say. And he says that he was told to stop the speech in advance, but he was generous and he let me say the speech. But after the speech, he did something that no one had ever done before. The chairman, his or her role is to say, thank you. I now give the floor to the next NGO, Amnesty International, what have you.

He's just a referee. I asked you to take the floor. Next person. He's not meant to interrupt. Countries could interrupt, but not the chair. He broke this rule. And he said, I will not thank you. For the first time in Spanish. He said, I will not thank you. For the first time, I will not say thank you. And this is because what you said, you recalled the names of the founders. I mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt and René Cassin. You invoked the names of the founders. You insulted them. I did not insult.

You praised them. You insulted the people who were abusing their legacy. That's right. That's right. So he took it personally. And, well, maybe I wasn't personal, but I was hitting the council. And he ripped into me and he said that if you ever give this speech again, I will strike it from the records. He banned my speech from ever being delivered again. When it happened, I was in the back. What did he ban it from being? He said, if you ever give this speech again...

I will delete it from the record. So he said, you cannot give this speech again. I, I, I, you know, you cannot give this speech again. And when you feel like a political dissident, well, I'll tell you, I was in the room and it was the, it's the United Nations. The human rights council looks like it looks in New York and he's,

far away, you know, sitting on the chair and the whole room was looking at me. It was like a kid when I was 13 or something, the principal called me out in assembly for talking and you're embarrassed. It was very embarrassing. But a guy came up to me, his name is Brett Schaefer, and he said to me, he's an American with heritage, and he said to me, hello, I can't believe what just happened. You know, I was embarrassed because I

you know, I didn't even know he was talking to me. The seat that I was speaking in, you speak and then you get up and give it to the next guy. So I got up and my intern, uh, tapped me on the shoulder and said, hello, he's talking to us. What do you mean? And I looked at him and he was saying, you, you. And so, um,

When I left the room, I realized that suddenly YouTube had begun. It was all new. There wasn't even social media. There was no Twitter. There was no anything. A world away. But there was YouTube. And I said, well, there's this thing called YouTube. And this just started to be videoed, the UN speeches. And I said, the whole year, Iran has been saying these horrific things, denying the Holocaust. Cuba is attacking UN experts who criticize Cuba. And he always says, thank you, thank you, thank you. And we put up that speech. Ha ha.

that video. And to answer your question, yes, I do. I do feel like a Soviet dissident in Moscow. An anti-Soviet dissident. An anti-Soviet dissident, an anti-communist Soviet dissident. Whereas I'm in an Orwellian world where they will twist the truth. They will shut me down repeatedly, scratch my name off speakers lists, and I'm just trying to speak the truth. Even though you have really been sounding the alarm about deep problems, including about UNRWA and

the UN cover-up of the Hamas infiltration of UNRWA, and their response has been largely to disparage, belittle, and defame you as an independent watchdog, rather than taking seriously the allegations that you've been raising. From the beginning till today, it's extraordinary that Chris Gunness, again, who was the official spokesman, has now been revived as a surrogate.

He just the other day said, don't listen to you and watch. I announced that I put on Twitter that I'm going to make an announcement about something about UNRWA. It was very terse. I said, I'm going to make an announcement about UNRWA. Oh, yes. He wasn't very happy about that. He had a meltdown and he started saying, journalists, don't listen to him. Journalists, this is in the name of Israel and the IDF. And they had nothing to do with my announcement. And I announced that we're having a conference about UNRWA.

the future of UNRWA, but he was having a meltdown. And it's exactly what he did in August, 2015, when we said there's antisemitism being taught by your teachers. He said, don't listen to them. It's a, he said, she said story. And of course, over the years, nothing that we said has ever been, you know, disproven. Right. And when the UN then says that it takes very seriously allegations against UNRWA, it is, um, as I said, in one of the press conferences, complete poppycock, uh,

because they've been ignoring you when you raised the alarm. The opposite is true. They attacked us. Melanie Phillips, welcome to the State of a Nation podcast. Hello, Elon. Thank you very much for having me on. When the Sky interviewer is saying, Hamas told me this, and the UN says the same thing, and a whole alphabet soup of human rights organisations say the same thing, and it's my word as a government spokesman against half of the world, I think viewers know which side they're taking. That makes my job all the more difficult. And I'm wondering what it is that...

We don't understand about the starting point with which British or American audiences think about the conflict, about why these organisations that purport to be humanitarian are essentially running interference for Hamas. What do we not understand about how people outside Israel are viewing this conflict?

there is absolutely zero appreciation that they're running interference for Hamas. They don't understand the way that all these UN agencies are running interference for Hamas. If you're a decent, you know, Christian, God-fearing individual who's pretty apolitical but has a conscience and, you know, you pass the Oxfam shop, you get the Amnesty International begging bowl in the street, you give...

because it's for a good cause, because it's for Palestinians and it's for humanitarian purposes. There is zero understanding of the way in which the whole humanitarian industry of NGOs, charities, the major charities...

plus the whole apparatus of human rights law and all the rest of it, has been co-opted completely. How? How did that happen? Why have these organisations been co-opted in a way that in this war they are essentially interfering to try to save Hamas's skin?

after the October 7 massacre and make sure that this war ends with Hamas still on its feet? Because that's to be the logical conclusion of anyone who is trying to demand that this war end with anything other than a total Israeli victory. Well, I think there are a lot of components for that, and I wouldn't claim to know all of them at all. First of all, a number of them are under the umbrella of the U.N.,

It is a major international world misapprehension that a transnational body like the UN, which is supposed to be promoting peace and justice, does that because it's a transnational body. I see the UN spoken of with so much respect.

moral reverence as the United Nations has said. Because there's a whole orthodoxy in the West that transnational bodies basically promote the brotherhood of man. By their nature. Because they're transnational bodies. Whereas nations are only interested in their own self-interest and aggression. Um,

People don't understand that if you have a transnational body, which represents most of the countries of the world, given that most of the countries of the world do not observe human rights. Oh, yes. They're not exactly liberal democracies, most of the countries in the world. So if you have a bunch of kleptocracies, dictatorships, tyrannism, rogue states all getting together, i.e. the UN, it is not surprising that they preside over not peace and justice, but the opposite. So all those, that infrastructure of humanitarian aid

of humanitarian groups, not all, but a significant proportion, is going to be devoted to advancing the interests of people who are hostile to democracy, hostile to human rights, hostile to the Jewish people, hostile to the state of Israel. Nobody in Britain understands that because they're fed all the time by the consensus which says

You can't trust governments, any government. You can't trust politicians, any politicians. You can't trust, you certainly can't trust the government. Spokespeople. You can't trust the government of Israel because everybody knows that if it wasn't for Netanyahu and his right-wing consensus, his right-wing coalition, there'll be peace tomorrow. Right. So you can't trust any of these, you know, authorities.

What can you trust? You trust people who are not government. You trust people who are motivated by compassion. They are backed by the churches. They are backed by the sainted United Nations. They're backed by sainted people. They are sainted people. Fascinating. And that causes us so much grief because we find that Hamas has been using UNRWA, which is effectively, it is a Hamas front. It is the international branch of the Palestinian nationalist movement.

using it not only to store tunnel shafts and weapons in their facilities, but also to launder its information for global consumption. Because Hamas claims something, UNRWA then will put it out in a press release with a blue UN logo. And the next thing we know, the International Court of Justice is quoting Hamas.

an UNRWA allegation, and then it's not Hamas saying, it's not UNRWA saying it, it's the International Court of Justice, and it's causing us very serious problems. I think it's extremely difficult for the vast majority of people to get their head around this. I mean, it's a terrible thing that we're all facing here, where you have an international establishment ostensibly devoted to peace and justice and humanitarian and compassionate concerns.

Which are very noble values. And it would be wonderful if the UN did live up to that very lofty mission. This is the terrible thing. You have the most noble values which have been turned inside out.

And, you know, with the best one in the world, I mean, it's a very difficult thing to convince people of that. But you certainly can't begin to expect people to begin to understand that unless you start telling them. Afternoon, Colonel Jonathan Conoricus. Welcome to State of a Nation. Shalom. Did you find yourself deliberately suppressing

certain messages for an international audience because they didn't fit the domestic narrative. Of course. I mean, you know, there were so many things related to humanitarian that we needed to say, needed to do, needed to get out. The early efforts done by, for instance, a good example of a strategic decision that was made somewhere

before the Israeli ground invasion started, there was a meeting with UNRWA and other UN and non-UN NGOs by Kogat, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, had a meeting. I'm a veteran of that. Yes. And what Israel wanted to do was to create a humanitarian zone. And they asked UNRWA to create such a humanitarian zone in the Moassi. UNRWA said no.

That was, I think, a strategic crossroads where Israel decided to continue to work with UNRWA, not to shame and out UNRWA for their strategic decision to basically facilitate

or aid in killing lots of civilians, non-combatants. That was the actual importance of their decision. The UN agencies have blood on their hands by refusing to cooperate, evacuate civilians to safety, 100%. Definitely. But the strategic Israeli decision, in hindsight, was a mistake at that time. What I think that... Funny, because I made that argument, but I think I was really going rogue when I made that point.

But UN officials have blood on their hands. They have. And we should have early on said, listen, world, we should have had a press conference where we should have read the protocol of that meeting, where we should have said before the Israeli ground invasion started, we should have said, we just met with UN officials. Present were UNRWA, UNRWA.

UNICEF, World Health Organization, etc. We requested, out of our concern for civilian life and out of the sanctity of human life and the fact that we don't want to kill lots of non-combatants, we want to kill Hamas very badly, and we will, but we don't want to kill civilians and we don't want to inflict damage on them. Out of that respect, we ask these guys

to help to work together and to build a humanitarian zone, but they refused. That should have been our communication strategy from that day and onwards, and we should have hammered that message on and on and on. The only case in which the United Nations is refusing to evacuate civilians to safety in Israel is begging them to protect civilians, get them out of harm's way. And they're insisting on keeping these civilians in Hamas strongholds, in places where they can be used not only as human shields,

But it's human sacrifices. Yes. And sadly, we didn't leverage that media opportunity. I think the strategic thought was, okay, we'll need them further down the road. So let's not burn the bridge with UNRWA and others. I remember getting a slap on the wrist at the beginning of the war when I started attacking UNRWA and being told,

don't go after UNRWA. We need them. They're helping us on the humanitarian issues. I said, but it's insane what they're doing. They said, don't attack UNRWA. Eventually there was an open season that was declared and I think was rather less proactive and strategic than people from outside think it is. There's this great Israeli plot to bring down UNRWA. But you're saying Israel missed, for domestic reasons, a strategic opportunity to attack

out the United Nations for trying to keep civilians in Hamas. Definitely. And then when you look at how that narrative, the humanitarian narrative, has unfolded, it is, I think, the most potent narrative

dagger or sword that our enemies and protectors and Israel haters and BDS supporters and Iran fans and Hamas fan clubs around the world are using against Israel. Very hypocritically, they don't care for human life. They don't care about Palestinians. They don't care about, you know, people surviving. Do you think the government should prioritize the international message and say, look, the domestic audience, maybe you don't like this, but on a national strategic level, we're going to have to pump out this message you don't like?

because that's what we need globally. Definitely, because you know what's even worse is that we're doing it anyhow. Israel has been dragged kicking and screaming to do what we should have been doing from the beginning. Namely?

providing humanitarian aid, controlling or opening the borders, providing electricity, providing water, helping with the sewage, providing food, and providing the basic necessities. Because at the beginning of the war, when Hamas took down, what was it, nine out of ten electricity lines leading into Gaza on the first day of the war, Israel's policy was to say,

Okay, we are now cutting ourselves off from Gaza. This is now no longer our responsibility, but was really forced into opening more crossings than existed before and more infrastructure. And hooking up the infrastructure again. And, you know, it's a matter of how things get done. Now, there's not a lot of sympathy in my heart for...

the people in Gaza who aided and abetted Hamas in their atrocities. No, I have even less sympathy. Yeah, yeah. It's not as if I really particularly, there's no warm place in my heart for them. And I think that the whole ecosystem in Gaza is an ecosystem of hatred, of anti-Semitism, of rabid anti-Semitism, and a system that is really perverted,

and corrupt, corrupt on a moral level. It's a system where young are educated to hate,

in general, are educated to hate, where they grow up with the most vile ideology shoved down their throats, and then that becomes their persona. By a death cult, supported by the United Nations, which is horrific that I'm having to say this, but it is what it is. Paid for by international taxpayers. Yes, thank you, international taxpayers, for paying for UNRWA, which teaches this Hamas death cult in schools. Yes, and as

basically an assembly line of future terrorists, future jihadists, who there's this whole martyrdom death cult. The question is not how many UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th massacre, it's how many UNRWA graduates took part, because they were all products of the United Nations schooling system. Indeed. And it's such a travesty that that isn't, you know, that

speaking about strategy, that should have been a strategic aim of the state of Israel. Now, Israel, I think Israel, the state of Israel, is a miracle. You say that should be the strategic aim of the state of Israel. I don't actually know what Israel's official policy is on UNRWA at the moment. Do we want to disband it? Do we not want to disband it? Has a decision been made on a national level? I mean, you know, I'll take you back behind the scenes. I found myself, after the news about the UNRWA staff

who took part in the October 7th massacre. I put on a special briefing for the international media about Ornrae. I pulled an all-nighter to bring together all your press releases from the IDF, all the different revelations, and then found myself piecing together something the prime minister had said with something the foreign minister had said with something the defense minister had said to try to work out what our official position was. Because it's not just a question of communication, it's a question of policy.

Hello Noya, welcome back to State of a Nation. Thank you. We also know that Hamas has been operating out of UN facilities and not once has the UN reported to the IDF that armed militant groups are violating the neutrality of its facilities. Tell me more about that. Well look, you know, if UNRWA wants to be compliant with their obligations, they could

Sound the alarm when Hamas takes over their facilities and abuses What is an UNRWA school and owner a clinic to create a command and control? Terrorist center we saw actually in Lebanon a few years ago in one of the refugee camps when there were various Palestinian militants fighting each other secular groups fighting Islamist groups when we're actually went to

on Twitter and Instagram and issued a statement saying we condemn how militant groups are using our facilities. So if they want to... And when terrorists took over a UN office in Yemen, the UN was able to call them out. They can't do that in the case of the Palestinians. Well, obviously they could, they choose not to. Basically, if you want to understand... I mean could in terms of can't, could not bring themselves to. Of course, I understand. What's clear with UNRWA, if you want to understand when they're going to speak out, if they can blame Israel...

Even if they have no evidence, they'll speak out right away. If there's some blame against Hamas, suddenly the most they'll say is, "Well, we need to investigate, we need to authenticate, we need to corroborate, we need time, we need months, we need ten months." But if there's something against Israel, within minutes, Philippe Lazzarini is there on Twitter condemning Israel, even when it's Hamas firing rockets on itself, rockets that fall short.

It's only to blame Israel will UNRWA speak out. If it's something that might implicate Hamas, omerta, complete silence. Is this normal for staff of UN agencies to also be signed up, fully paid operatives for terrorist organizations and to take part in terrorist massacres? Or is this unique to UNRWA?

To be honest, I'm not aware of any other cases in the world where a UN humanitarian agency has not just one, but several individuals who've been fired. Now we have nine who are fired for partaking in a massacre. Another nine, there's some evidence. And of course, we know it's much deeper than that. I'm not aware of any other precedents. So at a minimum, you'd expect the head of the agency to resign. You know, I've been...

I've been overseeing an agency where nine of my humanitarian, a social worker involved in kidnapping, mass murder would resign. Maybe the donors would not freeze funding for a few months but would do so permanently. That's the kind of consequences

expect to see. We'd like to see, you'd expect the donor states would be condemning this in a serious way, but since the report came out, actually, you've heard relative silence from the donor states. It's shocking. And of course, this isn't just a question of the individuals who took part in the October 7th massacre. There is an attempt among UNRWA's apologists to say it's just a few bad apples, even though, you know, let's put to one side, yes, most UNRWA staff members did not take part

in the October 7th massacre. Most of the perpetrators of the October 7th massacre were not UNRWA staff members, but most of them were UNRWA graduates. They were products of the school system, and you have done a lot of work exposing how UNRWA schools have been indoctrinating Palestinian children. But the complicity, the overlap, organizationally,

between Hamas and this UN agency goes so much deeper that no one can say it is a few bad apples. It is a case of a totally rotten barrel. Tell me about that complicity. Look, let's look at the numbers. The UNRWA and its apologists, since the revelations in January, tried to put the focus entirely on the 12 people that Israel had identified. And then for months, we heard from Mehdi Hassan and others, there's no evidence, where's the evidence? And of course, in the end, there was evidence and they fired most of them.

And the evidence had to have been really compelling for the UN to take that step. Even though it's important to say, in the press release, which we got because we didn't get the full report, they didn't say they took part in the October 7th massacre. They tried to fudge it. May have, could be, indications, maybe, may have. But bottom line, when you had the press conference with the UN spokesperson and they asked them, what does this maybe, could have, maybe, was have, they said,

Highly likely. When pressed, likely or highly likely. And Emma Riley, who is a UN, very courageous UN whistleblower from Geneva, was in the UN Human Rights Office. She wrote on Twitter saying, UN doesn't fire people unless there's very strong evidence. If they fire them, that's

compelling evidence. She said the press release would have been spin by the comms people, the communications people, because they're trying to dictate the headline. And of course, some of the journalists are only too happy to comply. And to limit damage. But indeed, in the press conference, they acknowledged that it's likely or highly likely you didn't get headlines like that. But let's look at, you know, the owner wanted to focus, this is all about just 12 people, 12, you know, rotten apples, even though actually the expression is a few rotten apples,

uh... spoils but the whole lot uh... they try to say it's just about twelve people uh... let's look at that right twelve people that that israel had identified then you have a hundred names that israel gave my published the list on my twitter account last week israel sent when we are recently a list of a hundred names and i_d_'s of understaffed warham as terrorists when we're not uh... hasn't done anything about this and you you expanded a bit more uh... we've identified

200 names of UNRWA teachers and school principals who regularly promote terrorism, glorify Adolf Hitler. It's on our website, unwatch.org, the case against UNRWA. Then you have the Terragram report, which we released in January. 3,000

members of an UNRWA teachers group who celebrated the atrocities of October 7th. So now we're at 3,000. Then you look at numbers like in 2011, when UNRWA, the teachers union leader in Gaza by the name of Sueil Al-Hindi, he sits on the Hamas Politburo with Yahya Sinwar. When he was identified as belonging to Hamas, and UNRWA was embarrassed into finally suspending him in September 2011,

8,000 UNRWA teachers rallied for this senior Hamas terrorist. They shut down UNRWA schools for months, shut down 220,000 students. So 8,000 Gaza UNRWA teachers rallied for a Hamas leader.

By the way, that is a cautionary tale that UNRWA learned the hard way, that when it tries to push back against Hamas's takeover of its institutions, it's not Hamas that pushes back, it's the Palestinian people who rise up to demand that

that UNRWA and Hamas continue to operate hand in hand. Well, you know, presumably it was Hamas that gave the order to mobilize them, but they complied. But this was a mass movement. They complied. And there were no protests saying, why are you shutting down our schools for a Hamas terrorist? 220,000 students are out of school and the people go along with it.

Then this happened in 2011 in 2017 it came out that Sue L. Al-Hindi was elected to the Hamas Politburo. Unruh couldn't hide it anymore. Actually Chris Gunness, the then spokesman said, I asked Sue L. Al-Hindi and he said no, no, he's not with Hamas. Oh, that's alright. Yeah. So their response was still denial.

Because in 2011, after the protests, they reinstated him. 2017, they finally asked him to resign. They didn't fire him. They asked him to resign. There were parties celebrating his 27 years with UNRWA. He went on to become one of the senior overt Hamas leaders, part of the Great March of Return, and was involved in planning the massacre sitting now in Turkey.

And that brings us to the end of today's special episode of State of a Nation about UNRWA. As always, if you're enjoying these episodes, and I assume you are, if you've reached till the end, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a like on all the social media platforms, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, everywhere. And subscribe. Make sure that you send the link to friends who will feel enlightened and informed by our conversations here in the studio. I'm Elon Levy, and thanks for watching.