The main United Nations (UN) effort to handle aid delivery to the Gaza Strip knowingly put Hamas terrorists into key school leadership positions in the impoverished region, a watchdog organization revealed in a report published Wednesday.
UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog staunchly aligned with pro-Israel causes, alleges the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) “knowingly” employed Hamas members in leadership roles in Gaza and Lebanon. UNRWA, which has been exposed in the past for harboring Hamas terrorists, purports to be a neutral agency. But the new report details repeated failures to remove Hamas-affiliated leaders, contradicting its stated mission.
“By knowingly employing Hamas terrorist leaders as school principals and teachers, and by allowing terror chiefs to head the unions that oversee thousands of their teachers, UNRWA didn’t just tolerate extremism — the Western-funded UN agency institutionalized it, turning classrooms into incubators of hate,” the report reads. “Over its 75 years of existence, UNRWA has churned out thousands of jihadi terrorists.”
UNRWA did not fire Suhail Al-Hindi from his position as a school principal and head of the Gaza Staff Union, even after he publicly appeared with Hamas terrorists for years, the report alleges. UNRWA also kept Fateh Sharif, leader of the Lebanon Teachers’ Union and a senior Hamas official, on staff in that country.
UNRWA claims to have fired Al-Hindi in 2017, but Al-Hindi himself has said he continued to receive benefits from the organization, according to the report.
“According to one Palestinian source, Al-Hindi was given a choice between ‘resignation and receiving his employee rights, or dismissal’,” the report reads. “It appears that Al-Hindi chose to resign, but that UNRWA represents it as Al-Hindi having been fired since it gave him an ultimatum. In any event, even if one accepts at face value UNRWA’s current stance that Al-Hindi was let go, this would only underscore UNRWA’s complicity with Hamas — by refusing to unequivocally state that Al-Hindi was fired at the time of the event, UNRWA prioritized Hamas’s honor and reputation over the truth.”
Al-Hindi also spoke multiple times regarding an “upcoming battle” before the October 7th massacre, when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages.
“This is a clear message to the enemy: We are preparing, and Allah willing, we are on the cusp of a battle that will be the decisive battle between us and the enemy,” Al-Hindi said on July 2, 2023.
Sharif was in charge of 2,000 teachers and 39,000 students as chief of the UNRWA Lebanon Teachers’ Union, according to the report. After his death in an Israeli airstrike in 2024, Hamas eulogized him as a “Leader of the Hamas movement in Lebanon, and member of its leadership abroad.”
The UN did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
