“This is who UNRWA is,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in response to confirmed reports that Hamas’ top leader in Lebanon, Fateh al-Sharif—who was killed in an airstrike on Monday—was also employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

            “If you were surprised that Hamas’s top leader in Lebanon was also employed by UNRWA, stop kidding yourself,” said Smith, the Chair of the congressional global human rights and international organizations subcommittee.

            “UNRWA’s deep ties to terrorism—including its employment of hundreds of staffers with terrorist affiliations—have been vastly documented, including by expert witnesses at four congressional hearings I’ve chaired over the past 18 months on UNRWA’s decades-long complicity in the most vicious forms of antisemitic hate,” said Smith.

            “In an April report, the UN even admitted that it does not vet UNRWA employees for connections or sympathies with Hamas or Islamic Jihad,” Smith said.

            “UNRWA is an incubator of hatred and a child-soldier factory whose textbooks, curricula, summer camps, and official media all exist to perpetuate conflict,” said Smith.

            “The United States and all those who are committed to combating terrorism cannot resume any funding for UNRWA and instead should provide humanitarian assistance to an agency that does not promote, espouse, or affiliate with those that support violence, terrorism or antisemitism,” said Smith, the author of legislation that would permanently prohibit any U.S. funding for UNRWA.

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