On Jan. 20, the Associated Press falsely reported, “Often with little evidence [Israel] says UNRWA employs and maintains ties with militant groups including Hamas.” [Emphasis added]
UNRWA staff member comforts a child at a school shelter in Nuseirat camp, Gaza Strip, March 12, 2025. (credit: Ashraf Amra, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, via Wikimedia Commons)
Similarly, The New York Times and Reuters, citing statements by UNRWA, also charged Israel with not providing any evidence of the UN agency’s systemic ties to terrorist groups.
These claims of Israel lacking evidence could have easily been disproven by the journalists who wrote the stories with a simple Google search of “UNRWA Hamas.”
This search would reveal publicly available Israeli government materials containing extensive evidence illustrating ties between Hamas and UNRWA, based on analysis conducted by the Israel Defense Intelligence (IDI), a branch of the IDF’s general staff. There are also analyses performed by UN Watch and IMPACT-se.
Government evidence of terrorist links to UNRWA
According to the IDI’s assessment, approximately 12 percent of UNRWA employees were identified as ranking members of Hamas or other designated terrorist organizations. By cross-referencing UNRWA staff rosters with manpower records of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the IDI identified 75 employees linked to Hamas’s military wing. Another 79 UNRWA principals and deputy principals were affiliated with Hamas and one with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
The report includes photographs of several individuals and official documentation showing matching identification numbers appearing on both UNRWA staff lists and terrorist organization letterhead.
Screenshot of the Israeli government documents containing evidence linking Hamas and UNRWA. This screenshot shows an example of that evidence: An UNWRA school principal who also serves in Hamas’s military wing.
Evidence linking UNRWA and Hamas was credible enough for The Wall Street Journal to write an entire news report on Jan. 29, 2024, detailing how Palestinian terrorist groups had infiltrated UNRWA. This report also cited intelligence estimates shared with U.S. officials indicating that roughly half of UNRWA employees in Gaza have close relatives in terrorist organizations.
Additionally, the WSJ reported that nearly a quarter (23 percent) of UNRWA’s male employees had ties to Hamas, a figure exceeding the estimated 15 percent affiliation rate among adult males in Gaza overall. This suggests, according to the report, a higher degree of militancy within the agency than in the surrounding population. UNRWA, per the WSJ, was aware of the information detailed in these documents after U.S. officials briefed the agency on the intelligence.
Evidence linking Hamas to UNRWA dates back at least to 2014, when the agency admitted that approximately 20 rockets were found hidden in a vacant school in Gaza. A 2015 U.N. investigation found its facilities were widely used to store and launch rockets during the 2014 Israel-Hamas conflict.
Thousands of UNRWA teachers have publicly glorified terrorism and praised the Oct. 7 attack. Additional research by IMPACT-se has exposed how UNRWA textbooks glorify terrorists, promote antisemitism and encourage militancy. At least 100 Hamas members who have committed terrorist attacks were graduates of UNRWA’s educational system, including Ismail Haniyeh, slain former political leader of Hamas.
Terrorist links to UNRWA leadership
The hands of the head of UNRWA, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, are far from clean. He was widely quoted across news sites as gospel, arguing that Israel’s actions broke international law.
By virtue of his position, he is obligated to preserve the organization’s neutrality, and to prevent the agency’s involvement in terrorism. UNRWA’s Neutrality Framework extends this obligation to employees’ public statements, including on social media, as well as their dealings with donors, partners, and aid recipients.
Despite this obligation, Lazzarini has attended annual meetings alongside representatives of Hamas, PIJ, and other terrorist organizations. Some of the photos of him alongside terrorists, originally identified by UN Watch, were taken as recently as December 2023, after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini speaking at the UN in Geneva in December 2024 (credit: Egyptian Channel 1, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Lazzarini’s predecessor, Pierre Krahenbuhl, similarly held meetings with members of terrorist organizations. UNRWA officials have regularly negotiated with terrorists, acceding to their demands on several occasions.
In May 2024, Lazzarini traveled to Beirut, Lebanon to resolve agency employee protests over UNRWA’s suspension of then Lebanon Teachers Union head Fateh Sharif, who doubled as a Hamas ranking member. Lazzarini negotiated with the protest leaders, who represented several terrorist organizations. After the meeting, local press reported that the matter was resolved and Sharif continued in his UNRWA position until he was killed later that year.
In June 2021, the former deputy commissioner-general Leni Stenseth visited Gaza and capitulated to former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks. The meeting came after Palestinian factions declared UNRWA Gaza Director Matthias Schmale and his deputy personae non gratae due to Schmale’s remarks in an N12 interview. His sin? Acknowledging that Israeli strikes in Gaza had been very precise.
According to al Mayadeen, Sinwar said that the popular stance against Schmale is not reflective of their positive opinion of the agency as a whole. Stenseth then removed Schmale from his position after his remarks, saying that they were “indefensible.”
In late September 2011, UNRWA suspended Suhail al-Hindi, then head of the UNRWA Gaza Staff Union, over his role on Hamas’ Politburo, the group’s main decision-making body, according to Reuters. After three months of union-led protests and strikes, he was reinstated, following a visit to Gaza by the then-head of UNRWA to quell the unrest, according to UN Watch. In negotiations, UNRWA management agreed, according to al-Hindi, that it would no longer dismiss local staff for their “external activities,” a reference to terrorism.
Even the controversial Colonna Report, a supposedly “independent” review of UNRWA established by the UN itself and issued in February 2024, cited unions as a significant impediment to UNRWA’s obligation of neutrality.
The review was hardly independent, however, and demonstrated the UN’s resistance to transparency and accountability for UNRWA. Before UN Secretary-General António Guterres formally announced it, Lazzarini stated that the agency would commission a review into allegations “attacking, blaming, [and] accusing the agency of collusion with Hamas,” and that UNRWA itself would select the reviewer. The agency ultimately appointed former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna to lead the review, alongside three Scandinavian institutions, all of which had demonstrable records of favorable commentary on UNRWA and little to no public criticism of the agency.
Colonna met with Lazzarini in June 2023, when, as France’s foreign minister, she reaffirmed France’s support for UNRWA. Under her leadership, France increased its contributions to the agency, becoming UNRWA’s sixth-largest donor in 2023. This financial and institutional relationship alone raises reasonable questions about the review’s independence considering a negative review would reflect poorly on Colonna’s own actions while in her leadership position.
Manipulative article structure
Beyond factual errors, the very structure of these articles is manipulative, misleadingly shaping readers’ perceptions of events.
The lead of an article not only highlights the main news but also frames how readers interpret it. In every news site examined here, the lead casts Israel as the aggressor against a non-governmental agency assisting refugees.
For example, the WSJ reported: “Israeli authorities began tearing down structures on a United Nations compound in Jerusalem on Tuesday, escalating a battle between the government and the main agency tasked with providing assistance to Palestinian refugees.” [Emphasis added]
The Times, Reuters, CNN, and AP all have similar leads.
The next few paragraphs in each of these articles provide more details of the Israeli destruction, and then generally, a condemnation of the move from a UN official.
After sufficiently maligning Israel, only then do the authors introduce the subject of Hamas’ infiltration of UNRWA.
But each article employs several further structural practices to slant the coverage. For example, words like “alleged,” “claimed,” or “accused” are emphasized in relation to Israeli viewpoints, whereas the UN’s viewpoints are left unchallenged and unqualified.
The articles then sandwich the matter of Hamas’ infiltration with self-serving, inaccurate, and unchallenged denials and excuses from the U.N. The false claims of a “lack of evidence” of Hamas infiltration work to delegitimize Israel’s side of the story.
Where UNRWA wrongdoing is acknowledged, the reports quickly absolve the UN agency of culpability, by emphasizing that the agency fired several staff for participating in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, while omitting that Hamas’ infiltration demonstrably extends far beyond just a few staff. Such absolutions are then followed by even more condemnations of Israel’s actions.
There has been extensive research that has found readers remember information presented first and last better than any information presented in the middle. In this case, the subject of Hamas’ infiltration into UNRWA is always sandwiched between information that portrays the organization as virtuous.
Framing push against UNRWA as a partisan cause
The WSJ further discredits criticism of UNRWA, framing opposition to the agency as a right-wing cause: “Right-wing Israeli politicians have been at the forefront of the crusade against the agency. The latest attack comes at the beginning of an election year.”
This is misleading as politicians across Israel’s political spectrum have voiced opposition to UNRWA. Even left-wing Democrats MK Merav Michaeli agrees with the “unbelievable consensus in Israel against UNRWA today” due to Oct. 7. Opposition leader and center-left Yesh Atid party chair Yair Lapid also agrees that UNRWA “cannot be part of” Gaza’s future.
According to a 2025 Pew Research Center study, 80 percent of Israelis have overwhelmingly negative opinions of the U.N. According to a 2024 Panel Project survey in early 2024, 76 percent of Israelis said they support the post-war removal of UNRWA from Gaza.
Framing opposition to UNRWA as partisan inaccurately minimizes the society-wide belief to merely a right-wing cause, further discrediting the stance.
This mischaracterization mirrors the wider reporting pattern where information is cherry-picked to support one narrative, while the other is brushed under the rug.
Ultimately, these reports serve to shield UNRWA from scrutiny and cast Israel as the villain.