China Defends UNRWA After Employees Found Engaging in October 7 Atrocities

Chinese state media rode to the rescue of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the U.N. relief operation for Palestinians that saw much of its international funding suspended after shocking revelations that many agency employees were members of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad — and some directly participated in the October 7 atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians.

China’s state-run Global Times on Monday dismissed the controversy, blithely accepting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ assurances that “any U.N. employee involved in accounts of terror will be held accountable.”

“It is necessary to emphasize that both the ongoing probe and the future investigation results should be handled on a case-by-case basis, without politicizing or exaggerating the issue. In particular, precautions should be taken to prevent any serious secondary humanitarian disaster resulting from this incident,” the Global Times pontificated.

The Chinese Communist paper falsely asserted that UNRWA is the only means for delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians, so it must be forgiven all of its sins without any interruption in funding, so the bureaucracy can take its time figuring out precisely which Gaza employee belongs to what bloodthirsty terrorist gang:

During the era of the Trump administration, the US temporarily suspended donations to the agency and even planned to propose alternative solutions. However, after the Biden administration took office, it gradually resumed funding and adopted a cooperative attitude toward UNRWA. Apart from Washington’s change in stance, the main reason for this is that there is currently no alternative to UNRWA, and it remains the only hope for Palestinian refugees. The international community has broad consensus that “collective punishment” against the Gaza population for condemning and combating terrorism is unacceptable and humanitarian needs should be guaranteed. It is completely unnecessary to take sides on this matter. 

The Global Times concluded by lauding the “indispensable role” UNRWA supposedly plays in humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians and pushing for a “two-state solution” as the only way to “achieve a comprehensive, fair, and lasting resolution to the Palestinian issue.”

The UNRWA already had a troubling history of working with Palestinian terrorists before last week’s explosive allegations, including UNRWA schools that were caught teaching murderous hatred of Jews and glorifying terrorism. Some of the now-infamous Hamas terror tunnels were built suspiciously close to UNRWA facilities.

The Global Times mentioned none of this in its apologia for the embattled U.N. agency and the allegations leveled against UNRWA last week were far more serious than the Chinese Communist paper let on.

Israeli intelligence presented the U.S. government with a dossier that documented evidence of the active participation of a dozen UNRWA employees in the October 7 atrocities, including charges of kidnapping and mass murder. 

Some of the suspects were reportedly caught discussing their participation in the massacre by cell phone and text messages. Ten of them were identified as active members of Hamas and one allegedly belonged to another Palestinian terrorist group, Islamic Jihad. Seven of the 12 suspects were employed as teachers at UNRWA schools. One of those teachers was accused of helping to kidnap an Israeli woman and distributing ammunition to the October 7 terrorists.

The Biden administration was sufficiently horrified to almost immediately suspend funding to UNRWA — a step it was probably very reluctant to take, both because of the bad press from the humanitarian angle and because Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump also suspended UNRWA funding.

Fourteen other countries quickly followed suit, including Germany, the second-largest funder of UNRWA after the United States. Others included the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and Australia.

Israel Hayom reported on Monday that more shoes will soon be dropping, including a much longer list of Hamas operatives who have been collecting lucrative paychecks from UNRWA, widespread fraud in the agency’s program for Palestinian refugees, and many more examples of UNRWA employees celebrating the October 7 massacre.

“There is a suspicion in Israel that agency staff take part in the sexual abuse of the Israeli hostages held captive in the strip,” Israel Hayom added. The Israeli paper suggested the next stage of the scandal might be angry recriminations against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not shutting down UNRWA sooner, given the tidal wave of allegations building against it.

U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer on Monday demolished the “few bad apples” defense of UNRWA promoted by apologists like China, pointing out that the latest revelations show that roughly 1,200 UNRWA employees are “actual ‘operatives’ of Hamas or Palestinian Jihad.”

Neuer further cited Israeli intelligence estimates that nearly half of UNRWA’s employees have “close relatives with official ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups.” He pointed to his own organization’s discovery of a group of about 3,000 UNRWA teachers on the messaging platform Telegram that celebrated the October 7 atrocities.

“The UNRWA staff in the group shared photos and video footage of those events and prayed for the terrorists’ success and for Israel’s destruction, in clear violation of U.N. rules,” U.N. Watch reported.