The Israeli Knesset’s recent decision to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from Israeli territory has been met with fierce backlash from Israel’s critics, with the United Nations suggesting the decision sets a “dangerous precedent.” However, the only “dangerous precedent” here is UNRWA’s use of the guise of “humanitarian assistance” to obscure material support for terrorism. 

Failing to hold UNRWA accountable for its actions, including its support for the brutal slaughter of Israeli civilians carried out by some UNRWA officials, puts global humanitarian aid at risk by calling into question the motives and operations of true aid organizations. Accordingly, the United States should follow Israel’s lead and defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

This August, nine UNRWA staffers were fired after an investigation by the UN’s internal inspector general (OIOS) discovered they had participated in the violent October 7 terrorist attack. On one hand, UNRWA should be commended for finally publicly admitting it employed terrorists responsible for the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. But the kudos should end there. For the entirety of its existence, UNRWA has funded Palestinian terrorism in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan. UNRWA’s antisemitic curriculum has brainwashed generations of Palestinians, encouraged a perpetual Palestinian victimhood mentality, and manipulated the international community into funding its perverse ideology.

UNRWA’s announcement of its staffers’ involvement in terrorism should not have been surprising. For years, American officials and civil society organizations have sounded the alarm, attempting to raise awareness of the perpetually dysfunctional organization. Despite America’s $7.3 billion in taxpayer-funded contributions since the program was founded, these calls for oversight fell on deaf ears. It was only the Trump administration, led by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that decided to take seriously the antisemitic bias, radicalization, and terrorist support within UNRWA. After a significant and thoughtful review, the administration ultimately decided to withdraw all American taxpayer support.

As one could imagine, the decision to pull funding was met with swift condemnation. Disgraced former Commissioner General Pierre Krahenbuhl, who subsequently resigned from UNRWA amid allegations of misconduct, at the time warned the Middle East would explode, the schools would close, and the Palestinians would have nowhere to go. 

Of course, this did not happen. When President Trump suspended funding to UNRWA, neighboring countries stepped in to cover the cost. There was no explosion of violence, no mass canceling of schools or camps. Instead, there was, for the first time, responsible stewardship of U.S. taxpayer contributions to an endemically corrupt organization. Furthermore, the Trump administration’s review turned up damning information about the program’s work—from the storage of weapons in UNRWA facilities to the firing of rockets from UNRWA schools to the racist propaganda and glorification of “martyrdom” in UNRWA textbooks.

Despite this evidence, when President Biden took office, he irresponsibly moved to resume funding to UNRWA—contributing a total of nearly $1.2 billion over the last three years alone. There was no budget shortfall that necessitated this action, and certainly, with a national debt of $32 trillion at the time, we could have used it here at home. How much American taxpayer support did Biden inadvertently siphon over to Hamas through the decision to refund? How many Americans’ hard-earned cash was unwittingly used to construct terror tunnels and provide other in-kind contributions to a designated terrorist entity?

UNRWA’s involvement with Hamas is a deeply serious issue that cannot be papered over. If the UN is serious about its role as a global institution, it must take the following actions.

First, accountability requires taking responsibility, and that starts at the top. Phillippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, oversees an organization in which there are reports that up to 10 percent of his staff have links to militant organizations. Both he and his hiring managers should immediately tender their resignation. There is simply no latitude that should be granted for regularly employing terrorists.

Second, the allegations against UNRWA employees are not simply dismissible offenses—they include involvement in terrorist attacks that resulted in numerous cases of rape and the murder of over 1,200 civilians. No sane country would consider “firing” an appropriate punishment for actions that aided and contributed to the murder of its citizens. Israel deserves justice, and the nine individuals determined by the OIOS investigation should immediately be turned over to Israeli authorities to face a fair trial.

Third, the OIOS must also officially publish—at least to its contributing donors—the entire results of its investigation as well as its process, showing the evidence it has both for those supposedly exonerated as well as those it has found have credible proof of involvement. Unfortunately, when your agency funnels money to terrorist organizations and employs murderers and rapists, you have no reasonable expectation that people should just trust your process.

Finally, UNRWA should conduct an assessment of how much donor aid was siphoned off to support terror tunnels, which could be as high as $1 billion. These funds should be publicly calculated and returned to donor nations whose citizens do not want their hard-earned dollars to be spent on developing underground terrorist networks. If they do not, the United States should consider designating UNRWA as a sponsor of terrorism. Certainly, if any other individual, company, or state funneled $1 billion of in-kind contributions to a designated terrorist group, that would merit this distinction. After all, the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation, which funneled $12 million—just over 1 percent of the amount UNRWA allegedly funneled to Hamas—was subsequently labeled a foreign terrorist organization, with its leaders found guilty of providing material support to terrorist organizations.

Notably, none of these solutions addresses long-standing concerns about antisemitism and radicalism promoted by UNRWA. None of these solutions addresses UNRWA’s continuous and erroneous expansion of the definition of “refugee” in a manner inconsistent with that defined for any other refugee population, thereby directly imperiling peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But should the UN want to be taken seriously in any other context and if they want to ensure nefarious actors do not use “humanitarian aid” as a screen for terrorism, they have a narrowing window to demonstrate long overdue improvements in accountability and transparency. In the meantime, the U.S. government cannot fund UNRWA. As the last decades of UNRWA’s history have shown us, UNRWA will never hold itself accountable. 

Carrie Filipetti is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and former Senior Advisor to Ambassador Nikki Haley at the U.S. Mission to the UN.

Image: Chuck Kennedy / U.S. Department of State / Flickr.