A new report is reigniting scrutiny of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), alleging that the U.N. body knowingly employed Hamas operatives as teachers and principals and allowed the terror group to entrench itself across the agency’s school system.

The 56-page report, published Wednesday by Geneva-based NGO U.N. Watch, claims that UNRWA’s schools in Gaza and Lebanon have been “hijacked by Hamas and turned into incubators of hate.” The group’s director, Hillel Neuer, charged that “for years, governments have been writing billion-dollar checks to UNRWA believing they were investing in peace and tolerance. Our investigation reveals the shocking truth: donor states are financing terror by proxy.”

The findings line up with long-standing Israeli intelligence assessments. According to the report, at least 15% of senior UNRWA educators in Gaza are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The agency’s staff structure—30,000 employees, with only 120 international officials—has left local unions dominated by Hamas effectively in control of curriculum, hiring, and school governance.

The report, titled “Schools in the Grip of Terror: How UNRWA Allowed Hamas Chiefs to Control Its Education System,” also highlights case studies. It points to the 2021 ouster of Matthias Schmale, then the agency’s Gaza chief, after he expressed mild support for Israel in a media interview. Within 10 days, Hamas-linked union leaders had forced him out. Meanwhile, Suhail al-Hindi, a senior Hamas figure long linked to the UNRWA teachers’ union, kept his post for years and even appeared publicly alongside Hamas leaders.

The investigation also notes that some of the most notorious Palestinian terrorists—including perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Massacre and Mohammed Deif, the late commander of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades—emerged from UNRWA’s schools.

The agency, founded in 1949, has long drawn criticism from Israel and its allies, who accuse it of perpetuating conflict by embedding Palestinian refugees and their descendants in a separate system. The new report argues that the problem is not negligence but institutional capture: “UNRWA has handed children over to the very operatives who recruit child soldiers, glorify suicide bombers, and preach the annihilation of a U.N. member state,” it states.

Western donors provide roughly $1 billion annually, and recent revelations about Hamas infiltration into UNRWA staff have already sparked debates in Washington, Brussels, and Jerusalem over whether funding should continue.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)