A Republican senator demanded Monday that the United Nations investigate an Israeli journalist’s allegations that one of its employees kept a hostage captive in his attic during recent fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) gave US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield and United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini until Dec. 18 to respond to the claims made by Israel Channel 13 reporter Almog Boker.
Boker reported Nov. 29 that he had interviewed the hostage following their release during a pause in fighting between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas terrorists.
“One of the abductees who was held for almost 50 days in the attic of a house, says he was held by a [UNRWA] teacher!” the reporter wrote on X.
“This is a father of ten children who locked the abductee in the attic, hardly provided him with food and did not provide him with medicine.”
The Post reported in October that the Biden administration has distributed more than $730 million to UNRWA, despite credible allegations that the agency has employed educators who “regularly call to murder Jews” and teach from textbooks “that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis and incite antisemitism,” per a March joint report by the nongovernmental organization UN Watch and the Israeli nonprofit Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.
The UN program was established in 1948 with the intention to aid Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza following Israel’s founding and the subsequent Middle Eastern war. The program, which originally covered 700,000 refugees, has more than 5.6 million registered with it as of 2019 — in part because Palestinian parents are allowed to pass on their refugee status to their children.
“The United States will not be complicit in propping up Hamas’ terrorism, and this report further proves why deep change is necessary within UNRWA before we even consider providing another dollar to the agency,” Blackburn wrote in her letter, first reported by Fox News.
“It is deeply concerning that despite the prevalence of these reports, the United Nations has seemingly done nothing to prevent the siphoning of UNRWA funding by terrorists, and UNRWA continues to double on its claims that each subsequent, documented report is ‘unsubstantiated,’” she added.
Blackburn wants the UN to provide details of any investigation into Boker’s report and an explanation of UNRWA’s “process for ensuring that its facilities are not used to support terrorist activities.”
The UNRWA called Boker’s claim “unsubstantiated” after the reporter failed to respond to the agency’s requests for more information.
“UNRWA and other entities in the United Nations have asked the journalist to provide more information on what we consider to be a very serious allegation,” the agency said in a statement on Friday.
“Despite repeated demands, the journalist has not responded.”
“In the absence of credible information to support this claim, UNRWA requests that the journalist immediately deletes the post,” it said, adding: “Defamation attacks and the spread of misinformation about UNRWA — from any side — directly endanger the lifesaving operations of the Agency and its staff operating on the ground.
“These harmful and presumably gratuitous acts must stop, immediately.”
Boker responded late Saturday with a post on X condemning the international organization for choosing “to attack the testimony of one of the abductees.
“This is the response I gave them: This is not a ‘claim.’ This is the testimony of a survivor, an abductee who was held captive by Hamas. More evidence is coming,” he wrote.
“While Hamas is holding 136 Israeli hostages in Gaza, I cannot share information that could endanger them or identify the survivor.
“I hope UNRWA takes this more seriously than Hamas’s theft of its stocks and misuse of its civilian facilities for terrorist activities.”
UNRWA did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Post.
If the allegations are true, the US must “immediately defund this terrorist-sympathizing organization,” Blackburn told Fox News.
“Not one more US taxpayer dollar should go towards funding UNRWA,” she said.
“We have known for years that this is an antisemitic organization,” Blackburn claimed. “It has become crystal clear that the United Nations is complicit in Hamas’ terrorism.”
The UN has also come under fire after the IDF posted a video of troops discovering what appeared to be rockets, mortars and other explosives hidden under UNRWA boxes in a residential home.
Reuters has previously reported that the former headmaster at a UNRWA school also helped build rockets for Palestinian Islamic Jihad while employed by the international agency.
It also shared posts from UNRWA teachers and administrators celebrating Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, including 33 Americans.
As a result, Germany announced last week it would freeze funding to the UNRWA.
