AOC Defends UNRWA, Condemns Funding Pause After At Least 10% Of Org. Were Found To Be Involved With Hamas, Islamic Jihad

OAN’s Brooke Mallory
10:19 AM – Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed her outrage on Monday over the White House’s decision to stop funding a United Nations agency whose employees took part in the terrorist attack against Israel on October 7^th by Hamas.

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“Cutting off support to @UNRWA – the primary source of humanitarian aid to 2 million+ Gazans – is unacceptable,” said Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who reps parts of the Bronx and Queens, posted on X in response to the Biden administration’s Friday move against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

“Among an organization of 13,000 UN aid workers, risking the starvation of millions over grave allegations of 12 is indefensible,” she added. “The US should restore aid immediately.”

John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, stated on NBC’s “Today” program that “UNRWA does important work across the region, certainly in Gaza.”

“They have helped save thousands of lives, and we shouldn’t impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the terrible, just terrible allegations lobbied against just a small number of their employees,” Kirby continued.

Around the same time that Kirby and Ocasio-Cortez made their statements, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Israeli intelligence discovered that at least 12 UNRWA employees actively participated in the Hamas attack, which claimed an estimated 1,200 lives, at the least. Additionally, Mossad, Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, revealed that approximately 10% of the organization’s employees had ties to either the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Hamas, and that half of the 12,000 employees had close relatives who were members of either terrorist organization.

Six of the individuals engaged in the Oct. 7^th attack are said to have participated in the actual assault, while the remaining individuals oversaw logistics, including obtaining weapons. Two participated in the kidnapping of Israelis, while two more were traced to locations of the slaughter of civilians.

When he took over presidential office in early 2021, President Joe Biden reinstated financing for UNRWA, which had been stopped by the previous administration of former President Donald Trump in 2018.

Since then, the U.S. has given the organization at least $730 million, despite proof that it hires instructors who incite anti-Israel sentiment.

The Israeli intelligence dossier states that seven of the twelve UNRWA personnel engaged in the attack were teachers in elementary or secondary education.