White House forcefully defends UNRWA amid alleged terrorism ties: ‘They do great work in Gaza’

The White House defended the United Nations Relief and Works Agency Thursday as Republican lawmakers are demanding investigations into reports that the aid body’s staff has embedded with Hamas and aiding the terror organization in Gaza and throughout the Middle East.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby defended the agency, however, when asked if Republicans’ calls to investigate the agency have shifted the administration’s “strategy” regarding the organization. Former President Donald Trump forcibly cut ties with UNRWA in 2018, but the group again began receiving money from the U.S. after President Joe Biden entered office in 2021. Since that time, the U.S. has sent UNRWA more than $700 million.

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“The U.N. relief agency does important work. In fact, they’re doing a lot of heavy lifting right now in terms of trying to get food, water, medicine to the people of Gaza all up and down the strip. They’re doing a lot of work, and they’re doing it in harm’s way,” Kirby told reporters. “You can’t hold them accountable for the depredations of Hamas and the way Hamas uses civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, for command and control or storage of weapons for the holding of hostages.

“I’ll let the U.N. speak to their agency and what alarms they want to raise or not,” he continued. “They do great work in Gaza, and they are important to helping get the humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza. And we’re grateful for that work that they’re doing very much in harm’s way. I will let them speak to whatever concerns they have over Hamas’ activities and the degree to which that they feel obligated to speak out or not.”

Kirby reiterated that “it is not some state secret here that Hamas hides itself in hospitals and schools and digs tunnels under residential complexes and neighborhoods, and this is what the Israelis are up against, a group that absolutely doesn’t abide by the laws of war and has no compunction about putting civilian lives in greater danger.”

Longstanding concerns about UNRWA’s tolerance for terrorism escalated after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, and it took on a greater role in distributing the massive influx of humanitarian aid that is arriving in Gaza.

“For decades, funding UNRWA has been a form of automatic virtue signaling and support for the myths of Palestinian victimhood,” Gerald Steinberg, president of the Israeli watchdog group NGO Monitor and emeritus political studies professor at Bar Ilan University, recently told the Washington Examiner. “UNRWA should have been closed years ago to transform the Palestinian economy from total dependence to jobs and growth.”

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You can watch Thursday’s briefing in full below.

Gabe Kaminsky contributed to this report.