October 7 victims sue UNRWA for aiding Hamas

Published: 26 June 2024

Last updated: 26 June 2024

More than 100 victims of the devastating October 7 Hamas assault on Israel and their families filed a lawsuit on Monday claiming $1 billion in damages from UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinians, accusing that it aided and abetted the terror group’s assault.

The 167-page lawsuit named as defendants the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as well as seven of its past and current leaders, including head Philippe Lazzarini.

It said UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, let Hamas use its facilities for weapons storage, allowed tunnels and command centres to be built under its sites, and funnelled cash into the terror group’s coffers by insisting on paying employees in US dollars.

“Hamas did not carry out these atrocities without assistance,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants were warned repeatedly that their policies were directly providing assistance to Hamas,” it asserted. “In the face of those warnings, Defendants continued those very policies.”

UNRWA, the plaintiffs said, “knowingly providing Hamas with the US dollars in cash that it needed to pay smugglers for weapons, explosives, and other terror materiel.”

Hamas money changers took a 10%-25% spread on transactions, “ensuring that a predictable percentage of UNRWA’s payroll went to Hamas.”

“The resulting atrocities were foreseeable, and the defendants are liable for aiding and abetting Hamas’ genocide, crimes against humanity, and torture,” the lawsuit said.

It also accused UNRWA of using Hamas-approved textbooks in its schools that “indoctrinate children from a young age into a death-cult ideology of hatred and genocide” and produce new recruits for the terror group.