Ocean County Leader

In response to confirmed reports that Hamas' top leader in Lebanon, Fateh al-Sharif, was also employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) issued a statement highlighting his concerns about the agency. Al-Sharif was killed in an airstrike on Monday.

"This is who UNRWA is," said Smith, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "If you were surprised that Hamas's top leader in Lebanon was also employed by UNRWA, stop kidding yourself."

Smith, who chairs the congressional global human rights and international organizations subcommittee, emphasized UNRWA's alleged connections to terrorism. "UNRWA’s deep ties to terrorism—including its employment of hundreds of staffers with terrorist affiliations—have been vastly documented, including by expert witnesses at four congressional hearings I’ve chaired over the past 18 months on UNRWA’s decades-long complicity in the most vicious forms of antisemitic hate," he said.

Smith referred to an April report from the United Nations that admitted it does not vet UNRWA employees for connections or sympathies with Hamas or Islamic Jihad. He described UNRWA as "an incubator of hatred and a child-soldier factory whose textbooks, curricula, summer camps, and official media all exist to perpetuate conflict."

Smith called for an end to U.S. funding for UNRWA and urged support for humanitarian assistance through agencies that do not promote violence or terrorism. "The United States and all those who are committed to combating terrorism cannot resume any funding for UNRWA and instead should provide humanitarian assistance to an agency that does not promote, espouse, or affiliate with those that support violence, terrorism or antisemitism," he said.

Smith has authored legislation aimed at permanently prohibiting any U.S. funding for UNRWA.

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