The false claims instigated by Israel resulted in the UNRWA firing 12 of its staffers earlier this year due to unfounded allegations that they actively participated in the Hamas terror campaign.
A February 2024 report from the UNRWA that was reviewed by Reuters details allegations of mistreatment of Palestinians in Israeli detention centers, including several Palestinians who work for the UNRWA.
According to UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma, the agency is planning to give an 11-page, unpublished report about these allegations to agencies both inside and outside the United Nations for evaluation for potential human rights abuses.
"When the war comes to an end there needs to be a series of inquiries to look into all violations of human rights," she said. (Related: Israel's "holy war" against Gaza already expanding to include Syria, Yemen.)
UNRWA: A tool of Hamas?
The report in question details how Palestinian UNRWA staffers were detained and abused by the Israel Defense Forces. Israeli soldiers subjected the staffers to severe physical beatings and waterboarding, and threatened to hurt their family members.
"Agency staff members have been subject to threats and coercion by the Israeli authorities while in detention, and pressured to make false statements against the Agency, including that the Agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff members took part in the 7 October 2023 atrocities," the report explains.
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Palestinian detainees also reported that Israeli soldiers humiliated and beat other detainees as well, subjecting them to dog attacks, sexual violence, and deprivation of medical treatment. This horrific abuse at the hands of Israel has resulted in the deaths of many.
Since the UNRWA refused to allow Reuters to see transcripts of its interviews with those making these allegations, some are saying that this points to the UNRWA being a tool of Hamas.
"Obviously, UNRWA has much to gain by falsely accusing Israel after it has been exposed as a tool of Hamas," one commenter at Times of Israel wrote.
Another suggested that Israel is abusing captives in much the same way as it claimed Hamas did to Israeli hostages. At the same time, the UN "is not a fan of the Jewish state," so determining which claims are true and which are false is a challenge.
Someone else told the story of a Jewish photojournalist friend of his who encountered the very same thing the UNRWA is now claiming Israel did to its Palestinian employees.
"Israel has long used torture as a means of trying to coerce Palestinians into telling them what they want to hear," this person wrote. "In the 1970s one of my Jewish friends who was a photojournalist had an assignment to go to Lebanon and Jordan to report on Palestinian refugee camps. While in Jordan a Palestinian man told him he could stay in his apartment. When the man took off his shirt at night my friend saw that his back was covered with many small scars."
"He asked the man what happened to him. The man said that when he was 17 the Jews captured him. They tortured him trying to make him admit he was a fedayeen. They broke both of his arms and put out their cigarettes not just on his back but on other parts of his body. I saw the picture of his back. The man said that before he was tortured, he was not a fedayeen. The torture made him a fedayeen."
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