Ella Emhoff, stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris, has been raising money for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, despite the United States suspending funding to the group over its extensive terror ties.
Emhoff, who is the daughter of second gentleman Doug Emhoff and his wife from a previous marriage, posted a link to UNRWA’s English-language fundraising page on her Instagram account.
She removed it after the New York Post sent an inquiry to the White House.
Sixteen countries suspended funding to UNRWA after Israel revealed that at least 12 UNRWA employees participated directly in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel. Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, later said that 30 took part in the massacre.
According to Israeli intelligence, some 10% of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza are affiliated with or members of Hamas.
For years, critics have complained about UNRWA-run schools in Gaza, which teach curricula replete with antisemitism and incitement to violence. More than half of the 500,000 students studying in Gaza attend UNRWA-operated schools.
“We urge Ms. Emhoff to go on the website of U.N. Watch and read our reports showing how UNRWA teachers and school principals systematically promote and encourage Jihadi terrorism and the slaughter of Jews,” Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, told the Post.
This isn’t the first time Emhoff has promoted controversial Gaza charities. In November, she linked to a fundraiser from the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, an Ohio-based nonprofit.
Critics argued that money sent to Gaza would end up in the hands of Hamas.
While some media outlets have referred to Emhoff as being Jewish due to the second gentleman’s Jewish background, she has repeatedly clarified that she does not identify with the faith of her father.
“Ella is not Jewish,” a spokesperson for the second stepdaughter told The Forward in 2021, noting that Harris’s husband had been “celebrating Judaism for a few years now but out of an independent search.”