According to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees’s U.S. fundraising arm, more than “2 million people” in the Gaza Strip, including 1.7 million refugees, are being killed “while the world watches.”
“As of Jan. 12, deadly Israeli military airstrikes have killed more than 23,708,” the organization also claimed in its emergency appeal, using disputed figures released by Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization.
“We call for an immediate ceasefire and a full lifting of the humanitarian siege. Give now to save lives in Gaza,” added UNRWA USA, an independent nonprofit based in Washington.
“WTH?” tweeted Tamar Sternthal, director of the Israel office of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), in response, accusing the NGO of “just making stuff up.”
According to the Palestinian Authority’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the Gaza Strip is home to a total of approximately 2 million Palestinians.
The Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, does not distinguish between terrorist and civilian deaths. Both Israel and the United States have disputed the casualty figures coming out of Gaza.
The Israel Defense Forces has killed some 9,000 Palestinian terrorists in the airstrikes and ground offensive it launched following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of more than 1,200 people, nearly all of them civilians, in Israel’s northwestern Negev region, interim data published by the military last week shows.
The IDF also killed as many as 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on and immediately following the Oct. 7 invasion.
In December, Israel’s Foreign Ministry put together a classified report calling for the removal of UNRWA from Gaza in the long term, noting that the U.N. agency works against Israel’s interests. The report’s recommendations set out a three-stage process for shrinking and eventually eliminating UNRWA from the Strip.
Last week, Republican lawmakers on the U.S. Congress’s House Foreign Affairs Committee requested testimony from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini about Hamas’s theft of U.N. aid.
A Jan. 15 letter organized by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) asked that Lazzarini testify before the committee about whether UNRWA has aided the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
Shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks, UNRWA appeared to accuse Hamas of stealing fuel and medical supplies from its Gaza City compound. The agency then deleted the post, saying it was “a movement of basic medical supplies from the UNRWA warehouse to health partners.”
In addition to the alleged aid theft, the committee’s letter also noted that Hamas uses UNRWA schools as cover for terror tunnels and that its teachers promote anti-Israel and antisemitic content in their curricula, in violation of U.N. standards of neutrality.
