UNRWA Official Calls Aid Agency a Casualty of October 7 During Hamas-Affiliated Webinar

A spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) attended a Hamas-affiliated webinar last month alongside one of the terror group's operatives and claimed that officials with the embattled aid agency were "also victims" of the October 7 terror rampage through Israel.

Adnan Abu Hasna, an UNRWA media adviser, participated in a February 19 online briefing organized by the Lebanon-based advocacy group Association 302 for Palestinian Refugees. The organization is led by Ali Hweidi, who also serves as an official in the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, a group that Israel designated as a Hamas front in 2021.

During the briefing, which also included a Hamas official and was broadcast on a media outlet linked to the terror group, Abu Hasna argued that UNRWA was also a casualty on the day Hamas slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis in cold blood, an attack the terrorists carried out alongside more than a dozen UNRWA employees. The aid group's participation in the October 7 strike prompted international donors, including the United States, to temporarily pull their funding, leaving it scrambling for cash. The Trump administration permanently froze all U.S. funding to UNRWA shortly after taking office.

"At the end of the day, we at UNRWA were one of the victims of what happened on October 7," Abu Hasna said in Arabic during the briefing, which was titled "UNRWA After the Ban Law and the Arrival of Trump: Dangers and Coping Mechanisms." It centered on ways the aid group and its supporters can sow divisions between the Trump administration and European countries that still support UNRWA's role as the chief humanitarian aid group in Gaza. Israel in January formally banned the aid group from operating, citing its role in the October 7 attack and longstanding concerns over its anti-Semitic educational materials.

Speaking alongside UNRWA's Abu Hasna was Ahmed Al-Hajj, a Hamas official based in Lebanon, and Abdelhamid Siyam, a Rutgers University professor who formerly worked for the United Nations. Another participant, Saleh Abdel Ati, is a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group.

Abu Hasna's participation in the briefing did not raise any red flags with UNRWA, even as the agency tries to rehabilitate its image in the wake of October 7. In the months after the war in Gaza broke it, Israel revealed that scores of UNRWA employees are card-carrying Hamas foot soldiers. Hamas also used UNRWA-run facilities, including hospitals, to hide weapons, transport hostages, and plan further terror attacks on Israel.

Abu Hasna, an UNRWA spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon, "is permitted to participate in public events to clarify the agency's position. Participation in events does not endorse the organizers' position, nor their political affiliation."

During his remarks, Abu Hasna said Israel used October 7 as an excuse "to liquidate UNRWA" and push the international community into ditching the aid group.

Israel, he claimed, "began to talk openly about the need to liquidate UNRWA" and spent more than $150 million on a supposed "counter-media" initiative meant "to distort the image of UNRWA."

"If you type UNRWA in Google now, search engines direct you to something that resembles that this is a terrorist organization," he lamented.

An independent U.N. investigation determined that UNRWA employees did in fact participate in the October 7 attacks. The agency fired nine officials as a result. Abu Hasna during the briefing acknowledged this investigation but said only that "some people may have participated."

Elsewhere in the briefing, Hamas official Al-Hajj advocated for sowing divisions between Europe and the Trump administration in a bid to keep international dollars flowing into UNRWA.

The briefing was broadcast on Facebook and presented by the European Palestinian Media Center, a media outlet once helmed by Dutch activist Amin Abou Rashed. Dutch authorities arrested Rashed and his daughter in 2023 for allegedly raising millions of dollars for Hamas.

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