Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) faced backlash over the weekend after he defended a U.N. group that has ties to the Hamas terrorist organization.
Van Hollen claimed that the links between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and Hamas were “lies” during a Sunday interview with CBS News’ “Face The Nation” with Margaret Brennan.
His claims come as Democrats have soured on their support for Israel over backlash they’ve faced from anti-Semites within their own party ahead of the November elections.
Van Hollen said that the claims that “somehow UNRWA is a proxy for Hamas are just flat-out lies. That’s a flat-out lie.”
“Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA since at least 2017. That’s been his goal, not just in Gaza, but also in the other places you talked about,” he claimed. “And if you get rid of UNRWA in Gaza today, it is the primary distribution system for food and aid. So, if you cut off funding for UNRWA in Gaza entirely, it means more people will starve, more people won’t get the medical assistance they need. And so it would be a huge mistake to cut them off.”
Several notable users on X fired back at Van Hollen over his remarks.
The popular conservative account “AG” called Van Hollen’s remarks “lies” and said the notion that UNRWA was not in cahoots with Hamas was “nonsense.”
“It’s not just about the UNRWA employees who participated in the 10/7 attack and holding hostages after,” he said. “Or hundreds of UNWRA employees who openly celebrated the attack and cheered Hamas. Or the years of exposing that UNRWA is teaching hate and perpetuating the conflict. It’s also about the fact that almost every UNRWA facility in Gaza was being used to store weapons. The fact that many of them, including the headquarters, had Hamas built tunnels attached. It’s also about the fact that Hamas has stolen hundreds of millions, if not billions, in aid without UNRWA saying a word and often openly covering for them.”
“And if the excuse is they are the only ones with a large distribution infrastructure in Gaza, then the discussion should be about how we go about changing that and, at a minimum, shifting control of those resources to UNHCR which manages all the other refugees in the world,” he added. “The fact that instead of seeking that shift Van Hollen chooses to ignore all of the evidence mentioned above and lie about UNRWA’s complicity speaks volumes about his inability to deal with this issue honestly and his tendency to cover for allies of a terrorist group that is still holding Americans hostage.”
Political writer Noah Pollak added, “I don’t get Van Hollen here. He likes Hamas. He likes that UNRWA works so closely with Hamas and is a major employer of Hamas terrorists. Why is he trying to pretend that isn’t the case?”