High-ranking United Nations officials are facing fierce backlash after lighting a tribute flame for a man now exposed as a Hamas field commander and terrorist who spent years running U.N.-funded schools while actively recruiting for terror networks.
In an explosive open letter penned last week, U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer demanded that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock issue an immediate retraction and a public apology to the victims of Hamas.
The outrage stems from a June 8 memorial service where top U.N. brass honored fallen agency personnel. Among those memorialized was Imad El Samhouri, a longtime teacher and principal for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
There was just one massive problem: El Samhouri wasn’t only an educator; he was a terrorist.
A recently released Hamas “martyr video” blew the lid off El Samhouri’s double life. The footage revealed he served as a field commander in the Muhammad al-Shamali Battalion of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades. The video showed the “educator” emerging from underground terror tunnels, brandishing machine guns and grenades, and openly declaring that jihad and death were his ultimate aspirations.
According to U.N. Watch, El Samhouri didn’t bother hiding his extreme loyalties. His public social media accounts featured posts praising the murder and kidnapping of Israelis, alongside photos with high-ranking Hamas figures. Even worse, he routinely invited terror officials into his UNRWA classrooms, using school grounds to host terrorists and recruit young Palestinian students into Hamas-affiliated networks.
“[H]ow many UNRWA teachers must emerge from Hamas tunnels before you admit that the terrorists are not merely beneath UNRWA’s schools, but actually inside them?” Neuer wrote in his blistering letter.
The revelations about El Samhouri are just the tip of the iceberg. USAID investigators have probed ties involving at least 1,500 current and former UNRWA staff, referring over 100 individuals to the State Department for potential exclusion from U.S. funding. Furthermore, Israeli intelligence documents previously revealed that dozens of UNRWA school administrators doubled as active Hamas fighters.
Neuer is now calling for a full, independent investigation into how a terrorist commander managed to direct UN schools for over a decade without agency leadership batting an eye. He also pushed for criminal prosecutions of complicit officials and urged international donors to immediately halt funding to the agency.
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