Israeli FM: Guterres ‘personally accountable’ for UNRWA crimes

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar went on the offensive on Monday against the U.N., accusing it of antisemitism, complicity in terrorism, and anti-Israel bias with its legal action against Jerusalem over the UNRWA aid agency for Palestinians.

Sa’ar did this in a fiery speech at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem, where he elaborated on his decision, communicated Sunday at the JNS International Policy Summit, to have Israel sit out hearings this week at a U.N. tribunal on the legality of Israel’s decision to stop cooperating with UNRWA and ban its activity on Israeli territory.

Presenting evidence that 25% of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza were implicated in terrorist activity before Oct. 7, 2023, Sa’ar said: “The U.N. must answer for these crimes. Secretary-General [António] Guterres is personally accountable. He knew what was going on in UNRWA. He knew very well and he knows very well. Israel repeatedly warned him. He did nothing. He went out of his way to whitewash UNRWA.”

Israel, Sa’ar said, “refuses to sit on the bench of the accused in the U.N.’s political side,” the foreign minister said of the tribunal, the International Court of Justice in The Hague. “No country in this position would. It is the U.N. and UNRWA that should be on trial today, not Israel,” Sa’ar said.

The U.N. “has become a rotten, anti-Israel and antisemitic body. Clear evidence shows that under the U.N. and its secretary-general, UNRWA employed terrorists who took an active part in the Oct. 7 massacre. It then covered it up,” Sa’ar said. “We will not grant any legitimacy to this farce if the ICJ continues to be abused like the ICC [International Criminal Court] for antisemitic purposes.

Sa’ar went on to reference Émile Zola’s iconic “J’Accuse…!” letter of 1898, in which he drew international attention to the antisemitic prosecution of army officer Alfred Dreyfus on false charges of treason.

“I accuse UNRWA, I accuse the U.N., I accuse the secretary general, and I accuse all those that weaponized international law and its institutions in order to deprive the most attacked country in the world, Israel, of its most basic right to defend itself,” said Sa’ar, who spoke next to a large banner with the word “J’Accuse” on it next to portraits of Guterres and UNRWA’s chief officer, Philippe Lazzarini.

Amir Weisbrod, deputy director general for the Israel Foreign Ministry’s U.N. and International Organizations Division, presented data according to which 1,462 UNRWA employees in Gaza were involved in terrorist activities before the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel led by Hamas, whose terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 251.

 In November, Israel cut all ties with UNRWA operations in Gaza, Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, in accordance with a law passed after evidence surfaced of Hamas’s infiltration of the agency.

In Israel, experts on UNRWA, including former Knesset member Einat Wilf, dispute claims that Israel’s refusal to work with UNRWA contradicts international law. Israel is not party to any treaty compelling it to engage with the group or allow its activities, Wilf told JNS.

UNRWA provides food, education and medical care to two million people in Gaza. Hundreds of UNRWA workers are believed to have engaged in terrorism in recent years, including on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel. At least one of them was filmed loading the corpse of an Israeli into a vehicle.

Lazzarini has denied allegations of massive complicity by UNRWA in terrorist activities.

That complicity led to the passing of laws banning Israeli officials from engaging with UNRWA and banning the agency’s activities in Israel.

Through UNRWA, the United Nations employs a unique refugee definition for Palestinians. UNRWA defines as refugees not only those who fled Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, but also all their descendants in perpetuity, until a “just solution” emerges for their status. Critics accused the United Nations of insisting on this definition, preserved through UNRWA, to perpetuate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.