By: Fern Sidman

The question of whether the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been infiltrated by Hamas has long troubled policymakers, researchers, and security officials. Yet the revelations of recent months, amplified by the latest reporting from VIN News, suggest that the concern is no longer hypothetical but systemic. The organization, founded to provide humanitarian relief for Palestinian refugees, appears to have been deeply compromised, with Hamas operatives, sympathizers, and even family members of the terror group’s most notorious figures working within its ranks.

The most startling case to surface involves Samir Al-Kahlout, a UNRWA teacher in Gaza who publicly identifies himself as the father of Hadheifa Al-Kahlout — better known by his nom de guerre Abu Ubaida, the masked spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

According to documentation revealed by blogger Abu Ali Express and reported by VIN News on Thursday, Samir has openly boasted of his family ties. On his Facebook page, he identifies himself as an UNRWA teacher and previously noted that he spent 15 years teaching in Saudi Arabia, where Abu Ubaida was born. In a 2020 post, he confirmed that his son Asid was part of the family, while another son, Abu Ubaida, had already become a leading Hamas spokesman.

When Abu Ubaida was eliminated in an Israeli strike last week, his brother Asid released a video acknowledging his death. The incident drew immediate scrutiny to the fact that an active UNRWA employee was the father of Hamas’s chief mouthpiece for military terror operations — a relationship that highlights the blurred lines between Hamas operatives and UNRWA staff.

For Israeli analysts, this was not an aberration but rather emblematic of what VIN News has called the “institutional capture” of UNRWA by Hamas.

The revelations about the Al-Kahlout family come against the backdrop of a long and damning record of Hamas penetration into UNRWA’s ranks. In January 2024, reports surfaced of UNRWA employees actively participating in atrocities:

One staff member was accused of kidnapping a woman.

Another was caught distributing ammunition.

A third was identified as participating in a massacre at an Israeli kibbutz where 97 people were slaughtered.

All three were employees of UNRWA, which has been the largest aid provider in Gaza for decades. According to the information provided in the VIN News report, these details were forwarded to the U.S. government by Israeli officials as part of a dossier alleging that at least 12 UNRWA staffers took direct part in Hamas’s October 7 atrocities, including kidnappings and massacres.

For Israel, these were not isolated incidents but part of a larger pattern in which the infrastructure of UNRWA — its schools, clinics, and warehouses — has been manipulated, exploited, and in some cases run by Hamas operatives.

The charges against UNRWA are not confined to staffing but extend to its facilities. Mandy Damari, whose daughter Emily was taken hostage during the October 7 attacks and later released in the first wave of prisoner exchanges, testified to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in March 2025 that her daughter had been held inside UNRWA buildings in Gaza.

“Emily was held in UNRWA facilities and denied medical care after being shot twice,” Mandy Damari told Starmer, according to the VIN News report. “She survived by a miracle. We must get aid to the remaining hostages now.”

Her testimony underscored the grave allegation that UNRWA’s infrastructure itself — ostensibly humanitarian and neutral — has been directly used as staging grounds, detention centers, or cover for Hamas’s war machine.

The accusations against UNRWA strike at the heart of the agency’s credibility. Founded in 1949 to provide relief to Palestinian refugees, the organization today employs more than 30,000 people, the vast majority of whom are Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Critics, particularly in Israel, have long warned that the agency has become indistinguishable from the society it serves — a society where Hamas is not only a ruling power but a pervasive ideological force.

VIN News has documented for years how Hamas influence runs through UNRWA schools, where textbooks frequently glorify martyrdom, delegitimize Israel, and in some cases erase its very existence from maps. Teachers linked to UNRWA have been exposed posting praise for terrorist attacks on social media, while classrooms have been adorned with posters celebrating Hamas “martyrs.”

The latest revelations about the Al-Kahlout family merely underscore what Israel’s Ministry of Defense has long argued: that UNRWA has ceased to function as a neutral humanitarian body and instead has become, willingly or otherwise, a tool of Hamas’s infrastructure.

These revelations carry enormous geopolitical implications. The United States and other Western nations provide hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to UNRWA. Yet as VIN News has reported, Israeli intelligence briefings to Washington in 2024 forced the Biden administration into an uncomfortable position, after evidence showed that a dozen UNRWA staff had taken part in the October 7 massacre.

While the U.S. temporarily suspended some aid, the pressure from European governments and UN agencies led to funding being restored — with promises of reforms that many Israeli officials privately dismissed as cosmetic.

The case of Abu Ubaida’s father being an UNRWA employee raises fresh questions about whether donor nations can credibly continue to channel funds through an agency so compromised by the very terror groups that Western governments have designated as illegitimate.

For Israel, the issue is not merely bureaucratic but existential. As Defense Minister Israel Katz and other senior officials have repeatedly emphasized, every Hamas operative embedded in UNRWA effectively grants the terror group international legitimacy, financial resources, and operational cover.

The fact that UNRWA employees have allegedly participated in massacres, or that its facilities have been used to hold hostages, as VIN News reported, represents not just corruption but complicity.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly urged the dismantling or fundamental restructuring of UNRWA, proposing that its responsibilities be transferred to other UN agencies less vulnerable to ideological capture. So far, the international community has shown little appetite for such radical steps.

The pattern of infiltration is now undeniable:

UNRWA teachers openly tied to Hamas leaders’ families.

UNRWA staff implicated in kidnappings, massacres, and weapons distribution.

UNRWA facilities allegedly used to hold Israeli hostages.

As VIN News has consistently emphasized, the revelations make clear that UNRWA cannot simply be treated as a neutral humanitarian agency. The blurred boundary between Hamas and UNRWA undermines not only the credibility of the United Nations but also the safety of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

The revelations surrounding Samir Al-Kahlout, father of slain Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida and an active UNRWA employee, sharpen the question Israel has long asked: How deeply has Hamas infiltrated UNRWA?

The evidence — from staff accused of participating in massacres to facilities allegedly used to imprison hostages — suggests that infiltration may be too mild a word. UNRWA has not simply been infiltrated; it has, in many respects, become indistinguishable from Hamas’s ecosystem of control in Gaza.

For Israel, as VIN News has reported, this is both a diplomatic and a security crisis. For donor nations, it is a moral reckoning. Funding an agency so intertwined with terrorism risks not only enabling Hamas but perpetuating the very conflict UNRWA was founded to alleviate.

The story of Emily Damari, the testimony of her mother, and the public record of Hamas ties within UNRWA make one conclusion clear: the international community can no longer pretend that UNRWA is merely a humanitarian actor. It is, by association and by function, part of the problemhttps://youtu.be/Ad9m5F6Fb-https://youtu.be/Ad9m5F6Fb-E