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‘Blood on their hands’: Report outs WSJ for unverified claims of Hamas links to Unrwa

Many blame the legacy paper for the mass defunding of the aid agency and the death of multiple workers
A United Nations worker checking destruction of a school in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza run by UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees that was hit by Israeli bombardment, on 15 July 2024 (Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Reuters)
By Maysa Mustafa
Published date: 5 August 2024 21:32 BST | Last update: 3 months 2 weeks ago

In January, The Wall Street Journal quoted “intelligence reports” to say that 12 members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or Unrwa, had taken part in the 7 October Hamas-led attack on southern Israel and that 10 percent of the agency’s 12,000 workers in Gaza had ties to Palestinian armed groups.

The report came only a couple of days after Israeli officials accused a dozen Unrwa workers of taking part in the attack.

The New York Times was the first to publish a detailed report on the alleged 12 Unrwa workers, but the WSJ added weight to the allegation, with its claimed findings of links between Hamas and the aid agency. 

In response, the US immediately froze its funds to Unrwa, which prompted a dozen countries, including Germany and Britain, to follow suit – stalling a total of $450m. Unrwa, which was founded after the Nakba (catastrophe) for the Palestinian refugee population when the state of Israel was created, has been the main source of support for Palestinians not only in Gaza but in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon as well.

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In the Gaza Strip alone, the agency has operated over 183 schools (70 percent of which have now been hit by Israeli air strikes) and 22 health centres. The sudden halt of funding put additional stress on those who were displaced internally in Gaza, limiting what little access there already was to food, shelter, and medical care. The US kept its funds frozen for three months before it resumed in early April. 

A recent report by Semafor said that months after the WSJ’s report, the top editor admitted the paper didn’t know – and still doesn’t know – whether its allegation was true. 

In an email from earlier this year that Semafor found, WSJ chief news editor Elena Cherney wrote: “The fact that the Israeli claims haven’t been backed up by solid evidence doesn’t mean our reporting was inaccurate or misleading, that we have walked it back or that there is a correctable error here.”

According to three people familiar with the situation, the Semafor report later says that the paper's reporters “tried and failed to corroborate the 10% claim at the center of the story” and that journalists working on Middle East reportage for the publication have also raised concerns about elements of the paper’s coverage of the war more broadly – with many feeling that it is biased towards Israel. 

A day after the Semafor report was published, Unrwa commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini released a statement on the internal investigation findings by the Office of Internal Oversight Services into the allegations of Unrwa staff being involved in the attack on 7 October.

Of the 19 suspected cases, 10 were dismissed and nine “may have been involved”. 

"The evidence – if authenticated and corroborated – could indicate that the UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the attacks of 7 October," Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General, said in a statement on Monday.

Lazzarini proactively terminated the contracts of these nine staff members and said they will not be allowed to work with Unrwa again. 

Real-world impact?

Many who have been sharing the Semafor findings have expressed their frustration with the legacy paper for being uncritical of Israel as it disseminates unverified information.  

Others have pointed out that this very report was used as justification for the killing of multiple UN members by Israel. 

Many Palestinian and Arab journalists took to social media to express that the Semafor report was not only unsurprising but was expected. 

Another claim that received international attention and outrage, and has been used as a justification for Israel’s war on Gaza by world leaders like President Joe Biden, was the alleged widespread rape that occurred on 7 October. The New York Times expose, “Screams Without Words”, detailed the alleged mass rape which The Intercept soon found was based on sources that either came straight from the Israeli military or were unverified by other sources. The NYT has not retracted the expose.

For the last ten months, many online have repeatedly pointed fingers at publications like the NYT and the WSJ for spreading information from the Israeli government with little to no verification of the information. Literary Hub editor Dan Sheehan recently took to the social media platform X to say that “NYT’s ‘Screams Without Words’ and WSJ’s ‘UNRWA-is-Hamas’ are the two most harmful pieces of laundered Hasbara we’ve ever seen.”

Organisations like Writers Against the War on Gaza have made it their primary goal to put direct pressure on legacy publications like the NYT, WSJ and AP to correct any misleading headlines and information with their monthly newspaper edition, the “New York Crimes,” and have spearheaded a campaign for readers to un-subscribe to the NYT.

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