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The executive director of UN Watch has accused a senior DFAT official of lying to the Senate about claims the Australian government was taking allegations of links between UNRWA and Hamas seriously.
UN Watch, a human rights organisation based in Geneva, has been a key body in exposing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees for its ties to the Gaza terrorist group.
Accusations of a link between the groups had been levelled against UNRWA for multiple years before accusations emerged in January that 12 of its employees had been involved in Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.
Following the grave allegations, Australia joined multiple international allies in suspending its latest tranche of funding to the refugee organisation.
But when asked about UNRWA’s links to Hamas at Senate Estimates last week, DFAT First Assistant Secretary Marc Innes-Brown admitted the allegations had been raised “for years” before disparaging groups critical of the United Nations body like UN Watch.
“I think it’s generally known that there are at least several organisations that, their agenda is to focus on misconduct by UN,” Mr Innes-Brown said.
On Wednesday, though, Executive Director of UN Watch Hillel Neur fiercely hit back at Mr Innes-Brown’s comments, as well as the federal government’s failure to permanently axe UNRWA funding.
Mr Neur said the DFAT official had “told lies” about UN Watch’s reports and refuted suggestions his organisation had “an agenda”.
“It’s absurd for him to contest the facts. He’s trying to disparage us,” Mr Neur told Sky News Australia’s Sharri Markson.
“He told the Australian Senate that they’re taking the allegations seriously. It’s a total lie.
“All they’re seeking to do is to disparage us and avoid accountability for the fact that they gave tens of millions of dollars of Australian taxpayer money to fund a group that is complicit with Hamas.”
Australia, the US and the handful of other Western nations who suspended funding have said they would await the outcome of several investigations into the claims before making any new commitment to support the UN body.
On Thursday, a new United States intelligence report found it was likely a number of UNRWA staff were involved in Hamas’s October 7 attack, but that wider claims from Israel that many UN staff have links to militant groups could not be verified.
Israel has suggested more than ten per cent of UNRWA’s about 12,000 Gazan staff have links to either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
While the US report does not deny the existence of links, it appraises them in a far more measured tone than public statements from American and Israeli officials.
The National Intelligence Council assessed with “low confidence” that a small number of UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 attacks – a finding of low confidence suggests the US intelligence community believes the claims are plausible, but cannot make a stronger assertion because it lacks its own independent confirmation.
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