UN Watch has definitively proven that UNWRA leadership was complicit in educating young Palestinians to become terrorists for Hamas.  They knowingly taught K-12 Palestinian youth to hate Israelis and Jews and kill them in the name of Hamas, Allah, and Islam.  It teaches them that "martyrdom" against the non-believer is a goal unto itself.

Canada has committed more money—up to $100 million over four years—to the United Nations agency responsible for the welfare of Palestinian refugees.   To be clear, that's $100 million dollars of additional debt that Canadians are funding to an agency that, whatever their mandates and protestations, supports terrorist activities in Gaza and the West Bank.  UNRWA is not a benign humanitarian agency; it operates at the pleasure of HAMAS and the Palestinian Authority.  

IN 2016, UNRWA signed a joint “Framework for Cooperation” outlining Ottawa’s expectations regarding UNRWA’s reform initiatives, regular monitoring and reporting, compliance with Canadian anti-terrorism requirements, and other oversight measures.  They never lived up to this commitment and yet Canada and Carney keep supporting their corruption.  The announcement of new funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) came June 26, 2026, in a statement from Harjit Sajjan, minister of international development.

The United States and Sweden have halted all funding to UNRWA.  It is time Canada recognized UNWRA’s complicity in fomenting hate and violence against Israel.  It is time for Canada to stop wasting Canadian taxpayers’ hard-earned money on UNWRA.  The Palestinian youth deserve better.

UN WATCH

“UN Secretary-General António Guterres is the one who infamously, just two weeks after October 7, came before the United Nations and said: “Yes, I condemn the attacks of October 7,” and then added: “It is also important to note that the attacks did not happen in a vacuum.” Guterres went on to list numerous alleged Palestinian grievances against Israel.

Effectively, António Guterres was justifying the attacks of October 7. But not everything he said was wrong. When he said the attacks “did not happen in a vacuum,” that was true. Because nothing we do happens in a vaccum.

But if Mr. Guterres had even a smidgen of self-reflection, he might have asked himself: Who educated the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7 and committed atrocities. Who taught them?

According to UNRWA's former legal advisor in Gaza, Johann Soufi, 90% of those in Gaza attended UNRWA schools.

So you’re right, Mr. Guterres—the attacks did not happen in a vacuum. The perpetrators of those atrocities were graduates of your education system; they were graduates of your schools.

Last year, in UN Watch's report Schools in the Grip of Terror, we exposed the fact that the head of the teachers’ union in Gaza, Suhail al-Hindi—a teacher for 30 years, a school principal, and the head of 8,000 UNRWA teachers funded by Western taxpayers—was a member of the Hamas politburo. He still is. You can see photographs of him with Yahya Sinwar.

Everybody knew.

Philippe Lazzarini is about to retire as head of UNRWA, and we will demand his indictment for complicity in war crimes, terrorism, and crimes against humanity. He cannot claim he did not know. He knew — and we have the receipts.

I am happy to say that the United States government has now defunded UNRWA. The United States used to provide $400 million a year. Today, that figure is zero. Sweden has also ended funding worth tens of millions of dollars.

But the battle continues. France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and other European countries are still funding an agency that, in the words of Secretary Rubio, is “an arm of Hamas.”

If we want peace in this region, if we want deradicalization, it begins and ends with UNRWA.”