A report by WIRED published last week indicates that the Israeli government is purchasing advertisements targeting searches for “UNRWA” and “UNRWA USA.” This strategy is intended to redirect potential donors interested in supporting the agency to a webpage that outlines reasons for questioning UNRWA’s reliability. Notably, the agency has not clarified whether the employment of Hamas members compromises its neutrality, nor does it conduct investigations into its facilities regarding potential abuses by Hamas terrorists.
According to the report, Mara Kronenfeld, who works for UNRWA USA, which fundraises in the United States, discovered on Google an ad resembling her outfit’s promotional message, but the link redirected her to an Israeli government website titled, “The UNRWA-Hamas Linkage.”
Kronenfeld realized that she had stumbled upon an online advertising initiative by Israel aimed at discrediting and undermining UNRWA’s funding.
Around the same time that Kronenfeld discovered these advertisements, Israel had accused twelve UNRWA employees of involvement in the lethal attack carried out by Hamas terrorists against Israel on October 7, 2023. Israeli officials characterized UNRWA as a facade for Hamas and urged nations, including the United States, to cease their financial support for the agency.
Kronenfeld perceived that Israel’s objective was not only to damage the reputation of UNRWA but also to impede donations to UNRWA USA.
On March 19, Congress and the White House reached a deal to continue a ban on US funding for UNRWA until March 2025, as part of a $95 billion bill providing aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
An update posted on the Israeli website on August 6, titled: UN probe confirms the participation of UNRWA staff in 7.10 massacre, said “the probe by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) proves that Israel’s assertions about the involvement of UNRWA employees in the October 7 massacre are credible and true.”
The website continued: “In addition to the nine employees that the UN’s investigative team determined were involved in the October 7 massacre, other workers – about whom the team claimed there was insufficient evidence – were also involved in the massacre. They are members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the UN must fire them immediately and not sweep the issue under the rug.”
On July 31, the Israeli government’s website reported: “Six months have passed since the UNRWA-Hamas scandal broke and Commissioner General Lazzarini continues to mislead the UN agency’s donor countries. In late June, five months after he was first informed that UNRWA employees took part in the October 7 massacre in Israel, Lazzarini stated for the first time that ‘membership in any militant or armed group or entity is prohibited’ for UNRWA staff.”
Between May and July, when users searched for more than 300 terms associated with UNRWA, the Israeli ads appeared 44% of the time in instances where both Israeli and UNRWA USA ads were appropriate to be displayed, as indicated by analytics from UNRWA USA’s Google Ads account. In contrast, UNRWA USA advertisements were shown in only 34% of the eligible cases.
But UNRWA USA still made out like bandits, raising more than $32 million from about 73,000 donors in 2023, up from $5 million from almost 5,700 donors the year before.
