Senator Tom Cotton Alleges UN Agency Has ‘Misused’ Over $1 Billion in Funds

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) penned a letter alleging that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) has “misused” over a billion dollars earmarked for humanitarian aid in Gaza. 

In a letter addressed to Samantha Power, the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the senator cautioned that Hamas terrorists may have taken ahold of the aid. The senator laid blame on the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war for prolonging the conflict, allowing the Palestinian terrorist group to enrich themselves at the expense of American taxpayers. 

“As I predicted would happen from the outset, credible reporting indicates that Hamas terrorists have diverted this aid; indisputable evidence demonstrates that the aid was always at high risk of diversion. In all likelihood, the Biden-Harris administration has prolonged the Gaza war, allowed aid to flow to Israel’s enemies, and misused taxpayer funds,” Cotton wrote.

The senator blasted USAID for furnishing Gaza and the West Bank with hundreds of millions in aid despite ongoing concerns that humanitarian organizations in those territories are infested with terrorists. 

“On September 30, your agency announced approximately $336 million in additional humanitarian funding for Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. On the same day, the United Nations acknowledged that Fateh al-Sharif, a Hamas leader in Lebanon killed in an Israeli airstrike, was employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA, a major USAID partner before October 7, remains a chief conduit for UN humanitarian assistance in Gaza despite extensive evidence of its ties to Hamas,” Cotton wrote. 

“While Congress cut off funding to UNRWA earlier this year, USAID continues to work with UN agencies and other local partners in Gaza despite documented concerns about inadequate vetting and possible terrorist ties,” Cotton continued. 

Cotton added that USAID maintains a number of vulnerabilities in making sure terrorists do not have access to aid earmarked for humanitarian purposes. These vulnerabilities include: “inadequate vetting of local partners, reliance on self-reporting of terrorist ties from partners, reliance on inadequate vetting by UN partners, and challenges with third-party monitoring.”

The senator stated that USAID is “guilty of moral failure, strategic catastrophe, and betrayal of the American taxpayer” by continuing to send American taxpayer funds to humanitarian groups in the West Bank and Gaza. 

“You should immediately suspend all aid until taking credible and serious steps to stop Americans’ tax dollars from funding terrorists,” Cotton concluded. 

In August, UNRWA fired nine employees after discovering evidence “sufficient” to prove their participation in Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. However, that number may only be a minute portion of UNRWA employees who are members of or continue to collaborate with terrorist organizations.  UNRWA teachers from Gaza participated in the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, one of whom was heard saying on an intercepted transmission that “we have female hostages, I captured one.”

Israel has maintained that the agency still employs some 450 terrorist operatives in Gaza. Many countries, including the US, paused funding to UNRWA amid allegations that the agency aided Hamas terrorists. UNRWA has insisted that its links to terrorist groups are not systemic and do not negate its humanitarian purpose, arguing its aid work in Gaza is crucial to alleviating the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

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