A look at the intelligence Canada had when UNRWA fundng resumed

Article content

Biographies of UN employees who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel.

Satellite photos of Gaza schools constructed atop buried terrorist bunkers.

Article content

Hamas rocket launchers installed within metres of marked United Nations compounds.

This is just a portion of the Israeli intelligence that Canada had access to when the Liberal government decided on March 8 to resume funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Global Affairs Canada announced the decision despite several other countries, including the United States, opting to wait until the conclusion of a UN investigation before making any decisions on resuming funding they had also paused after allegations from Israel of links between UNRWA and the Oct. 7 terror attacks led.

Article content

National Post was granted exclusive media access to the intelligence given to the Trudeau government — a dossier spelling out Israel’s case for Canada to permanently stop sending tax dollars to the controversial UN agency.

After allegations in January of UNRWA members taking active roles in the Oct. 7 massacre, the United States announced a temporarily funding halt.

Canada and numerous other nations followed suit, but Ottawa reversed course two months later, in time to deliver this year’s $25-million installment of a $100-million funding pledge to UNRWA made last year by the Trudeau Liberals.

In contrast, the massive appropriations package passed by the U.S. Congress late last month included a statutory ban on funding UNRWA until March 2025.

Japan, Australia, Finland and Sweden have also resumed their funding.

The intelligence briefing shown to National Post included 43 slides laying out a comprehensive dossier of evidence, including information gathered from communications of Hamas operatives, social media, and video of the Oct. 7 attack. Some of it bore the logo of iNet, the Israeli operation that synthesizes open-source intelligence for the state’s defence establishment.

Article content

According to the intelligence — which Israeli diplomatic officials confirmed to the Post was made available to the Canadian government before March 8 — Hamas views UNRWA as a pillar of its civil rule providing the support that allows it to put greater focus on its military and terrorism programs.

“Hamas is deeply and systematically embedded in UNRWA,” the briefing states.

“Hamas members serve in all sectors of UNRWA activities, including in key positions.”

That’s a conclusion shared by many Israeli politicians and stakeholders.

Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada, questioned why funding was resumed given the abundance of evidence connecting UNRWA with a group officially classified as a terrorist group.

“We are not convinced that Canada used the information that we provided in a way that would put UNRWA in a different light than before. It’s as if nothing happened,” he said.

“Even if we got the message that Canada believes UNRWA needs to be reformed, our conviction is that UNRWA needs to be reformed immediately and completely. As an organization, it’s become a bottleneck that’s part of the problem, not the solution.”

Article content

Article content

UNRWA’s supporters insist it is a necessary welfare agency in Gaza and the West Bank. The UN has treated Palestinians as refugees since Israel was established 76 years ago. But many Israelis see funding for UNRWA from countries like Canada as facilitating further attacks against Israel.

“For years I’ve had meetings in western capitals, I’ve been to Ottawa and met with Canadian officials in Israel many times, and I tell them ‘you get to feel very good about yourself, even very smug for giving money to supposedly the poor Palestinians, but what you’re really funding is the continuation and perpetuation of the century-long Palestinian war against the Jewish state,” said Einat Wilf, an Israeli politician and former Knesset member, in a previous conversation with this newspaper.

“And while you sit there comfortably in Ottawa, my people are going to pay for it in blood.”

The Israeli UNRWA dossier suggests that as many as 2,135 UNRWA employees are members of Palestinian terror organizations — more than three-quarters of them belonging to Hamas.

Of those, 327 are in the Al-Qassam Brigades — Hamas’s military wing.

The dossier also contains over a dozen biographies of UNRWA employees who allegedly participated in the Oct. 7 that killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel, the overwhelming majority of them civilians.

Article content

They include Faisal Ali Mussallem Al-Naimi, an UNRWA social worker captured on surveillance video removing the body of Yonatan Samerano from Kibbutz Beeri.

Hafez Mousa Mousa, a 42-year-old UNRWA school principal, allegedly moonlights in Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades.

Israel’s intelligence alleges he closed his school shortly before the attacks on Oct. 7 and notified fellow Hamas operatives to muster near the Gaza border.

Eighteen UNRWA school principals in Gaza are identified by Israel as alleged combat militants for Hamas.

Israeli officials said that while Hamas’s influence over UNRWA was common knowledge, it wasn’t until the Oct. 7 attacks that the full scale of the infiltration came to light.

“While we gathered intelligence on Hamas, more and more links to UNRWA came up,” a senior Israeli diplomatic source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the National Post.

“The problem is that Hamas infiltrated into the ranks of UNRWA in a systematic manner, in a way that Hamas perceived UNRWA as a strategic asset.”

He said that UNRWA’s assertions that militant employees are merely a few bad apples don’t hold water.

Article content

“If UNRWA will not recognize that there is a problem, it will be impossible to fix it,” the source said.

“Because the infiltration is so wide, we believe it is beyond repair, and we don’t want to see the continuation of the activity of UNRWA in the Gaza Strip.”

To fill the gap, the source said Israel has been providing Gaza with humanitarian aid, but much of that is still being intercepted and seized by Hamas.

“Not all of the humanitarian aid reached the civilians, Hamas was trying to use this aid for its own purposes,” he said.

Hamas is known for using civilians as human shields in Gaza, placing rocket launchers, command posts and other strategic targets among and even inside schools, mosques and hospitals.

Israeli intelligence has uncovered at least 32 UNRWA facilities within 20 metres of Hamas installations in Gaza.

A tunnel underneath the UNRWA-run Maghazi Prep School B in central Gaza was discovered in 2017, while the bunker beneath the UNRWA-run Zaitoun Prep School B was found in 2022.

The principals of both schools — Khaled Said el Masri and Mohammed Shuwaideh — also moonlight as Hamas militants, Israel alleges.

Article content

Despite UNRWA’s condemnation and promises to fill the tunnels, Israel maintains they’re still in use.

Maps show arms warehouses, tunnel access points and logistical centres placed adjacent to UN-run schools, residences and facilities throughout the Gaza Strip.

One satellite image depicted construction of an underground bunker in 2010, with an updated image from last year showing an UNRWA school built overtop.

Another near Rafah showed Hamas rocket launchers just metres from a mosque and schools, and throughout nearby UN refugee camps.

Yet another outlined Hamas’s intelligence headquarters and a computer server farm underneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters.

Hamas officials speak openly about the importance of their tunnels and underground bunkers in their war against Israel.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, deputy chair of the Hamas Political Bureau, told Russia Today in October that the Gaza tunnel system was designed to protect fighters and their infrastructure from Israeli counterattacks.

“We have built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed,” Marzouk said when asked why Hamas didn’t also invest in bomb shelters for Gazan civilians.

Article content

“These tunnels are meant to protect us from the airplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels. Everybody knows that 75 per cent of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees, and it is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect them.”

National Post

bpassifiume@postmedia.com

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.

Article content