Israel Gaza: UN says Israeli air strike killed six of its staff

Apt. Wish it wasn't.

They write sternly worded letters.

Headlines.

They employ 30,000 people. It’s only natural that after decade of abuse, at least a few will use force against the blockading super-power that periodically kills their children at random.

And Israel made allegations against 19, only 9 of whom the UN found good evidence for so there’s a better than 50-50 chance a given “Hamas” UNRWA employee is perfectly innocent. Most “western democracies” wouldn’t take a 50-50 shot at killing civilians but Israel’s so called “precision strikes” demonstrate they’re perfectly happy to murder arbitrary numbers of children in the process of killing a maybe-terrorist.

Lets look more into the details about that. UNRWA has taken that sort of thing very seriously, especially since Oct 7th. These 9 were fired because the evidence presented by Israeli officials, with no independent verification, showed it was possible they were involved.

That doesn't show that they were terrorists or working for/with Hamas on Oct 7th. It showed that it was possible that they violated UNRWA's policy of Neutrality, and for that they were fired. So trying to attribute this to UNRWA workers in general makes no sense, it's just used to justify Israel's attacks on UNRWA staff and other aid workers working in Gaza during a genocide.

“In one case, no evidence was obtained by OIOS to support the allegations of the staff member’s involvement, while in nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff members’ involvement,” he said.

With respect to the remaining nine cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS indicated that the UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the 7 October attacks.

Asked about the extent of the staff members’ alleged involvement, Mr. Haq responded that he did not have specific information about the allegations.

He said the OIOS investigation involved visits to Israel for discussions with officials and to see and review information held by authorities there.

“However, one thing I'd like to point out is that since information used by Israeli officials to support the allegations have remained in Israeli custody, OIOS was not able to independently authenticate most of the information provided to it,” he noted

He also appointed an independent review panel to conduct a separate assessment into UNRWA to determine whether the agency was doing everything it could to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they arise.

The panel – headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna - published its report in April.

• UN completes investigation on UNRWA staff