IDF recordings show more UNRWA staffers bragging of Oct. 7 crimes

IDF recordings show more UNRWA staffers bragging of Oct. 7 crimes

Emanuel Fabian

The IDF on Monday released audio recordings that it says incriminate two additional UNRWA employees who allegedly participated in the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught — bringing the total number of agency workers that Jerusalem says actively participated in the attacks to 14.

“I’m inside, I’m inside with the Jews,” Mamdouh al-Qali, an Islamic Jihad terrorist whom the IDF says was employed as a teacher in a UNRWA school, is heard saying in one recording.

“How will you get home?” he is asked in the phone call, and he replies with a laugh: “When I die.”

In another recording, an UNRWA teacher can purportedly be heard bragging about kidnapping Israeli hostages.

“We have female hostages, I captured one!” says Yousef al-Hawajara, a Hamas terrorist who worked as a teacher at a UNRWA school in Deir al-Balah, according to the IDF. “Everything’s fine I hope,” he later says in the recording. “We will enter Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

He says that he entered into Israel, and “saw the sights… they shot them in the eyes… they did actions for liberations, God willing.” Asked what he found while in Israel, he says, “One thousand shekels.”

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari in an evening press conference said that despite the “difficult content,” the military chose to release the audio recordings to “remind and not forget.”

“The massacre committed by Hamas on October 7 is the most documented massacre in history. Hamas terrorists filmed their own cruelty. As time goes by, more and more testimonies are revealed, more intelligence every day,” he said.

He said that in one of the recordings, a Hamas terrorist who worked as a teacher at a UNRWA school in Deir al-Balah, tells his friend that he captured a “sabaya,” a term used by Islamic State jihadists which means sex slave.

“The most difficult use of ‘sabaya’ was by ISIS terrorists, who called the captured Yazidi women [in Iraq and Syria] this,” Hagari added.

“In the conversation, the terrorist on the other side of the line describes a woman as a noble mare,” he said.

Such comments “keeps us awake at night, and requires the world to shout, as it did for the Yazidi women.”

Hagari added that from testimonies of hostages who were released from Gaza, “we have learned about the dangers the hostages are exposed to, especially the women and children.”

Last month, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant named 12 other UNRWA staffers whom it said participated in the massacre on October 7. The IDF said its intelligence shows that some 450 terror operatives in Gaza, mostly Hamas members, are also employed by UNRWA.

Jerusalem has long argued that UNRWA should be disbanded, and the recent allegations have led several donor countries to announce funding freezes, increasing concerns that the agency, which says it is the main conduit for aid for millions in the Strip during the Israel-Hamas war, could stop operating in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East within weeks.

More...