If you really care about the hostages Sir Keir, stop funding Unwra

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but did you know that you paid to keep Emily Damari hostage in Gaza? Yes, that’s right: you.

In a phone call last week with Sir Keir Starmer, Emily said that she had been held in Unwra buildings. The same United Nations Relief and Works Agency, that is, to whose $1.5 billion annual budget the British taxpayer started contributing again when Labour took office in July.

So it’s British taxpayers who have, at least in part, been contributing to Unwra’s ongoing role in Gaza as a de facto branch of Hamas.

To be honest, it’s not really news – unless, that is, you’ve only been getting your news from the BBC, Sky and other sources who seem to believe their role is to act as propaganda stooges for Hamas. Since you’re reading the JC now, I assume you are well aware of Unwra’s connection with Hamas, such as the role of some of its employees in butchering Israelis on October 7 and the UN agency’s long-term responsibility for aiding Hamas.

Which begs a pretty significant question about the decision announced on 19 July last year by foreign secretary David Lammy – just two weeks after taking office – to resume the UK’s funding of Unwra. Because it is inconceivable that neither he, the Foreign Office, Downing Street or the prime minister knew about Unwra’s connection with Hamas – not least because that was the very reason the previous government suspended UK funding, when it emerged Unwra’s employees had taken part in the October 7 massacre.

Last year UN Watch, one of the few NGOs which has emerged with its reputation enhanced since October 7, published a forensic analysis of the links between Unwra and Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organisations in Gaza. It showed how Unwra’s international staff and its senior local managers, regularly meet these terrorist groups in Lebanon and Gaza, praising each other for “cooperation,” and describe each other as “partners”.

The report details – with evidence – how Unwra’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini “made a deal with Jihadi terrorist groups, at a Beirut meeting in May 2024, by which Unwra allowed Hamas leader Fathi Al-Sharif to remain as principal of a major Unwra school, and as the head of the Unwra Teachers Union. For years, Al-Sharif had openly glorified Hamas terrorist attacks, including on his Facebook page, and published photos of his fraternisation with heads of terrorist organizations. Contrary to its claims of robust neutrality mechanisms, Unwra for years allowed Al-Sharif to occupy a senior position overseeing thousands of Unwra teachers and students.”  Lazzarini denies knowing that Al-Sharif was  Hamas’s leader in Lebanon. 

But there is an even more specific and urgent question now: given that a British hostage, Emily Damari, has told the prime minister directly that she was held in an Unwra facility, why have the funding taps to this organisation not been turned off again, immediately? You would have to be a certifiable idiot to think that Emily was the only hostage to have been held in an Unwra building, as if she somehow ended up there by a terrible series of mistakes. Unwra is integral to the plight of the hostages, and of course to the broader problem of Hamas’ control of Gaza.

But you would have to have been born yesterday to think that Mr Lammy, Sir Keir or anyone else involved in shaping the government’s policy on this actually gives a damn, because they have spent the past few months showing us that they don’t. They mouth the usual platitudes about bringing the hostages home but it’s all drivel, because actions speak louder than words – and when it comes to actions the government’s position is crystal clear that they couldn’t care less about Unrwa’s link to Hamas. Sir Keir even had the gall to invite Emily to Downing Street, when he is prime minister of the very government which decided to hand British taxpayers’ money over to Unwra.

Politics can be a messy business, and foreign policy even more so. But there have been few more grotesque examples of hypocrisy than David Lammy and Sir Keir Starmer pretending to care about the hostages, when one of the first acts in office was to resume funding of Unwra– the very organisation that needs to be dismantled, destroyed and replaced if there is to be any chance of a peaceful and secure future both for Israel and for Gaza.