Many Palestinian families take refuge under harsh conditions at a school affiliated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) at the Daraj neighborhood as the Israeli attacks continue in Gaza City, Gaza on February 6, 2024.

(Dawoud Abo Alkas – Anadolu Agency)

As with much in the noisy clatter of Middle Eastern violence, the value attributed to numbers alters in the shade of ideology and self-interest. Massacres become acts of self-defence; acts of self-defence become unconscionable inflictions of murder. It also follows that an organisation of 30,000 employees, working in the field of humanitarianism, aid and salvation, can be plastered as terrorist sponsors for having 12 individuals in their service allegedly involved in a murderous assault on Israel on 7 October 2023. Despite the relative smallness of this figure, the entire organisation itself becomes a target.

What, then, of the evidence? The state of Israel was initially adamant that 12 such individuals in UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) had participated in the 7 October attacks by Hamas, sharing the details with several media outlets on 29 January. The accusations were made via a thin dossier amounting to no more than six pages. Little by way of evidence was supplied, though Israel was content to make further claims that almost ten per cent of the agency’s staff had ties to Hamas. As UN Crisis Group expert Daniel Forti writes: “Thus far, Israel has not provided evidence in writing to the UN to substantiate its allegations.”

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