The Biden-Harris Department of Justice is under fire after it argued in federal court that United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) employees should be immune from prosecution despite being involved in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
The many people who helped Hamas terrorists facilitate the attacks on Israel are being defended by the Biden-Harris Administration despite taking part in atrocities such as murder, hostage-taking, and kidnapping the bodies of the dead and injured.
In the lawsuit filed in June by the families of the victims of the attack, UNRWA revealed that at least nine of its employees participated in the terrorist attack, and one of its employees took the body of a murdered Israeli back to Gaza. Seven of the agency’s commissioners-general, deputy commissioners-general, and a director were also named in the filing.
UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer revealed that the agency’s ties to Hamas date back years. He also said that 1,200 UNRWA workers in Gaza are part of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, meaning there are operatives within the political and military organizations.
In 2004, then-UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said: “I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don’t see that as a crime.”
During a court appearance in the Southern District of New York, the UNRWA said its employees are immune under the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations.
According to the Jewish News Syndicate, the U.N. has not waived immunity. Therefore, the DOJ argued that UNRWA should retain its “full immunity, and the lawsuit against UNRWA should be dismissed due to lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”
In a filing to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, the world body claimed that “since the U.N. has not waived immunity in this instance, its subsidiary, UNRWA, continues to enjoy absolute immunity from prosecution, and the lawsuit should be dismissed,” Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Saturday night. The Biden administration was said to have echoed the U.N.’s position on the suit filed by Oct. 7 victims, with the Department of Justice telling the court that “the plaintiff’s complaint does not present a legal basis for claiming that the United Nations waived its immunity.
More than 100 Oct. 7 victims pledged support for the lawsuit against UNRWA. The court filing accuses the agency of having a well-established money-laundering scheme that financially benefits Hamas terrorists.
Legal scholars Eugene Kontorovich and Rabbi Mark Goldfeder said the Biden-Harris DOJ was not legally responsible for making an argument in the lawsuit, adding that it was a policy choice the DOJ made. Recently, the Biden-Harris Administration chose not to associate UNRWA with Hamas despite the U.S. suspending funding to the agency for that reason. During the Trump Administration, the former president ended funding to UNRWA, while President Joe Biden reinstated the cash flow in 2021.