
BREITBART | Published January 23, 2025
Outrage is intensifying after Israeli hostages recently freed from Gaza revealed they were held in U.N. facilities during their captivity, with critics calling UNRWA a “front for Hamas” that must be “disbanded” immediately.
Last weekend, three Israeli women — Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher — were released in a high-stakes prisoner swap, which saw Israel free 90 Palestinian detainees, including convicted terrorists.
The women, who endured nearly a year and a half of harrowing captivity under the terrorist group Hamas, described being detained in United Nations facilities, including tent camps and humanitarian zones administered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel’s Channel 13 News reports.
Additionally, reports indicate they were held at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
The former hostages are now undergoing rehabilitation, following severe conditions that included long periods in underground confinement without sunlight. One woman recounted being subjected to a medical procedure without anesthesia, underscoring the inhumane treatment they faced.
In response to the revelations, critics took to social media to express outrage.
“We need to confirm @EliseStefanik as UN Ambassador ASAP and hold the UN accountable for this. It’s despicable that the @UN has still not condemned Hamas terrorists for holding three women hostage in UN shelters for civilians in Gaza,” wrote Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.
“If the UN prefers to work closely with terrorists instead of working with the United States and Israel to get our hostages home, they don’t deserve a single cent of our taxpayer dollars,” he added. “It’s been 474 days – BRING THEM ALL HOME.”
“How we do know it was UNRWA? Because UNRWA told us. They boasted about it: ‘UNRWA runs all UN shelters,’” wrote Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
“We already knew that UNRWA employed Hamas terrorists, shared its infrastructure with Hamas, and allowed Hamas to use its facilities as bases of operations,” wrote FDD Senior Advisor Richard Goldberg. “Now, we learn it also provided a safe haven for Hamas to hold hostages.”
“We need to stop thinking about UNRWA as merely a supporter of Hamas and start internalizing the extent to which the agency is a front for Hamas,” he added.
Activist and writer Hen Mazzig, a senior fellow at The Tel Aviv Institute, underscored failures of international organizations such as the U.N., Red Cross, and Amnesty International, highlighting their silence on the hostage crisis and complicity in Hamas-linked activities.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.breitbart.com
RELATED: Israeli intel indicates Hamas held hostages at new Gaza hospital as UN health agency criticized for inaction
Expert calls on Trump UN pick Elise Stefanik to launch investigation into UN agencies on Hamas’ use of Gaza hospitals

The IDF shows weapons seized during an ongoing operation to clear terrorists from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. (IDF Spokesman’s Unit)
FOX NEWS | Published January 23, 2025
TEL AVIV, Israel – With the first three Israeli hostages freed in the cease-fire for hostages deal, Fox News Digital has exclusively learned that several terrorists captured by Israeli forces last month confessed that Israeli captives were held at different times at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) recently completed a major raid on the hospital, arresting some 240 terrorists. The director of the hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, the Israelis claim, had gathered intelligence showing that he not only allowed Hamas to infiltrate the hospital, but actively collaborated with the terror group.
Another captured terrorist, Anas Muhammad Faiz al-Sharif, who worked at the hospital as a cleaning supervisor and joined the Nukhba forces of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades in 2021, told Israeli interrogators that the northern Gaza facility was viewed as “a safe haven for them because the [Israeli] military cannot directly target it.”
He revealed that inside the hospital, terrorists distributed grenades and mortars, along with equipment for ambushing IDF troops and tanks

IDF troops located weapons, classified documents, and tactical communications equipment from the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, used by Hamas as a terror command center. (IDF Spokesman’s Unit)
Fox News Digital asked a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman if, based on the IDF’s new allegations about holding hostages at Adwan Hospital, they would condemn Hamas’ use of hospitals for military use.
In a statement, the spokesman said, “The International Humanitarian Law is very clear. Healthcare workers and healthcare facilities are off limits. They must not be attacked. They must not be used for military purposes. They must be protected at all times. The point is both to protect civilians, as well as to protect the health systems and infrastructure that communities depend on for life-giving care and continuity of services.
“Failure to protect and respect healthcare devastates twice. First, in the initial harm, and then again for the months or years it takes to rebuild the health systems.”
The statement concluded without condemning or singling out Hamas. “The protection of healthcare also includes the prohibition against combatants using health facilities for military purposes. IHL is also clear that even if healthcare facilities are being used for military purposes, there are stringent conditions which apply to taking action against them, including a duty to warn and to wait after warning and even then, disproportionate attacks are strictly prohibited.”
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Trump National Security Council official, claimed, “Several international organizations operating in Gaza likely had direct knowledge of Hamas using hospitals as terror headquarters and only publicly protested Israel’s attempt to clear the terrorists. The Red Cross, UNRWA, World Health Organization – they were all collaborators.”

Ambulances carrying patients from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahya, northern Gaza Strip since services stopped within 24 hours due to lack of fuel, arrive at Shifa Hospital, accompanied by UN teams, in Gaza City, Gaza, on Oct. 12, 2024. (Hamza Z. H. Qraiqea/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Goldberg offered advice for President Trump’s pick for U.N. ambassador, Elise Stefanik, who goes before the Senate on Tuesday. “Stefanik would be fully justified in launching investigations into each of those agencies – demanding documents and personnel interviews. And if they don’t comply, they can deal with the consequences.”
One of Trump’s first acts on Monday was to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO.
During the monthslong IDF operation in northern Gaza, more than 700 terrorists were detained, including Hamas commanders, some of whom participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. More than a dozen of those captured were involved in kidnapping or holding Israeli hostages in Gaza.
During the operation, the IDF located and destroyed thousands of weapons, including RPGs stashed within the hospital itself. The aim of the campaign was to completely defeat Hamas’s Northern Brigade and remove the terror group’s presence from within the civilian population. IDF troops conducted raids ranging from a few hours up to a full day. During the longer ones, they entered the hospital and searched for weapons and terrorists.
Former Shin Bet agent Gonen Ben Itzhak, who was the handler of former Hamas informant Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas founder, told Fox News Digital that, “Using visual intelligence, it’s easy to see when Hamas brings guns and ammunition into the hospital … and even with one human source, you can get intel on what is happening inside. From a signal point of view, the terrorists use phones and walkie-talkies, which can be intercepted.”
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.foxnews.com
Be the first to comment