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Yonatan Samerano was only 21, his entire life ahead of him, when he was murdered by Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacre. But that was not enough. As his body lay on the ground, lifeless, a video emerged of two men dragging him into a car and kidnapping him to Gaza. Yonatan’s body was later rescued in a heroic IDF operation, and he was laid to rest in Israel.
The two men were later identified as staff members of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. Over the past two years, there have been horrific testimonies about UNRWA’s involvement on Oct. 7, including photographs taken by a staff member, recordings of the organization’s teachers who boasted about kidnapping Israeli women, as well as the existence of terrorist infrastructure, tunnel shafts and a large number of weapons in dozens of UNRWA’s facilities in the Gaza Strip.
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Yet, UNRWA’s involvement did not begin with the Oct. 7 massacre.
On Dec. 2, the Meyerson JCC in Manhattan hosted a screening of the documentary “UNraveling UNRWA,” sharing the bleak history of an organization that has for too long hidden behind the veil of humanitarian aid. It exposed the dangerous reality of an agency that became a front for the terrorist organization Hamas and whose schools became incubators of antisemitism, indoctrinating hatred into successive generations, thus facilitating the genocidal agenda that culminated in the barbaric attacks of Oct. 7.
If Oct. 7 has taught us anything, it is that education matters. What our children learn at school matters. Their role models matter. Our elected officials’ behavior matters.
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Against this backdrop of shocking revelations and global outrage, New York City’s Mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, made a deliberate and deeply troubling choice. A few weeks before winning the election, he chose to take part in a “5K for Gaza” run in Brooklyn, whose proceeds benefited that very agency, UNRWA.
This decision is not a minor political misstep; it is a profound moral failure that strikes at the foundation of our values. To actively support an agency riddled with allegations of terrorist ties, educational radicalization, and participation in the gravest atrocities, signals a dangerous lack of moral clarity and executive judgment. It also suggests an indifference to the safety of the Jewish community, which is already grappling with a painful surge in antisemitism since Oct. 7.
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“UNraveling UNRWA” continues to tell the story of an agency that has not only undermined its vocation of resolving the problem of the then–Palestinian refugees but has also alienated Israelis and Palestinians by perpetuating in its schools the Palestinian delusion of Israel’s “disappearance” and the “right of return.” By lending his support and visibility to this cause, the mayor-elect risks injecting this toxic, zero-sum conflict into our city’s politics, prioritizing ideological purity over the well-being and unity of New Yorkers.
It is easy to stay quiet and say nothing. To pass by the vocal minority on our streets and cower away. But it will come at a cost — to us, to our children and to our society. When we choose to look the other way, evil gets emboldened. When we refuse to call it by its name, we — and the children of this city — will pay the price.
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