U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock are under fire for honoring a Hamas terrorist leader who worked for schools funded by the notorious U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The U.N. refused to apologize on Tuesday, shrugging off the terrorist’s inclusion as an innocent mistake.
The U.N. held an annual service in June to memorialize employees who died during the previous year. The event, which was attended by Guterres and Baerbock, featured the lighting of a candle dubbed the “eternal flame” while the names of 136 fallen U.N. employees were read to the sound of a mournful violin.
One of those names was Imad El Samhouri, who was working as a teacher and principal of the UNRWA Preparatory Boys School B in Rafah when he was killed by an Israeli airstrike in June 2025.
Critics of the United Nations, including Israeli ambassador Danny Danon and U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer, were outraged that El Samhouri was included in the ceremony – or indeed that he was employed by UNRWA, since he was a well-known Hamas leader with a long trail of incriminating social media posts.
Neuer posted the evidence on social media platform X, including a “martyrdom video” in which El Samhouri posed in military garb, surrounded by guns and grenades.
“We have chosen jihad as our path. Death in the cause of Allah is our highest aspiration,” El Samhouri said in the video. He taunted Israel over the extensive network of tunnels Hamas constructed by stealing money from humanitarian aid operations, chortling and saying that “the Zionist enemy never imagines we will emerge from beneath the ground.”
Neuer noted that El Samhouri brought other Hamas terrorists into UNRWA schools, building a “network” that the U.N. seemed completely oblivious to, but which U.N. Watch mapped in detail. El Samhouri himself moved between several UNRWA facilities over the years, gaining access to thousands of Palestinian children.
“Everyone in UNRWA Rafah knew about El Samhouri. He was a big man on campus, openly active with senior Hamas officials, including as scout for Hamas-linked athletic clubs,” Neuer noted, citing several instances of the Hamas commander and U.N. employee openly celebrating kidnappings and terrorist attacks.
One of the “athletic clubs” El Samhouri recruited for was the Al-Qadisiyah Rafah Club, which was funded by none other than Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. One of the major “athletic” endeavors at the club was teaching Palestinian children how to use firearms.
In his open letter to Guterres and Baerbock on August 14, Neuer asked the U.N. officials to “finally acknowledge that UNRWA is simply unwilling or unable to root out the terrorists who have taken over its schools.”
“Excellencies, how many UNRWA teachers must emerge from Hamas tunnels before you admit that the terrorists are not merely beneath UNRWA’s schools, but actually inside them? Excellencies, if an UNRWA children’s school principal emerging from Hamas tunnels does not compel you to confront the agency’s terrorist infiltration, what possibly will?” he wrote.
Neuer reminded Guterres that he said it was “the privilege of my life” to work alongside the people he named at the eternal flame ceremony, that he was committed to “carrying forward their work,” and that the fallen U.N. employees “made our world a better place.”
“Now that the man you praised has been exposed as a Hamas field commander, do you stand by those words? Is Imad El Samhouri’s work – the jihad, the terror tunnels, the indoctrination of children – the work you intend to carry forward?” Neuer asked.
“Will you retract your tribute, apologize to the victims of Hamas, and order an independent investigation into how a terrorist commander was allowed to run UNRWA schools for more than a decade?” he challenged Guterres and Baerbock.
Neuer concluded:
We urge you to retract the tribute to Imad El Samhouri, apologize to the victims of Hamas, commission a genuinely independent investigation, and disclose the identities of every UNRWA employee found to have terrorist ties, as well as every supervisor and senior official who knew or should have known.
There can be no immunity, impunity, or eternal flame for terrorists who infiltrate the United Nations.
On Wednesday, Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric said there would be no retraction or apology for the honors bestowed on El Samhouri. Dujarric repeatedly insisted the list of names for the eternal flame ceremony was “shared with Israeli authorities,” and “no issues were raised.”
“If those allegations had been shared with us at the time through official channels, it would not have been included,” he said.
“What was said was said, and we’re now stating our position, which makes it clear, had we known and had we been told, his name would probably not have been included,” he said.
“Yes, we honored a Hamas commander. No, we won’t apologize. No, we won’t correct it. And somehow, this is Israel’s fault,” Neuer sarcastically summarized the response from the United Nations.
“It is outrageous to watch the U.N. spokesperson struggle to clearly condemn the crimes committed by former UNRWA employees,” Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon responded.
“The U.N. spokesperson’s response reflects Secretary-General Guterres’ entire tenure: the organization has lost its moral compass. It is because of terrorists like Imad Youssif El Samhouri and others that Israel ended UNRWA’s operations in Israel,” Danon said.