Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., introduced legislation seeking to disband the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after reports exposing links between agency staffers and the Hamas attacks on Israel in October.
Mast said that people who are protesting his legislation suffer from "willful ignorance."
"They do quarterly inspections of their facilities. Well, then how do they miss the tunnels? Under their facilities the rockets and other armaments that are stored in their facility. How do they miss that?" Mast said Wednesday on Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren."
Mast, a Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient, said that the despite U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres pleading ignorance, he has known about UNRWA's problems.
"He's not just learning about this," Mast said. "He's not appalled that this took place. He's appalled that they got finally got caught so red-handed, that it cannot be denied.
"There's roughly 25 to 30,000 Palestinian employees of UNRWA, and they estimate that 10 to 15% of those individuals are either directly supportive of Hamas or other terrorist organizations or, at minimum, largely sympathetic to them."
The legislation would require the White House to coordinate efforts to transfer refugee responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and to withhold funding for countries refusing to support the policy.
In an X post, Mast went further on his attack on UNRWA, writing: "UNRWA is a front: plain and simple. While it masquerades as a relief organization, it has built the infrastructure to support Hamas and has indoctrinated Palestinian children to hate all Jews. Not a single penny of our tax dollars should go to UNRWA."
Mast also said on Newsmax that there are other entities within the U.N. that the United States could fund to help with refugees, but that UNRWA should not one of them.
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