A Few Minutes with… Gavriel Mairone

The tragedy of October 7 seems like a never-ending horror story, with new information about the extent of the atrocities coming to light all the time. One of the most chilling details that has emerged is the apparent collaboration of UNRWA, the United Nations aid agency dedicated to the Palestinians.

Although it was long known that there was an unhealthy relationship between the agency and Gaza’s Hamas overlords — which led to the Trump administration moving to defund UNWRA in 2018 — the full extent of the organization’s culpability only became clear on October 7. Videos have surfaced showing UNRWA vehicles involved in the attacks, rockets being fired from buildings belonging to the organization, and even Jewish hostages being held in homes of agency workers.

A large group of victims affected in various ways by Hamas’s crimes has decided to take action and is suing UNRWA in court. They have chosen Attorney Gavriel Mairone, founder of MM-Law LLC, a pioneering expert in representing victims of international terrorism, to represent them. Mairone’s record includes winning multimillion-dollar lawsuits against Arab banks for financing terrorism. After taking the case, Mairone asserts, “The most senior authorities in UNRWA were complicit in the massacre of October 7.”

Can you briefly explain the premise of this lawsuit?

We filed a lawsuit on behalf of our clients, who contend that the senior management of UNRWA, and the organization in general, aided and abetted Hamas in perpetrating genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, and weaponization of abuse against women. We are asking for accountability and compensation for the damages, deaths, and injuries to our clients.

There are 101 individuals signed on this lawsuit. Some of them are the estates of people who were killed, some are family members of those victims. Others litigants include former hostages, witnesses to the heinous assaults and attacks, people who were injured, and those who managed to survive by hiding either in fields or in their safe rooms while they were under attack.

What’s your case against the United Nations agency?

UNRWA demanded that all of their facilities be treated according to international law, so that the Israeli forces were not allowed access to them. This was how they created safe houses for Hamas terrorists, who stored ammunition and installed rocket launchers there. The intention was to protect the weapons and to conceal the rocket launchers from Israel, and to thwart Israel’s ability to destroy them before they were used in terror attacks. Many senior Hamas officials were on UNRWA’s payroll and given cover jobs that enabled them to work for Hamas while sitting in UNRWA offices.

You allege that UNRWA knew exactly what was happening.

Of course. They were aware of tunnels being dug around or under their facilities. In some cases, especially in buildings that housed their headquarters, they supplied electricity and other utilities for the tunnels, which served as senior command posts for Hamas in launching the attacks on October 7. They created an education system that spewed endless anti-Semitism, and indoctrinated and radicalized the children, generating a death-cult jihadist society, in which the children grew up thinking that their loftiest aspiration was to die in the name of Allah and for the sake of jihad.