JERUSALEM — The shocking revelation that some employees of the U.N. agency UNRWA were part of the Oct. 7 massacre and transported Hamas terrorists in U.N. vehicles is just the most recent example of the heavily U.S.-subsidized agency’s relationship with Hamas. 

“UNRWA is a horror show that is decades in the making co-produced by the United States taxpayer,” Richard Goldberg a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies(FDD,) said during testimony to a subcommittee of the House Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

Fox News Digital has been digging over the years into the scandal-plagued history of UNRWA, an acronym for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.  

According to a dossier that Israel’s government submitted to the Biden administration in late January, 12 UNRWA employees allegedly aided Hamas in different capacities Oct. 7. 

Seven U.N. staffers crossed into Israel Oct. 7 while others were accused of “participating in a terror activity” or coordinating vehicle movements. The Biden administration has given UNRWA $1 billion of taxpayer money since 2021.

“This is the time to put stringent controls over UNRWA in the areas of education and [the] inspection of weapons,” UNRWA critic David Bedein, director of the Center for Near East Policy Research and an expert on UNRWA’s curriculum.

Bedein told Fox News Digital that the Palestinian Fatah party and the terrorist organizations Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas “are controlling the workers’ unions” for UNRWA teachers. 

“You can stop that,” Bedein said.

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East holds a press conference in Jerusalem Oct. 27, 2023.  (Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Fox News Digital reported in 2012 that Palestinians voted UNRWA elected candidates linked to Hamas to 25 out of 27 seats on a union board that represents 10,000 UNRWA workers.

Bedein said there must be a plan to overhaul UNRWA. First, “Cancellation of the new UNRWA curriculum, based on Jihad, martyrdom and ‘right of return by force of arms,’  which have no place in U.N. education, whose theme is ‘Peace Begins Here.”

He insisted “UNRWA dismiss employees affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Fatah in accordance with laws of donor nations that forbid aid to any agency that employs members of a terrorist organization.”

Bedein notes that the “current UNRWA policy is that any Arab refugee resettlement would interfere with the ‘right of return’ to pre-1948 Arab localities.” 

The refugee classification by UNRWA impedes the Israel-Palestinian peace process because it provides endless refugee status to generations of Palestinians who were not born in Israel.

According to Israel, the Palestinian demand to return all refugees is an impossible proposal because it would create a non-Jewish state.

Smoke from Gaza City fills the sky in the distance as an Israeli tank heads toward the Gaza Strip Nov. 22, 2023, in Southern Israel. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Bedein argued that it was time to implement standards “to advance resettlement of fourth- and fifth-generation refugees from the 1948 war who have spent seven decades relegated to refugee status,” while calling for an audit of all donor funds from the 68 nations who support the agency.

The FDD’s Richard Goldberg concluded his congressional testimony by telling the committee that, “October 7th is the logical conclusion of UNRWA. It is of course what they have been training generations to do with the resources we’ve provided going to these terrorist organizations to carry out that mission.”

UNRWA did not respond to multiple Fox News Digital questions.

Fox News’ Lawrence Richard and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.