Elia Emhoff, the stepdaughter of United States Vice President Kamala Harris, asked her Instagram followers to contribute to UNRWA (the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees). The fundraising campaign, unveiled in March, aimed to support humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, despite allegations that agency officials assisted Hamas during the October 7 attack.
At the time, Emhoff, who is the daughter of Douglas Emhoff, husband of Kamala, the potential presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, had 318 thousand followers on the platform. She shared a link to the UNRWA donation page but removed it after the New York Post published a report on the issue.
The story, titled “Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, publicly raised money for an aid group allegedly linked to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel,” raised questions about the 25-year-old model’s support for an agency allegedly linked . to an extremist group.
When Kamala’s stepdaughter used the link on her Instagram, the United States and other Western countries had already suspended funding to UNRWA, following accusations by the Israeli government that the agency had employees associated with Hamas. According to Tel Aviv, these employees would have actively participated in the October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,200 Israelis and began the current military conflict in the region.
Here are some of the numbers presented by Israel:
- 13 agency employees would have directly participated in the attack
- Of the agency’s 12,000 employees, 17% would be linked to one of the branches of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, a radical group allied with Hamas;
- 485 employees would be linked to the Al Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
In response to these allegations, several countries withdrew their financial support for UNRWA. However, an investigation carried out by the UN and published in April concluded that Israel did not present sufficient evidence to prove the links of UNRWA employees with Hamas.
The 54-page independent report, commissioned by the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, was prepared by the former French Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna, in collaboration with representatives of human rights institutes in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
The report states that despite Israel’s public allegations about the alleged links of UNRWA officials with extremist groups, the evidence presented up to that point was insufficient. However, Colonna highlighted that the absence of evidence does not entirely exclude the possibility that these connections exist.
On the other hand, the document considered that the agency continues to be fundamental in providing humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees. “UNRWA is irreplaceable and indispensable for the human and economic development of the Palestinians,” he said.
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