While international bodies condemned Israel’s decision to ban UNRWA, despite the discovery that some UNRWA staff had participated in the October 7 massacre and others were employed by Hamas, Israeli mother Ayelet Samerano told The Telegraph on Sunday that she was pleased with the news.
Samerano, 53, has not seen her son Yonatan in over a year. On October 7, his unconscious body was dragged into a truck and driven to Gaza. It was later discovered that it had been a UNRWA social worker, Faisal Ali Musalam Naami, who abducted her young son.
Samerano was told her son was killed in the attack but told The Telegraph she had not seen conclusive proof that he is dead and not just wounded.
“My fear is doubled,” she explained, on the impact of not knowing her son’s fate. “It’s an awful way to live.”
“If he is alive, will I succeed in bringing him back alive? And if he is not alive, what will happen?” she later asked the interviewer.
The Israeli mother had not heard of the UN agency before the attacks, she explained, but has since done extensive research.
Teaching hate
“They are teaching children from the moment they are born to hate people,” she accused. Numerous reports have claimed to find antisemitic and pro-terror material taught in UNRWA schools.
An IMPACT-se report found that “half of the invading terrorists had been educated in UNRWA facilities,” and the content they were taught included the veneration of a Palestinian firebombing attack on a bus and other terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.
A further investigation by the NGO found UNRWA teachers celebrating Hamas and October 7 online.
“It’s really sick,” she said of Naami. “He’s a social worker, a social worker committing terror and kidnapping a citizen.”
Many countries paused funding to UNRWA after its staff’s participation in the massacre came to light. The majority of those countries have since reinstated funding, citing the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
Samerano was critical of foreign bodies’ decisions to continue funding UNRWA. The money is “not going to help the Gazan people,” she says. “It’s going to [fund] terror,” she said.
She has spent the past year campaigning for her son and seeking answers as to how a UN agency could have employed terrorists. Three months ago, she traveled to Switzerland to lobby UNRWA’s chief so that he would pressure Hamas to release her son.
“Every night, I scream in silence. Every morning, I cry on my way to work. Every waking moment, I think about my son, and I live like that through each day, over and over again,” she told a Swiss audience.
During one protest, a pro-Palestinian protester snatched the photo she was carrying of her son and threw it in the bin.
About Yonatan
Yonatan “was smiling all the time. He had a special charm. And with this charm, everybody wanted to be with him… wherever we arrived, the doors were open, and everybody wanted to help him,” his mother said.
He had dreams of moving to New York and starting a T-shirt business. “He made everything he wanted; he wasn’t afraid… that’s why he was so successful,” Samerano said.
He had been enjoying the music at the Nova festival when Hamas attacked. Hearing incoming rockets, he and his two friends traveled to Kibbutz Be’eri in search of a bomb shelter, but their car was shot at by terrorists as they entered the small community.
A total of 96 people were reportedly killed from the Be’eri community, including children, and 26 were taken hostage.
The family spent days not knowing of Yonatan’s whereabouts – until his brother discovered a video posted by Hamas of Yonatan’s unconscious body being driven away in a UNRWA vehicle. They had initially believed the vehicle had been stolen by the terrorists but were later horrified to find out the truth.
Yonatan turned 22 in June. His fate remains unclear.