Aug. 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Commissioner-General of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, accused the Israeli government on Saturday of organizing a campaign to discredit and defame the organization he heads on social media.
Lazzarini has echoed an article published in the American magazine ‘Wired’, which specialises in new technologies, which points to a wave of advertisements paid for by the Israeli Government Advertising Agency and which direct to an official Israeli website listing “links” between the agency and the Islamist movement Hamas, which according to Lazzarini are completely wrong.
The crisis between Israel and UNRWA reached its climax when the Israeli government accused several UNRWA employees of participating in the October 7 massacre on Israeli soil that sparked the current conflict in Gaza. Several countries temporarily withdrew their funding from the agency, but over the months they have rejoined the process after appreciating the agency’s internal investigation and that carried out by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna.
In this context, Lazzarini has denounced that “as part of its campaign to discredit UNRWA, the Israeli government is buying ads on Google to prevent users from making donations to the agency and to perpetrate a defamation campaign” as part of the use “of disinformation as a weapon of war in Gaza.”
“This not only damages the reputation of the agency but puts the lives of our staff at risk,” Lazzarini added in a statement posted on his account on the social network X, where he calls for the immediate cessation and investigation of these “deliberate efforts to spread false information.”
Add Comment