{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=413374", "Stop kidding yourself Smith: This is who UNRWA is", "2024-09-30", "2024", "2024-09", "Republican", "House", "NJ", "Christopher H. Smith", "S000522", "chrissmith.house.gov", "chrissmith", "https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx", "scraper", "\u201cThis is who UNRWA is,\u201d said Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in response to confirmed reports that Hamas\u2019 top leader in Lebanon, Fateh al-Sharif\u2014who was killed in an airstrike on Monday\u2014was also employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).\n\n\u201cIf you were surprised that Hamas\u2019s top leader in Lebanon was also employed by UNRWA, stop kidding yourself,\u201d said Smith, the Chair of the congressional global human rights and international organizations subcommittee.\n\n\u201cUNRWA\u2019s deep ties to terrorism\u2014including its employment of hundreds of staffers with terrorist affiliations\u2014have been vastly documented, including by expert witnesses at four congressional hearings I\u2019ve chaired over the past 18 months on UNRWA\u2019s decades-long complicity in the most vicious forms of antisemitic hate,\u201d said Smith.\n\n\u201cIn an April report, the UN even admitted that it does not vet UNRWA employees for connections or sympathies with Hamas or Islamic Jihad,\u201d Smith said.\n\n\u201cUNRWA is an incubator of hatred and a child-soldier factory whose textbooks, curricula, summer camps, and official media all exist to perpetuate conflict,\u201d said Smith.\n\n\u201cThe United States and all those who are committed to combating terrorism cannot resume any funding for UNRWA and instead should provide humanitarian assistance to an agency that does not promote, espouse, or affiliate with those that support violence, terrorism or antisemitism,\u201d said Smith, the author of legislation that would permanently prohibit any U.S. funding for UNRWA.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:43:57Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=413374"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.094767987728119, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}