Annalena Baerbock joined a UN tribute to fallen staff, only for one of those honored to emerge as a Hamas commander. Germany's former foreign minister has yet to explain why his name was on the list in the first place.
Annalena Baerbock helped honor fallen UN staff – including an UNRWA educator later identified by Hamas as a field commander. Photo: Ronny Hartmann/Getty Images
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Former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has remained silent after newly circulated Hamas material identified one of the UN workers she honored in June as a field commander in the terrorist organization.
Baerbock, now president of the United Nations General Assembly, joined UN Secretary-General António Guterres in lighting an “eternal flame” at the 8 June ceremony in New York. Among the 136 UN personnel commemorated was Imad Yousif El Samhouri, a longtime teacher and principal at schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The Geneva-based watchdog UN Watch exposed El Samhouri’s double life last week and demanded that Baerbock and Guterres retract the tribute, apologize to Hamas’s victims and commission an independent investigation. The organization argues that the case adds to evidence that UNRWA has failed to keep terrorists out of its schools and workforce.
As of Monday, Baerbock had not publicly responded to the demand.
El Samhouri was commemorated as a UN employee who had died in the line of duty. His name was read aloud during the ceremony before Baerbock and Guterres helped light the flame. But Hamas presents a very different résumé. In a recently published martyrdom video, its Al-Qassam Brigades identify El Samhouri as a field commander in the Muhammad al-Shamali Battalion of the Rafah Brigade. The footage shows the UNRWA educator armed and moving through tunnels while praising jihad.
“We have chosen jihad as our path”, El Samhouri declares. He calls death in the cause of Allah his “highest aspiration” and praises the tunnels from which Hamas terrorists emerged to attack Israel.
Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and has been a designated foreign terrorist organization by the United States since 1997. Its terrorists murdered about 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 during the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.
UN Watch also cited publicly available material showing El Samhouri, along with Hamas officials, hosting figures linked to the terrorist organization at UNRWA schools. According to the watchdog, his social media accounts glorified the kidnapping and murder of Jews, while students under his supervision were guided to join Hamas-linked clubs.
El Samhouri therefore appears to have been anything but a well-concealed infiltrator. He worked for UNRWA for more than a decade, became a school principal and displayed his political and terrorist loyalties openly enough for Hamas to celebrate him after his death.
Guterres addressed the 136 honorees collectively, describing it as the “privilege of my life” to have worked alongside people like them, pledging to carry their work forward and saying they had made the world a better place. Neither Guterres nor Baerbock singled out El Samhouri. His name was nevertheless included on the UN’s official roll of fallen personnel and honored at the ceremony. The UN’s recording and transcript contain no indication that his role in Hamas had been uncovered.
Baerbock’s involvement extends beyond the ceremony. During her tenure as German foreign minister, Germany became one of UNRWA’s largest donors. UN Watch calculates that Berlin provided the agency with approximately €570m ($661m) during her time leading the Foreign Office.
Germany suspended new funding commitments for UNRWA’s operations in Gaza in early 2024 after Israel alleged that agency employees had participated in the 7 October attack. A separate UN investigation later concluded that nine employees may have been involved, and their employment was terminated.
Berlin announced in April 2024 that it would resume cooperation with UNRWA following a separate review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna. That review examined the agency’s mechanisms for ensuring neutrality rather than the individual 7 October allegations.
Germany said UNRWA would strengthen internal oversight, expand staff training, allow greater external monitoring and continue regularly sharing employee lists with Israeli security authorities. The measures were presented as safeguards against precisely the kind of infiltration now alleged in El Samhouri’s case. The Foreign Office described UNRWA as playing an “irreplaceable role” in Gaza.
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