A U.N. relief worker alleged by Israel to have participated in the Oct. 7 attacks was captured on video that day removing the limp body of an Israeli man who had been shot at Kibbutz Beeri and driving off with it, according to information released by Israeli authorities.
The explosive allegations plunged the United Nations into crisis, leading the United States — the agency’s largest donor — and other nations to suspend funding for the relief agency and threatening to collapse its operations in Gaza and the wider Middle East. The agency fired accused workers and launched an investigation.
The footage of the person Israel identified as Naami would be the first to surface publicly of any of the accused individuals participating in the attack. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant released a screenshot from the video at a news conference Friday as part of a dossier that publicly identified the accused relief workers. “UNRWA has lost legitimacy and can no longer function as a U.N. body,” Gallant said.
The CCTV footage, located independently by The Washington Post, provides a fuller picture than the brief account in the public dossier, which identified Naami as a social worker and accused him of being part of a Hamas brigade in his hometown of Nuseirat.
After he was named in confidential Israeli documents last month, The Post found images of Naami online and then used facial recognition software to find a likely match for him in footage from Oct. 7. The Post found other indications pointing to Naami as the individual in the footage. A Nissan Terrano II in the footage appears consistent with the same make and model of car that Naami is pictured with in social media posts, including damaged trim on a rear window.
Before Friday’s news conference, a security official told The Post that Israeli authorities had identified the man in the footage as Naami. The footage is among the evidence Israel used as the basis for its allegation against Naami, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
In the footage from Oct. 7, the SUV drives toward an open gate to Kibbutz Beeri shortly after 9:30 a.m. and stops just inside the entrance, where three men who had been shot and dragged from a car are lying motionless on the ground.
Two men step out of the SUV. The driver, the man identified as Naami, is wearing glasses that match photos from his social media profiles. The other man is carrying a rifle. They open the rear door of the vehicle and spread out a blanket inside.
They approach one of the people who had been shot, a man on the street next to an overturned cooler. It is not clear if he is alive, but he does not react as the man identified as Naami takes him by the jacket, the other man lifts his legs and they carry him to the trunk and place him inside.
They then rummage through belongings that are strewn in the street, taking a cellphone and a hat before driving off less than three minutes after they arrived. It is not clear why or where the two men took the Israeli or why they left the other bodies.
At The Post’s request, two vehicle forensic experts analyzed Naami’s social media photos capturing partial views of a white vehicle. They identified the car as a 1993-1995 Nissan Terrano II, and said the vehicle seen in the Oct. 7 footage matched that same color, make and model and was from the same generation.
Marcus Mazza, a vehicle engineering expert for Robson Forensic, a firm that provides technical expertise in court cases, said the separated trim also “may indicate that these are the same vehicle.”
The person whose body was taken was 21-year-old Yonatan Samerano, his mother, Ayelet Samerano, said at a news conference Wednesday in Tel Aviv.
“An UNRWA worker kidnapped my son,” she said. “How can a social worker for an organization that claims to promote good in this world do something so cruel and inhumane? How can the U.N. pay this man who dragged my son’s limp body on the ground, and then picked him as if he was a prize to Gaza.”
Yonatan Samerano was initially believed to have been kidnapped. His family was told on Dec. 4 that he had been killed. On Wednesday, Ayelet Samerano recalled him as “always smiling” and said “everything he did, he did with happiness.”
Asked about the mother’s remarks, UNRWA spokeswoman Tamara Alrifai said, “We truly call on anyone with information to cooperate with the investigation.”
On Oct. 16, Naami, five of his children and one of his two wives were killed in a strike on their home in Nuseirat, according to an UNRWA colleague who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media. His name, the name of a woman who appears to be his wife and the names of his children appear on the Gaza Health Ministry’s list of those killed in Israeli attacks.
The Israel Defense Forces told The Post it “is unaware of a strike at the specified area or time.” A spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity per the agency’s protocol, did not respond when asked if Naami had been targeted.
Efforts to reach surviving members of Naami’s family were unsuccessful.
“His personality was calm, he was very cheerful, he was friendly, he was loved by everyone, colleagues, clients and beneficiaries,” the colleague told The Post.
The colleague said they did not know if Naami was involved in the attack or a member of Hamas. Shown a photo of Naami taken from the Oct. 7 footage, the colleague said they did not know if it was him “as his features are not clear.”
Israeli officials have long complained that the U.N. agency was closely aligned with Hamas, accusations that UNRWA has rejected.
The U.N. agency was established in 1949 to aid Palestinians who were expelled or forced from their homes during the founding of Israel. In the decades since, the agency has taken on many functions of a state for stateless Palestinians, such as providing food, health care and schools. Refugee camps in the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria have turned into permanent urban slums.
The allegations that aid workers were members of the organization have threatened the existence of the primary conduit for aid to Gaza’s 2.2 million people whose lives have been upended after nearly four months of war. At least 29,313 people have been killed in Gaza and 69,333 injured since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Since Oct. 7, UNRWA’s schools and medical clinics the agency operates have been closed and turned into shelters that now house more than 1 million people. Palestinians in Gaza are almost totally dependent on UNRWA for the necessities of life as famine looms and diseases spread alongside continuous Israeli ground and air assaults.
On Friday, Gallant said that in addition to the 12 workers, Israel has intelligence indicating that over 30 UNRWA workers participated in the massacre, including the taking of hostages. He said that 12 percent of UNRWA’s 13,000 workers are affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller Islamist group in the Gaza Strip.
The agency denies that it has turned a blind eye to Hamas and says that Israeli authorities have long sought to dismantle UNRWA.
The Israeli army this month uncovered what it said was a subterranean Hamas server complex, dug 65 feet underneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza. The Israeli army has also released a video of a tunnel beneath Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, that it said was the hideout of Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar. UNRWA packages were among the underground supplies.
In response to the allegations last month, UNRWA launched a review and, before investigating the allegations, fired 10 of the accused employees; two others were dead. The United States and other countries have indicated they could restore funding after the release of the review.
Alrifai, the UNRWA spokeswoman, said a man matching Naami’s name joined the agency as social worker in 2006. But she said she could not comment on the ongoing investigation or verify if he was present in the footage shared by The Post.
UNRWA had “not [been] presented with any evidence from the Israeli authorities,” she said, adding, “UNRWA only received from the Israeli government the list of names of alleged staff reportedly involved in the horrible 7/10 attacks.”
Souad Mekhennet in Washington, Evan Hill in New York, Lior Soroka and Shira Rubin in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
This story has been updated to include Ayelet Samerano’s remarks identifying her son has the person whose body was taken.
correction
A previous version of this article gave an incorrect reason that an UNRWA staff member spoke on the condition of anonymity. The article has been corrected.
