Wired magazine reported that Israel is buying ads on Google search results for “UNRWA,” in an apparent attempt to discredit the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

According to the report, the Israeli government advertising agency purchased ads for searches for “UNRWA” and “UNRWA USA” to draw search users to a website linking the agency to Hamas.

On the government-run website, Israel claims that UNRWA has not declared whether employing Hamas members violates its neutrality, a charge the agency strongly rejects.

Last January, several Western countries suspended funding to UNRWA after Israel accused 12 of the organization's 30,000 employees of participating in the surprise attack launched by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.

The Colonna Report, commissioned by the United Nations to investigate Israel's allegations, found that Israeli authorities had provided "no supporting evidence" to support allegations that UNRWA staff were linked to Hamas.

It also made recommendations to UNRWA, which included strengthening the internal audit function and improving external oversight of project management.

It is noteworthy that since the report was published, several countries have restored funding to the agency, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Canada and Sweden.

UNRWA staff who noticed the Israeli ads on Google appealed to the tech giant to remove what they saw as a misinformation campaign, but the ads remained in Google search results as recently as the last week of August.

In May and July, when users searched for 300 terms related to UNRWA, Israeli ads appeared 44 percent of the time, while UNRWA ads in the United States appeared only 34 percent of the time.

Mara Kronenfeld, an official with UNRWA USA, told the magazine in a statement that the agency has spent thousands of dollars and staff time trying to overcome Israel's distorting ads on Google.

Despite Israeli announcements, UNRWA had received 78,000 donors by August this year, a record number for the organization since its founding in 2005.

Kronenfeld said she was concerned that Israeli propaganda efforts could influence people's perceptions of the nature of UNRWA's role during the ongoing war.

“There is an incredibly powerful campaign to dismantle UNRWA,” she said. “I want the public to know what is happening and its malicious nature, especially at a time when civilian lives are under attack in Gaza.”

Google employees who spoke to Wired said the anti-UNRWA campaign was one of several ad campaigns Israel has run in recent months that have drawn criticism from both inside and outside the company.

A Google spokesperson said governments can run ads that comply with the company's policies, and that "swift action" is taken if policies are violated.

"The Israeli Foreign Ministry did not respond to Wired's request for comment," the magazine said.

Kronenfeld said the return on investment in recent months has been $25 for every dollar spent on online advertising. However, she said competition from Israeli ads means they win fewer auctions and are therefore seen by fewer users.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established in 1949 - a year after the Nakba in which 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes during the creation of Israel - to provide health care, education and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Today, it is the second largest employer in Gaza (after Hamas). The agency has 30,000 employees in total, 13,000 of whom are in the Gaza Strip.

In the besieged Gaza Strip, the agency runs 183 schools, 22 health facilities and seven women's centres, among many other facilities.

Its schools serve 286,645 students in Gaza, while its medical facilities receive an average of 3.4 million visits annually, according to UN data.