Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Vice President Harris’ stepdaughter urged her social media followers to donate to U.N. agency accused of aiding Hamas

Ella Emhoff — the daughter of Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman — has previously said she does not consider herself Jewish

Ella Emhoff, the step-daughter of Vice President Kamala Harris and the daughter of Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman of the United States, urged her Instagram followers to donate to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), despite allegations that its staffers helped Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack. Harris has reportedly advocated the administration in recent months for greater empathy toward the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. 

Emhoff, who has 318,000 followers, removed the link to UNRWA’s website after the New York Post published a story about it

The Biden administration paused funding for the U.N. agency in January after Israel provided evidence that at least a dozen of UNRWA’s 13,000 staffers in Gaza received orders from Hamas and took part in the kidnapping and killing on Oct. 7. UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said he fired several staffers while the agency investigates the evidence provided by Israel.

The Senate’s recent $95 billion foreign aid package, which includes military assistance for Israel and humanitarian aid for Gaza, excluded funding for UNRWA, and future support is being negotiated between congressional negotiators as they attempt to prevent a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.

Emhoff previously raised funds for Gaza through the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. (A St. Louis Girl Scout troop recently made headlines for raising money for that organization.) 

Even though her father has constantly showcased his Jewish heritage since Harris became vice president in 2020, Ella Emhoff does not consider herself Jewish. “Ella truly has no qualms with the faith,” her representative told the Forward in 2021, “but she does not want to speak on behalf of Judaism, as she does not celebrate herself.”

The office of Doug Emhoff did not reply to a request for comment.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.