Oh, it’s nothing new, I know. Nothing surprising. What would be surprising would be if UNRWA actually did what It has promised to do for many years — to clean its textbooks of putrid antisemism. But it’s always the same script: a concerned NGO brings forth a meticulous compilation of antisemitic texts and study guides used in UNRWA schools. It tries to bring this to the attention of the UN, which doesn’t much care, and then, with more success, to the attention of Western countries that are the chief donors to UNRWA. Representatives of a few of those countries, in turn, make inquiries of UNRWA’s staff: what about these texts? What do you intend to do about them? And it’s always the same charade: the pretend-outrage of the UNRWA big shots, who are “just as shocked” as those complaining, and who promise to radically improve those texts, to remove the antisemitism, to make those books models of tolerance. And then nothing happens. And another year goes by, another dismal compilation of the same antisemitic texts, another handful of articles about UNRWA’s misdeeds appear in the Jewish press but seldom outside it, the same failed attempt to interest the UN, the same appeal to the same donor countries to “do something”about UNRWA, and so they promise to do.
As in years past, those donors ask for the same reassurances, and are given them by UNRWA, and then, yet again, nothing happens. No donor country, save for the US under Trump, has cut its aid to UNRWA in response. For 14 months, the EU did freeze its funds to UNRWA, hoping to force a change in the textbooks. But UNRWA did not change those texts, and the EU, under the egregious Ursula van der Leyen, renewed its aid without any conditions. And then there is the US, supposedly Israel’s closest ally, but under Biden, the aid to UNRWA has been renewed. The Bidenites apparently did not mind those antisemitic texts enough to want to continue Trump’s ban on funding for UNRWA. Instead, they were eager to please, and though those antisemitic texts were not removed from UNRWA schools, the Bidenites handed over to UNRWA $235 million in 2021 and $338 million so far in 2022. And the farce of false promises goes on.
Here’s a news story about the latest report on UNRWA from that tireless investigative organization IMPACT-se: “UNRWA Palestinian textbooks promote antisemitism, hate and violence – IMPACT-se,” Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2022:
Palestinian textbooks produced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) contain antisemitic, hateful and violent passages, an IMPACT-se analysis published on Thursday [July 7] found.
Some of the antisemitic passages include labeling Jews as inherently treacherous in an Islamic education drill. In a grammar exercise, Jews are implied to be impure and that [by their presence on Temple Mount] they defile al-Aqsa Mosque.
A poem included in the educational content glorifies the killing of Israelis, portraying dying as martyrs by killing Israelis as a “hobby.”
One of the hateful and violent ideas taught to Palestinian children can be found in a grammar exercise that encourages Palestinians to “sacrifice their blood to liberate Jerusalem,” with terms such as “Jihad warriors” included.…
In some passages, Israel is described as a European state implanted by anti-Arab imperialists. It is also taught that Israel tortures Palestinian prisoners and violently threatens their families.
The state of Israel came into being not because of “anti-Arab imperialists” – i.e., Great Britain – but despite them. Great Britain failed as Mandatary to look after the interests of the Zionists, as it had pledged to do. During the course of the Mandate, the British did not fulfill their solemn promise to “facilitate Jewish immigration” and to “encourage close settlement by Jews on the land.” Britain’s first major act concerning the Palestine Mandate was in 1921, when it prohibited settlement by Jews in all the territory east of the Jordan River – some 78% of the area that had originally been slated for inclusion in the Mandate’s territory, to become part of the future Jewish National Home. The British instead turned that territory into the Emirate of Transjordan, to be ruled by the Hashemite prince Abdullah. From 1920 on, the British did nothing to encourage “close settlement by Jews,” as they were required to do by the express terms of Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine. In 1939, the Macdonald White Paper on Jewish immigration to Palestine was adopted by the British government; it allowed only 15,000 Jews to enter Palestine in each of the next five years, after which all such immigration would be subject to an Arab veto, which would bring that immigration to an end. In other words, at the time of maximum peril for Europe’s Jews, when hundreds of thousands, and perhaps a million or more Jews in Western and Central Europe might have been saved had they been allowed to enter Mandatory Palestine, they were kept out by the British, the very people who were supposed to “facilitate Jewish immigration.” The British blockaded Mandatory Palestine, forcing ships loaded with Jewish refugees to go back to Europe with their desperate human cargo. And even after the war, the British continued to turn away ships loaded with Jewish refugees, many of them survivors of the camps. The Exodus was the most famous of those tragic vessels, but there were many others.
Palestinian children are also taught fake Israeli policies meant to “erase Palestinian identity.” These policies include alleged attempts to “steal and falsify” Palestinian heritage and “erase Jerusalem’s cultural heritage.”
As the Palestinians insist, among the ways those diabolical Israelis try to “steal and falsify” the Palestinian heritage is to make up stories about a mythical Jewish past. Two Jewish Temples were supposedly built on top of the Haram al-Sharif, but there is not a trace of any of them. The Israelis steal from Palestinian archeological sites, often destroying them in the process, and appropriate the Palestinian objects — pottery, drinking cups, lamps, and other artifacts — that they intentionally mislabel as Jewish antiquities. Ever since 1948, we are expected to believe, the Israelis have systematically changed the original Arabic place names for Jewish ones, another way they hope to efface the Palestinian character of the land.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini met with IMPACT-se officials two months ago and was presented with the report prior to its publication. In the meeting, IMPACT-se raised concerns over hate materials produced by UNRWA and secrecy over teaching materials.
What did Philippe Lazzarini say at that meeting with IMPACT-se officials, including that group’s tireless head investigator, Marcus Sheff? Did he promise “to read it with great interest”? Of course he did. Did Lazzarini promise to make sure that any offending texts would be removed, just as he and other UNRWA directors-general had done before, over many years, knowing full well that nothing would happen? Indubitably. Did he suffer even a twinge of conscience, at being presented with such evidence of violent antisemitism, which his own organization has continued to allow? Not at all. You don’t become the head of UNRWA if you let a little thing like antisemitism bother you. And has Lazzarini issued a statement about UNRWA schoolbooks in the two months since he was handed the report? No, not a word.
How much longer will the main contributor to UNRWA, and therefore its chief enabler, the United States, allow this farce to continue? All the Biden Administration has to do is withhold the money — $338 million this year and, presumably, about the same for 2023 – that it gives to UNRWA “until,” Biden or Blinken could say, “UNRWA really does what it has promised to do for so many years. This time, we will wait to examine the new texts, across the curriculum, before a single American dollar is transferred to UNRWA. This time, we mean it. And we insist that UNRWA mean it, too.”
gravenimage says
UNRWA Still Teaching Hate, and the Biden Administration Doesn’t Care
……………………………….
No surprise in either case, sadly.
Fitna says
To my reasonably logical mind, this does not compute. Why would anyone willingly side with and donate vast quantities of money to terrorist organizations, which they know are generating hate propaganda and inciting violence against our allies?
Maybe the Muslims cut a deal and give them bribes/kickbacks. This is happening right out in the open.
If that isn’t bad enough, why are the Republicans going along with this and not calling out the Democrats for what they’re doing?
When the ‘little fish’ get caught funding Islamic terrorism, they’re given stiff sentences. When the ‘big fish’ do it, it’s just “Biden’s foreign policy.”
The terrorism doesn’t end because there are a lot of people making money off it probably, at the expense of taxpayers and the victims of terrorists, how sickening. They all need to be prosecuted.
James Lincoln says
Fitna says,
“When the ‘little fish’ get caught funding Islamic terrorism, they’re given stiff sentences. When the ‘big fish’ do it, it’s just “Biden’s foreign policy.” ”
Yes.
ALL of these fish should fry.
Fitna says
Agreed James.