Fuelling Hamas By Funding UNRWA

"A fourth grade math exercise asks students to calculate the number of martyrs [including those who have led suicide bombings on buses and shopping centres] in Palestinian uprisings and it [is] accompanied by a photograph of raised coffins at a mass funeral."

2021 IMPACT-se report

"There is no question in anyone’s mind that, given that the majority of UNRWA’s funding goes to education, given that the education is geared towards inciting whole generations of Palestinians to commit the kind of unspeakable acts of terror that we saw, there needs to be a direct link between international funding of UNRWA and an absolute, iron-flat, not just guarantee, but evidence, that once and for all, UNRWA stops teaching this curriculum."

"We need that to end, and it needs to end right now. The international community has the power to end it because they are financially supporting it. That is the absolute bottom [line]. There cannot be one single day more of hate teaching."

"We warned that there will be a terrible outcome and that is what you saw. Hamas made its intentions crystal-clear in Arabic. We read it in the textbooks, but the damage is done. It’s unspeakable damage."

"[UNRWA claims it must teach the curriculum of ] the host nation."

“Time and time again, they have been told by the international community that change is necessary, and time and time again, instead of rewriting the curriculum to take out the hate they simply said, ‘We cannot because it is the host nation’s curriculum.’ That’s not good enough. They hid behind bureaucratic gobbledygook instead of taking the duty of care as educators.”

IMPACT-SE CEO Marcus Sheff

 

UNRWA has been heavily criticized frequently by  charges that it has links to Palestinian terrorists, more particularly the governing Gaza terrorist group, Hamas. It would have been difficult to deny those links since many of those UNRWA hires to implement their programs are in fact members of Hamas. In 2010, because of those proven links Canada's previous Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut Canada's funding to the UN group in 2010.          

 

When Justin Trudeau, the current prime minister of a Liberal government took office, he restored UNRWA funding. Funding that has now been announced by Canada's International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen, to be but a temporary suspension. Reality is, however, that the Liberal government's pious statement of having suspended funding to UNRWA now unequivocally stained with evidence that some of its employees took part in the October 7 pogrom in Israel, is an equivocation too far; the funds were provided prior to the declaration of suspension.

 

Prior to that, it was a known fact that UNRWA facilities had been used to stockpile Hamas rockets, and that launch sites were close to UNRWA facilities. When rockets are launched responses by the targets tend to aim back at the site from which they were launched, creating for Hamas the opportunities it seeks, to cast Israel in the devil's mould for 'targeting' crowded civilian populations. To which UNRWA was an enabler. When Trudeau restored UNRWA funding from Canada, he sneered at the previous government's cutting off the agency, for "political reasons".

 

"Quite frankly", he stated, in his inimical patronizing manner "Canadians expect us to be helpful in the world"; perhaps but not to terrorists. An estimated $110 million was sent from Canada to the UN agency. To an agency which, in Bearing Witness -- the 43-minute video detailing footage in real time of the October 7 atrocities being enacted and the shocking pleasure of Hamas operatives while murdering Israeli children, women and the elderly and desecrating their corpses -- amply demonstrates why not.

 

Images from the January, 2021 IMPACT-se report on UNRWA Palestinian school textbooks. (Screenshot)

 

The Israeli non-profit IMPACT-se conducts analyses on a regular basis of textbooks from UNRWA schools, since the agency's primary role is schooling provision to Palestinians. In them overt antisemitic conspiracy theories and violent Jihad are featured, with Israel referred to as the "Zionist Occupation". And there geography publications feature maps where the State of Israel is absent and reading lessons come complete with "martyr", "attack" and "intifada".

A report in spring of 2023 by the German magazine BILD uncovered examples of  textbooks and course materials with anti-Jewish propaganda. One Grade 9 exercise described an arson attack on an Israeli bus as a "barbecue". The headline of the article in BILD read: "Germany continues to pay for hatred of Jews". When UNRWA officials were charged directly by Avi Benlolo of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative, their response to him was: "they admitted this was an ongoing problem but suggested nothing could be done about it".

There have been occasions when UNRWA admitted its facilities were used to house munitions and even rocket launch sites for Hamas and other terrorist groups. The agency wrote that it had "discovered rockets hidden in a vacant school in the Gaza Strip" in July of 2014, A following press release noted that a second discovery had been made and then a third. The munitions in all three instances were "referred to the local authorities"; in other words Hamas removed them for storage elsewhere.

In January, UN Watch issued a report detailing dozens of social media posts where UNRWA employees openly celebrated the October 7 massacres; in some instances even while the attacks were ongoing. A Telegram channel used by 3,000 UNRWA teachers and administrators yielded celebratory posts on the very morning of the attacks. Israa Abdul Kareem Mezher teaching at a UNRWA-funded elementary school asked fellow teachers to pray for Hamas fighters and the destruction of Israel.

A 2015 UN Watch report detailing social media posts by UNRWA teachers glorifying terrorism or antisemitic conspiracies resulted in several UNRWA employees being fired. One post shared publicly to Facebook read "Stab Zionist dogs". The agency's commissioner Pierre Krahenbuhl in 2019 was responsible for a culture of nepotism and financial irregularities, leading him to resign. Just recently he began new employment as director general of the International Red Cross.