ONE APPLE OR THE WHOLE BASKET?
An isolated case? Other information has continued to raise alarm. In early December 2023, when the first hostages were released, one of them explained that she had been held by an UNRWA professor. He even moved her from one agency establishment to another to keep her captive. Another hostage experienced the same thing, in the hands of another agency professor, who took the opportunity to teach her Arabic. Jailer and terrorist, but a teacher to the end…
A few days after this discovery, on January 10, a revelation from the UN Watch Association, founded to monitor the UN and its excesses, was made to raise eyebrows. Hillel Neuer, its founder, has never hidden his support for Israel, but everything he denounces is always rigorous and documented, and that day, he had up his sleeve messages showing that October 7 did not shock the agency’s teaching staff, far from it: ” Just a few bad apples? Here is our recorded copy of the Unwra Telegram group of 3,000 UNWRA teachers… There are 249,000 messages, full of celebrations of Hamas terrorism. Without a single UNWRA teacher opposing it at any time. ”
He is not the only one shocked. IMPACT-se, a monitoring institute that analyzes educational programs around the world, is alarmed by messages published by some of the agency’s professors on social networks. Like Sarah Alderawy, who shares video clips showing Hamas terrorists shooting at Israeli cars or rocket attacks on her Facebook page. Or Afaf Talab, also employed by UNRWA, who implores God to destroy the Jews and their supporters. ” God makes [the enemies] pay for their evils .” On another page, it is Abu Adhm, a construction engineer for UNRWA, who incites Hamas to kill the hostages and as many Israeli civilians as possible by quoting the Koran, ” in order to terrorize the enemy of God .”
Nothing very surprising for UN Watch, which has been warning since 2015. The previous year, the Israeli army seized rockets stored in UNRWA schools. Israel regularly accuses the agency and its buildings of serving as weapons caches or access to tunnels. This could be the cause of the sudden collapse of the parking lot of the UNRWA headquarters that year, under the effect of a strange weakening of its basement… It would be necessary to wait for the Israeli military response on October 7 to clear up this mystery. By investing the premises, Tsahal discovered not simple tunnels, but a Hamas IT HQ! Cables supplied the nerve center of servers of the intelligence services of the terrorist movement… thanks to the electrical and home automation network of UNRWA. Disturbing. Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner General, sent out a very long tweet, denying that he knew anything: ” UNRWA does not know what is under its headquarters in Gaza. ” A bit short. Hillel Neuer does not believe it for a second: ” It’s absurd. The people who checked the electricity bills would certainly have known. Everyone knew. ” Especially since the collapse of 2014 could have raised suspicions. But it’s not over yet…
In February, a thunderbolt came when Israel revealed that twelve of the attackers in the massacre were employees of UNRWA. A file was sent to all the chancelleries, with photos and names to back it up. ” In addition to these twelve workers, we have significant indications based on intelligence that more than thirty UNRWA workers participated in the massacre, facilitated the hostage-taking, pillaged and robbed Israeli communities, and more ,” declared Yoav Gallant, Israeli Defense Minister, at a briefing with the foreign press. According to him and Israeli intelligence, ” 1,468 employees are active within Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad ,” including 236 in their armed branches.
REFUGEES FROM FATHER TO SON!
Shaken, challenged by their opinions, the chancelleries announce one after the other that they are suspending their donations. Not the Arab countries, but they give little… Apart from Islamist NGOs like Islamic Relief (a Muslim Brotherhood organization), it is mainly the Western democracies that finance UNRWA. In 2022 alone, the agency received 344 million dollars from the United States, 202 from Germany, 114 from the EU, 61 from Sweden, 34 from Norway, 29 from France, 26 from Switzerland, 24 from Canada, 21 from the United Kingdom, 21 from the Netherlands… There are company cars to buy and employees to pay. While the UNHCR takes care of all the refugees in the world (110 million in total) with only 21,000 employees, the UNRWA has more, 30,000 employees, to take care of the Palestinian refugees alone: 5.7 million, twenty times less. But their number continues to grow. Because, unique in the world, this status is passed down from father to son!
Outside of UNRWA, in the rest of the world, refugee status is by definition temporary and linked to displacement or conflict. The case of Palestinian refugees is the only one in the world where fathers can give this status to their children, in a hereditary and patriarchal manner. If the agency applied the rules of the UNHCR, as in other conflicts, only 20,000 people would be considered Palestinian refugees; and not 5.7 million as today. A third of these beneficiaries live in refugee camps, which strangely continue to exist in Palestinian territory… under Palestinian authority, such as in Gaza or the West Bank. In Jordan, several of these “refugees” also have Jordanian nationality. This allows them to vote and receive the financial aid associated with this status.
In a word: UNRWA has created a lasting institutional dependency on international aid, which makes the two-state solution undesirable. As long as the conflict exists, only the agency has the insane right to decide on the attribution of Palestinian refugee status. But since the 1950s, its agents have been distributing it haphazardly. It is not Israel who says this, nor a seasoned Zionist, but the former director of UNRWA, Henry Labouisse, a lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner for UNICEF. Here is what he declared on July 20, 1955: ” There are refugees who hold up to 500 UNRWA ration cards, and there are UNRWA personnel who knowingly give their approval. The black market in ration cards is particularly active in Gaza, where residents have made small fortunes. “That was sixty-nine years ago, and nothing has changed since then.
DIPLOMATIC SCHIZOPHRENIA
For Einat Wilf, a former Labour MP: ” UNRWA has failed miserably in its mission to solve the problem of Palestinian refugees. Instead of promoting the reintegration or resettlement of refugees, it has perpetuated their dependency and refugee status. ” A real scandal, indeed. But apart from a few courageous politicians, who will dare to say it? The slightest criticism is immediately equated with a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
Every ten years, the world realizes with horror that this agency promotes the expression of hatred, then turns a blind eye. This is the risk of the mission entrusted to Catherine Colonna by the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, known for his blunt statements against Israel. The man went so far as to forbid countries worried by these revelations from transferring their donations to other agencies. So it was he who tasked our former Minister of Foreign Affairs with submitting a report to him to investigate… As soon as she was mandated, Catherine Colonna explained that she wanted to allow donors ” to regain confidence “. Among them, France, which must soon pay its contribution. Behind the scenes, diplomatic advisers explain that there is no choice, and ” no one else on the ground ” to avoid the health and food hell that is brewing in Gaza.
And in fact, it is tragic but UNRWA holds the entire key to humanitarian aid and education. It is the one that communicates about the shortages of food and distributes the aid. Obviously selectively… Last October, several of its warehouses were attacked by the Gaza mob. On videos, online, Palestinians explain that they do not have access to the resources that the agency distributes, and that they say they find in the trash of members of Hamas… served as a priority?
YOU WILL BECOME A KAMIKAZE, MY SON
Given the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, one might argue that the agency is irreplaceable in the short term, and that it is necessary to restore the means to enable it to function in the midst of chaos. But should we continue to fund its schools, knowing that they are producing the suicide bombers of tomorrow?
IN MATH, CHILDREN LEARN TO CALCULATE THE NUMBER OF MARTYRS IN SUICIDE ATTACKS
All the evidence of this indoctrination exists. 60% of UNRWA’s annual budget is allocated to education: 540,000 children, including 286,000 Gazan children, are placed under its tutelage. However, everything suggests that the school orientation mainly proposes to become a suicide bomber or a future Hamas leader. At the Al-Zaytun elementary school, for example, women are celebrated… not by showing Barbie , but by glorifying Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist who shot 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, on a bus in 1978. The grammar booklets of UNRWA schools are, for their part, riddled with references to Jihad, martyrdom, prison and conflict. Overview: ” Jihad is one of the gates of paradise.” “The Palestinians have become an example of sacrifice.” » In the drawing section, students are invited to color a bloody Palestinian flag on the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The slogan ” God, protect Palestine ” is placed on a map that includes Israel and the West Bank. In math, children learn to calculate by counting the number of martyrs in suicide attacks, thanks to photos of funeral processions. Everything is in keeping with this… For Marcus Sheff of the IMPACT-SE Institute, which scrutinizes textbooks around the world, there is no doubt that those of UNRWA ” incite violence ” and ” demonize Israel “. She even added anti-Semitic and jihadist content that did not appear in the textbooks of the Palestinian Authority!
When donors cough a little, the agency issues an official denial and promises that it will not do it again. It did it in 2004, in 2014… In 2021, the “inappropriate material” was allegedly distributed “by mistake” to Palestinian students. Except that the manuals intended for UNRWA teachers themselves recommend exercising students’ imagination on the theme: “Why do Jews commit massacres?”
The European Parliament itself is concerned about the role played by these textbooks in the October 7 massacres and has just adopted a resolution warning that ” education to hate has direct and dramatic consequences on the security of Israelis as well as on the prospects for a better future for young Palestinians .” An unequivocal observation. One question remains: can UNRWA change?
REFORM OR REFOUND?
Reform will not be easy. Just one example. When in September 2011, Suhail al-Hindi, president of the UN agency’s staff union in Gaza and a school principal, was suspended for his overly visible role within Hamas (he was a member of the political bureau!), the entire staff, 8,000 teachers and school principals, went on strike in support of him. And this, until the terrorist leader was reinstated.
Under pressure from the famous donors, the West, changes have indeed been attempted in the textbooks. But this never lasts. And we must see how the former director of the UNRWA school curriculum unit, Ahmad Oueidat, spoke about it on Al-Hiwar TV on March 14. He deplores the fact that they were ” forced to remove images and various subjects ” or, worse, to introduce ” fanciful slogans such as neutrality, independence, impartiality and humanity .” With the success that we know! Fortunately, he hastens to proudly add that the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, taught at UNRWA.
When donors realized that agency employees had participated in October 7, most countries stopped funding the organization for a few weeks. But apart from the United States, all have since resumed. No lessons have been learned. As expected, Catherine Colonna submitted her report on April 22. Forty-eight pages of incredible lightness, recognizing problems of ” neutrality “, but contesting the most serious suspicions on the pretext of a lack of evidence, minimizing the share of hatred in school textbooks. Before recommending, all the same, just in case, to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as to the host countries, to check them carefully. All that for that.
If the international community really wanted to act, UNRWA would at least be divided between a humanitarian branch and another, educational, to be able to control the second without jeopardizing the first. Better still, the question of Palestinian refugees would be treated equally, within UNICEF, with a new agency dedicated to Palestine and new teams. This could reassure the donors… And perhaps attorney Zimeray would know what to say to Yonatan’s mother, who is still looking for her son’s body.
🔴🔔 Demain dans Franc-Tireur N128
Enquête sur l’@UNWRA, une agence à risque, par @FiammettaVenner.#Papacito, le Portrait qui fâche d’un macho facho. Par @BenjaminSire. La #Cisjordanie, un peu oubliée, s’embrase au rythme des assauts incessant des colons. Par @YannBarte pic.twitter.com/0UX4hkkT30- Franc-Tireur (@franctireurmag) April 23, 2024
