The Jewish Chronicle of March 13, 2019 reports that the UK government is to play a central role in a review of Palestinian school textbooks amid concern British aid money is funding a curriculum that allegedly incites violence against Israelis.

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) confirmed it had “successfully pushed” for the review of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) current curriculum for primary and secondary school children. The DFID announced the Georg Eckert Institute – a leading international institute for analysing education media based in Germany – had been commissioned to produce an initial scoping report to expedite the full review

Last July, 2018, the Center for Near East Policy Research submitted a complaint to DFID about the presence of military training for youth in the UNRWA schools funded by DFID

DFID sent a letter in response that “We increased our planned funding to UNRWA this year and last year to ensure the Agency can continue to deliver vital health and education services. DFID uses a variety of tools to monitor UNRWA’s performance and ensure that funding reaches the intended beneficiaries and delivers planned results, that it delivers value for money, and that it complies with UK transparency requirements”

For the past eight months, we wondered about which “tools” the DFID was referring to.

The Jewish Chronicle confirms that “Labour Friends of Israel “has been behind repeated calls for the government to probe the “scandal” of British money being used to fund a curriculum which incites the murder of Israelis and circulates antisemitic material to children. LFI vice-chair Dame Louise Ellman told the House of Commons in January that young Palestinian minds were currently “being poisoned” and “the opportunity for Britain to help promote the values of peace, reconciliation and coexistence squandered.” LFI chair Joan Ryan has also been a vociferous campaigner for action over the PA curriculum.

However, the Eckert Institute which the UK will rely upon, provides fertile ground for advancement of an anti Israel narrative.

How do we know?

The Eckert Institute has been a consistent sponsor of Nurit Peled Elhanan, who has focused her “academic” work on the promotion of the myth that Israeli schools indoctrinates the Israeli student population to demonize the Palestinian Arab population.

Sources

https://israelbehindthenews.com/?s=NURIT

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5bxags

*Palestinian History and Civics Textbooks and Curricula Statement. (Georg Eckert Institute: Braunschwieg, Germany, 1999);

*Adwan, S. and Firer, R. The Narrative of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict In History and Civics Textbooks and Curricula Statement. (Georg Eckert Institute: Braunschwieg, Germany, 2000)

https://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/163293S

Meanwhile, the current atmosphere in German diplomacy towards PA & UNRWA education has been two-fold.

Parties identified with the German govt have recently raised 24 resolutions to demand investigations of PA and UNRWA education. However , the German govt has tripled its donations to UNRWA, without any constraints.

We wrote to the German foreign ministry to ask whether their aid to UNRWA meets standards of transparency and oversight.

The answer we got from Germany : they rely on UNRWA itself for transparency and oversight.

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David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.