‘UNRWA at war’: New film shows UN agency teaching kids to kill in Judea and Samaria

evelations by Israel’s government about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency have shattered the group’s carefully cultivated image as a humanitarian organization, revealing it to be no less than an arm of Hamas in Gaza. However, little light has been thrown on UNRWA’s identical role in Judea and Samaria.

A new film, “UNRWA at War,” focuses on the educational side of UNRWA’s activities, in which children are taught not just to hate, but to kill. Just as it did in Gaza, UNRWA is inculcating children with the same genocidal creed in Judea and Samaria, only in this case for Fatah, the controlling party in the Palestinian Authority.

The roughly 20-minute film was released by the Jerusalem-based Center for Near East Policy Research on Sept. 1 and is available online.

The center’s director, David Bedein, told JNS that the movie shows what’s happening in Bethlehem. “That’s the next place they [the terrorists] are going to break out,” he said.

When could such an attack take place? “It could be as soon as tomorrow,” he said.

The film shows that terrorists, such as Dalal Mughrabi, a Fatah member who participated in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel, in which 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, were murdered, are routinely held up as heroes and role models in UNRWA schools. Images of Mughrabi and other terrorists adorn the schools’ walls.

In the film, Arab students in Judea and Samaria, products of UNRWA schools, speak of Mughrabi with reverence.

“She’s like my sister, like my mother. She’s part of our people,” says a boy from the Al-Amari refugee camp east of Ramallah. A girl of about six, also from Al-Amari, says, “Dhalal Mughrabi is a Palestinian martyr. She fought against the Jews. She blew them up.”

Bedein, who has been sounding the alarm regarding UNRWA for decades, describes the indoctrination the kids are receiving as “murder education.” UNRWA, he said, is a “machine” that produces genocidal children in a “cookie-cutter” manner.

Kutaiba Hatab, 15, attends the UNRWA Boys School in the Jalazone refugee camp north of Ramallah in Samaria. Asked in the film what he’s taught about the right of return, he says, “To fight, and to keep fighting, until Palestine is liberated!” He goes on to state that when he grows up, “I’ll be a jihadist and fight for Allah!”

“Do you hate Jews,” an interviewer asks Rada Abu-Hatab, 12, an UNRWA student in Jenin. “Yes, a lot,” she answers. “I want to fight and become a martyr and ascend to heaven with Allah!”

Mohammed Mahmud Khalil, an UNRWA student from Ein Arik, an Arab town near Ramallah, says, “What is the solution to Jerusalem? To kill the Jews. We’ll get rid of the Jews … With Allah’s help, I will become a holy warrior.”

All the children connected the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7 to the right of return, characterizing the gruesome attack as an effort to liberate the land from the Jews.

“Oct. 7 is related to the right of return because Hamas reconquered part of our land that was taken by the occupiers,” says Osama Belashe, an UNRWA student from Jalazone. “In school our teacher taught us we have to return. Even if Israel gives us compensation [to stay here] we have to return.”

For Bedein, the most important thing the film documents is that at UNRWA, children receive military training. In previous films, Bedein has shown that these training camps were set up near Israel Defense Forces bases.

He worries that Israel has been slow to adapt to the post-Oct. 7 reality. “They’re making the same mistake they made last October, not paying attention to the preparations for war in the UNRWA camps,” he said.

However, he sees signs of awakening, noting a recent Israel Army Radio report that the military intended to investigate military training at UNRWA camps.

And next week, Bedein is to present his findings to a Knesset committee. “People who did not take me seriously over a period of 36 years are now taking me seriously,” he said.

Incompetence, or willful blindness, on the part of the Israeli authorities is a recurring theme for Bedein.

He said the Foreign Ministry has a special division dedicated to overseeing UNRWA, yet its representatives were oblivious regarding the weapons held at UNRWA camps. He brought them to the Askar camp bordering Nablus (Shechem) to show them. “They had no idea about the guns,” he said.

Moreover, Israel never exercised what oversight it had, he said. “Israel has the power to veto anything in Palestinian education. What we learned from Oct. 7 is that they weren’t doing it,” he added.

“Back in the 1980s, I began this conversation with how humanitarian supplies were sold in the open market and with no supervision,” Bedein said. “And they [Israel] didn’t make any changes. There was no oversight. To say they’re not doing their job is an understatement,” he added.

Although many have argued for doing away with UNRWA, according to Bedein that’s not a realistic solution. The organization is too embedded in the territories and in the United Nations, and the General Assembly would never accept it, he argued. However, he continued, it is possible to change UNRWA from within by pointing out the absurd situation and demanding change.

“The theme of UNRWA education is ‘peace starts here,’” he said. “How could it possibly be that a U.N. social work agency would be using their education system to prepare kids for war?”

Bedein has put together a five-point plan for changing UNRWA from within:

1. Cancellation of the new UNRWA curriculum based on jihad.

2. Disarmament of UNRWA schools and cessation of paramilitary training.

3. Dismissing UNRWA employees affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.

4. Resettling fourth- and fifth-generation refugees from the 1948 war rather than keeping them in perpetual refugee status.

5. Demanding an audit of donor funds.

He has met five times with Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, whom he said is open to his proposals.

While UNRWA was always corrupt, it wasn’t always the way it is now, he said.

Even the children going through the schools, while they spoke of “their homes in Jaffa,” didn’t talk about going back and killing everyone in Jaffa as they do now, he said.

“The change took place after 1992 when the PLO was put in charge by [then-Foreign Minister] Shimon Peres,” he said. “UNRWA was handed over to the PLO.”