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WATCH: Only Palestinians will have sovereignty from the river to the sea, says Fatah official
Majed Al-Fityani, the Secretary of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, told Palestinian Authority-run Awda TV that the Palestinians will wrest sovereignty over the entire Holy Land, claiming that Israelis have no roots in the land.
Gaza: UN schools teach children ‘right to return by force of arms’
Mena-Watch spoke to David Bedein about the German and European unwillingness to engage with military training in UNRWA schools.
David Bedein is the founder and director of the Bedein Center for Middle East Policy Research in Jerusalem, which has been researching UNRWA since 1987 to educate the public about how its funds, schools and structures are being misused by Palestinian terrorist organizations for their own purposes.
On March 14, 2022, he sent an email to Oliver Owcza, the head of Germany’s representation in the Palestinian Territories. In it he wrote:
“Your Excellency, the Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research has identified the presence of massive weapons at UNRWA facilities. This is shown by several documentaries produced by the Bedein Center in the last year alone. [Links to websites were included; Note Mena-Watch.]
The Bedein Center has a question for you, the diplomat of a UNRWA donor nation. As a UNRWA donor, will you ask UNRWA to conduct an inspection of all facilities to remove deadly weapons?”
David Bedein received no reply. I then asked the same question to the Press Office of the Federal Foreign Office. The Foreign Office says:
“The Foreign Office is not aware of the incident you mentioned, which you attribute to a UNRWA facility. Germany is in permanent contact with UNRWA.«
A non-response typical of the Foreign Office whenever Palestinian terrorism is at stake (see also here and here ). I talked about this over Zoom with David Bedein.
Stefan Frank (SF): Mr. Bedein, you sent video recordings to both the German representative in Ramallah and the Federal Foreign Office showing how weapons of war are presented and even fired in UNRWA facilities. Is that correct?
David Bedein (DB): That is correct. Yesterday we were informed that in exactly four weeks a new summer training program for children from UNRWA schools will start with weapons training.
SF: In which facilities does it take place?
DB: These exercises are conducted in open spaces not far from the UNRWA schools. The people running the program are teachers and students from UNRWA schools.
SF: Is the area where the military training takes place legally under the control of UNRWA?
DB: Difficult to say. In previous films that you know, from 2017 and 2018, it actually took place against the backdrop of images and insignia of UNRWA. When we were filming last summer, we didn’t see the UNRWA emblem or the United Nations flags. But in January we filmed UNRWA children with guns in a UNRWA refugee camp near Bethlehem.
SF: The area for the military exercises is adjacent to the UNRWA schools?
DB: It’s right next to it. The drill does not take place in the schools themselves, because after we showed these films with footage from 2017 and 2018 in the German Bundestag and at the United Nations, there was a lot of feedback that something like this should not happen.
I predict that July’s military drills will likely not be held in front of UNRWA emblems; but when we then interview the students and ask them where they are from, they will say – like every summer – that they are from UNRWA schools. They will also tell us what they learn in UNRWA schools: what they call the “Right of Return at Arms”.
SF: What can be seen in the videos that you submitted to the German representation in Ramallah and the Federal Foreign Office?
DB: We submitted three videos: One from 2018 in which the children are marching with guns. One sees UNRWA instructors teaching them the idea of the “right of return” at gunpoint. Then there are the summer 2021 footage of thousands of children from UNRWA camps recruited into UNRWA schools being taught how to use automatic weapons. They give automatic guns to children – the youngest being nine years old – knowing they will use them. The third footage we have made available is from January this year, Fatah Day, at UNRWA’s Deheishe refugee camp. You see children with guns again.
SF: What do you say to the German government?
DB: We asked the federal government and other donor countries a very simple question: As a UNRWA donor nation, will you ask UNRWA to conduct an inspection of all facilities to remove deadly weapons?
Yesterday – this is coincidental – I received a press release from UNRWA’s spokeswoman saying that she needs more money for UNRWA’s Jenin camp, which of course has been a hotbed of terrorist activity lately. The message did not mention any regulation of the funds: it may come in cash and the purpose is questionable. So my message to the German electorate is: Look what happens to UNRWA funds, see if they are used for military purposes.
SF: The Foreign Office states that they are in contact with UNRWA and have no knowledge of weapons in UNRWA facilities.
DB: It evades my question: are you going to conduct an investigation to see if there are guns? That is the question. If it has no knowledge, it means that it did not investigate. If it did an investigation and said, “We didn’t find anything,” that would be interesting. But to say it has no knowledge means it has not done any research.
The federal government, which is UNRWA’s top funder, has not checked whether there are weapons at UNRWA facilities. UNRWA receives a lot of money from the federal government and German party foundations such as the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Hanns Seidel Foundation. You should all check what happens to the money.
SF: Have you contacted the foundations mentioned?
DB: Yes. I asked if they checked if the money they sent was used for weapons, for terrorist purposes – no answer.
SF: You have made similar requests in other European countries and in North America. Was that more successful?
DB: I’ve had success with the US government: the US government will not release the money for education until they have assurances that education will be monitored and revised. That is, the US government has allocated the money, but it will not release it because the US Congress is demanding accountability for what happens to the money. So the United States gave the money, but also made a condition: that UNRWA not be allowed to use it until it fulfilled the treaty. The United States and UNRWA agreed in the summer of 2021 that they would not allow the facilities to be used for terrorist purposes.
It is very important to monitor both incoming humanitarian funds and incoming educational funds. 58 percent of the UNRWA budget goes to education. If you see the children in military training now, that’s part of the education system.
SF: Have you had any success in Europe in your efforts to control funds for UNRWA ?
DB: Not at all. The EU Parliament has made certain recommendations for revising textbooks. However, the European Commission, which represents the EU, has not addressed any queries to UNRWA. So while the European Parliament is very sensitive to our questions, the EU decision-makers are not allowing anything to change.
SF: What do you think is the main reason why the EU and the German government are reluctant to stop the use of European taxpayer money to fund Palestinian terrorism and the murder of Jews? Is it laziness or a desire to sweep these things under the rug?
DB: It’s more serious. The Federal Foreign Office is striving for economic relations with the Palestinian Authority (PA), the PFLP and Hamas. It’s all a matter of economics and they don’t want anything to interfere with their deal with the PA. Their policy is: as long as the money flows, there will be peace. There is of course no basis in reality for this assumption.
SF: Do you see any connection to how European governments paid for Palestinian terrorist organizations in the 1970s? At that time, countries like Germany and Switzerland paid many millions of Deutschmarks and Swiss francs in ransom and protection money to the PFLP and other terrorist organizations so as not to be targeted by the terrorists themselves.
DB: There are very big similarities. As a former American, I know this concept as “paying tribute to terrorists.” And that’s what we’re talking about. Pay tribute and look the other way when they do something wrong. It would be easiest for the German government, which has an office in Ramallah, to look at all the refugee camps in Judea/Samaria, Gaza, Jerusalem and see what’s going on there. And with the amount of guns — we’re talking guns for 30,000 children — it’s not difficult to figure out where those guns are kept.
SF: Shouldn’t this also be an important human rights concern of the federal government?
DB: Of course. It is a violation of children’s rights, which are protected by the UN. There are very strict UN laws against arming children under the age of fifteen. And if you look at the films, there are children who are certainly under the age of fifteen and are receiving military training in weapons. We accuse the German government of fomenting a violent uprising. She can’t say she doesn’t know what’s going on. This happens in public. Is the German government at least looking at what is happening in Jenin?
SF: What can German citizens do who do not want their tax money to be used for child arming and terrorism?
DB: I recommend that you raise the issue of guns, incitement and indoctrination in UNRWA schools and UNRWA refugee camps with the Foreign Office, with the Chancellor, with all parties in the Bundestag and ask for a full assessment. Nothing easier than asking this question.
The weapons training program for UNRWA children begins in the first week of July. Will they watch what happens in the UNRWA camps? The context is that the Palestinian Authority, which supplies these weapons, is the first entity in the history of the world to offer a salary to anyone who murders a Jew. The Nazis didn’t have that. The Palestinian Authority is one step ahead of the Nazis. The Nazis tried to hide what they were doing. The Palestinian Authority, UNRWA, Hamas are doing everything they can to publicize what they are doing. Nothing is secret here.
And most importantly, as the largest donor to UNRWA, Germany can support the rehabilitation and resettlement of these people who have been living in refugee camps since 1949.
SF: Where can I find out more about this topic?
DB: We have a German language website where you can find more information about UNRWA. I emphasize that we are privately funded. We don’t get a penny from any government. If you want to donate, please do so, on the website you can find out how to do it the easiest way.
Eichmann and the Man Who Got Away
Sixty years ago, Adolf Eichmann was taken from his cell and sent to the gallows in Israel’s Ramle Prison. He had been tried, convicted and sentenced to death by the district court of Jerusalem. His sentence was upheld months later by the Supreme Court, which refused to hear additional evidence.
The trial, which lasted eight months, was greeted by disbelief in many circles in the West. They had regarded Eichmann as a mid-level SS officer, a desk man who probably never killed any Jew. His work was completely dependent on agents throughout Europe. They pointed out that Eichmann had been selected for prosecution while many of his superiors escaped the hangman’s noose.
One of the worst of Eichmann’s colleagues was Wilhelm Harster. Eichmann ended up a lieutenant colonel in the SS but Harster rose to the rank of general. For most of the war, his involvement in the Holocaust was more direct than Eichmann. Yet after World War II, Harster, convicted as a war criminal, was protected by Bonn and its new allies in NATO.
“A lieutenant general in the SS and Commander of the Security Police and SD first in the Netherlands and then in Italy, Harster was directly connected with the Holocaust in two countries,” Richard Breitman, a leading U.S. historian on the Holocaust, wrote.
Harster’s story highlights the vagaries of international justice and diplomacy. Unlike Eichmann, Harster was a German who served first under Weimar and then Hitler. Born in 1904, only two years before Eichmann, Harster graduated with a law degree from the University of Munich and served in the army and police. Soon after Hitler’s rise as chancellor, he joined the Nazi Party.
In November 1933, Harster enrolled in the SS. His career took off, first serving with the intelligence arm of the SS and Nazi Party, where he climbed up the ranks to gruppenfuhrer, or lieutenant general. Unlike Eichmann, Harster joined the German Army and served as a member of a machine gun company in 1940 during the occupation of Western Europe.
Harster’s experience as a police officer and SS intelligence specialist assured him plum assignments in the Final Solution. At the start of the occupation of The Netherlands in July 1940, he became the commander of the security police and SD. His job was to kill Jews and anybody else who stood in the way of Berlin.
Harster was in close contact with Eichmann but worked for Hans Rauter, the supreme SS leader in Netherlands. In August 1940, only weeks after his appointment, Harster established the Sonder-Referat Juden, or the “Special Department, Jews.” Its job was to find, persecute, starve and deport the Jews to their death. A leading facilitator was the Judenrat, the quisling council of Jews vital to Germany’s rapid extermination.
In one memo, Harster banned the publication and circulation of specific Jewish books, including “The History of the Jews in the Netherlands.” Those found with this and other books were to be severely punished if not executed.
“Violations of this decision are to be followed by measures by the security police,” Harster was quoted in a memo dated Nov. 8, 1941. “I request that you implement this decision. to put an end to violations thereof as soon as they come to your knowledge.”
Harster also played a leading role in the torture and killing of Jews and others in the Amersfoort camp, used for transit to Auschwitz and other death facilities. Until August 1943, he sent some 104,000 Jews to their death. One of them was Anne Frank, the teenager whose diary made her immortal.
When the lion’s share of the Jewish community was decimated, with even the Judenrat sent to Bergen-Belsen, Harster was reassigned to Italy. By this time, he had impressed SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
In Rome, Harster became commander of the SD, particularly the Bolzano camp, a stop for Jews on their way to Auschwitz. He was now a brigadefuhrer, or major general, in the SS and Gestapo. He served under Karl Wolff, the SS liaison to Hitler and supreme leader in Italy, a man vital to Himmler’s political survival.
Harster was captured by the British just after the war in 1945. He was extradited to stand trial in The Netherlands, and in 1949 was sentenced to 12 years for his role in the persecution and deportation of Jews in that country.
Four years later, Harster was set free. He was welcomed by West Germany and obtained a civil service job in Bavaria. But the Eichmann trial exposed his past, and in 1963, the German media reported that Harster was working for the regional government. He was eventually dismissed but allowed to keep his pension.
Virtually all of Harster’s aides, including those sentenced to death, were released by The Netherlands. They included Willy Lages, Harster’s deputy in Amsterdam, who directed and participated in the roundup and deportation of Dutch Jews. Rauter, Harster’s superior, an Austrian, was executed in 1949.
The Cold War was good to Harster. He was protected by Wolff, his former boss in Italy who escaped prosecution at Nuremberg and then worked for U.S. intelligence. Harster was known to have recommended his SS contacts to West German intelligence, which worked closely with the CIA. One of them was Heinz Felfe, who rose rapidly in the BND intelligence agency and was later identified as an agent of the Soviet Union.
In 1967, Harster was prosecuted in West Germany on charges of having sent thousands of Jews to their death in Auschwitz and Sobibor. He was sentenced to 15 years. Again, he was released — this time after two years. He had won a pardon from German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, himself a former Nazi. After Harster’s conviction, he was stripped of his law degree.
By then, Eichmann was long dead. He had earned his capital sentence during his assignment in Hungary. In Budapest, Eichmann personally implemented Himmler’s orders to destroy the Jewish community and managed to deport some 500,000 in record time — about three months.
But had Eichmann been German rather than Austrian, had he worked for U.S. intelligence after the war, there is no doubt that he would have been protected as Harster and Wolff.
Unlike his colleagues, Harster lived to be an old man. He died in his bed in 1991 — another leading German killer who got away.
‘My father was killed for supporting Israel’
MONTE-CARLO, MONACO - JUNE 17: News Jury President Rory Kennedy attends the 59th Monte Carlo TV Festival : Day Four on June 17, 2019 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
Posed portrait American politician and US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (1925 - 1968), 1963. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
On June 5th, 1968, New York Senator Robert Francis Kennedy was shot and killed by Sirhan Sirhan, an Arab terrorist angered by Kennedy’s support for an arms deal to Israel.
The assassination, which took place in the midst of the tumultuous 1968 Democratic primary season, came just two months after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and less than five years after the killing of Kennedy’s older brother, President John F. Kennedy.
Often lost in the larger story of RFK’s assassination, however, is his pro-Israel legacy and the centrality of his pro-Israel views in Sirhan’s motive.
On Saturday, Robert Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, spoke with Israel’s Channel 1 about her father’s support for Israel, the ‘special bond’ his assassination forged between her and the Jewish state, and her personal views on Israel.
In the interview, which was broadcast on Sunday, Townsend described Israel as “extraordinary”, calling it an example to the world.
A former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Townsend inherited from her father not only a desire to pursue a career in politics, but an interest in Israel as well – something which was inspired by her uncle’s support for the Jewish state as well.
“As you may know, my father, Robert Kennedy, was here in 1948 as a journalist. He covered the war in 1948,” Townsend explained.
“He wrote about the courage of the Israelis and how they were determined to build a new country, and that they would build this country, and that they had seen such horror in Europe, and that they would build a country of courage, of democracy, of values, and that he realized when he saw the Israelis that the United States had a special relationship with this country and needed to make sure that that relationship stayed firm. And as you know in 1968 he was fighting for the 50 jets that would be given to the Israeli army and he was killed because of his support.”
The sale in 1968 of 50 F-4 Phantom fighters to Israel was a landmark in Israel-US relations, cementing the two as strategic allies.
But the sale of modern US fighter jets to the Jewish state also became the prime motivation in Sirhan’s desire to murder Senator Kennedy, whose strong support was central in securing the sale.
“He was killed for his support for Israel, so I feel a very special bond to Israel because of my family,” said Townsend, adding that her uncle, President Kennedy, had been an early supporter of Jewish statehood.
“And you may know that my uncle, John Kennedy, came here in 1939 and called for a two-state solution and said that Israel will be very strong. He saw in 1939 the type of strength that the Israelis had. It’s hard to believe – wherever you look there are more cranes. You’re building this amazing country. More buildings, more technology, more jobs. Everywhere around the world could look to Israel as an example of people who are determined to make something work. It’s fabulous.”
Flunked – grade F for failure
If we were in the business of handing out grades for effort and results there would have been a flurry of failures this past week.
Top of the list or rather bottom of the pile again would be the pathetic performance of New Zealand’s dismal diplomatic vote at the meeting of the World Health Organization.
In my previous op-ed, I highlighted the disgraceful and shameful way in which New Zealand Governments of both political persuasions have over seven decades condemned, censured and voted against Israel. In each and every case the appalling ignorance of those involved, from the Prime Minister to Members of Parliament and the bureaucrats in the various Departments, remained impervious to real facts. Parroting whatever politically correct mantra was the flavour of the month their understanding of historical events and current realities remained fossilized. Attempts to enlighten some of them with the truth fell on stony and barren minds.
The latest farce at the WHO precisely encapsulates the hallucinatory time warp in which New Zealand finds itself. In aligning themselves with the worst human rights abusers on this planet and voting with the most brazen liars, NZ’s leaders and representatives have forfeited any chance that Israel or Israelis can ever take them or their pontifications seriously.
So what is this latest WHO theatre of the absurd all about?
Like the UN Security Council, General Assembly and the misnamed Human Rights Council, the WHO meets on a regular basis to ostensibly discuss health subjects. Just as the aforementioned organizations cannot resist the temptation to single out Israel for special condemnations the WHO also follows this corrupt agenda.
Thus, at its recent meeting, it ignored every other threat to world health and concentrated its venom on the Jewish State. Under discussion was a resolution cosponsored by such champions of human rights and democracy as Cuba, Iraq (where contact with Israel is now a capital offence), Libya, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela and Yemen, which accuses Israel of violating the health rights in the “occupied” Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem and the Golan. A series of vitriolic lies masquerading as “concerned” speeches ensued and set the scene for a classic case of Israel bashing by some of the world’s leading exponents of modern-day medieval-style blood libels.
Completely ignored of course were the myriad of genuine health abuses by Russian assaults of Ukrainian hospitals and health facilities, similar actions by the Syrian regime against its own population, Taliban destruction of its health systems and shocking results of conflicts in other places. It is apparent that the supposed threat to world health posed by Israel is fanned by the fetid intentions of those whose priority is the delegitimization of the Jewish State.
Instead of a complete rejection of these blatant manifestations of Jew-hate the WHO adopted the resolution by a vote of 77 in favour, 14 against and 36 abstentions. Once again Australia stood firm and voted against but shamefully and unsurprisingly New Zealand voted in favour.
This latest effort demonstrates that ignorance and no doubt an indecent dose of deliberate prejudice continues to be the prevailing attitude in Wellington. It is not as though the real truth is inaccessible; it is rather a prevailing and persistent refusal to not be confused by the facts.
As far as the allegations of deliberate Israeli actions in denying health care are concerned, anyone with the slightest interest in discerning the truth could discover it very easily. Jewish news sites (including J-Wire) have reported over the years on the medical aid provided by Israel to Syrians fleeing the civil war and brutality of the Assad regime plus Arab children from Gaza who receive life-saving heart surgery in Israeli hospitals. All this is well documented but obviously, those in charge in Wellington either can’t be bothered to be informed or prefer to ignore the obvious.
Having worked for seventeen years, until my retirement, in the PR Department of one of Jerusalem’s leading hospitals (Shaare Zedek) and during the last thirty years having experienced first-hand the wonderful care at Jerusalem’s other main hospitals (Hadassah) I can vouch for the fact that ethnicity is not a barrier to treatment. Whether it is the professional staff of doctors, surgeons, nurses, social workers and others or the patients themselves there never ever has been any hint of the sort of accusations that those voting for the WHO resolution believe is the case.
I have witnessed first-hand how patients from Arab countries still technically at war with Israel have been admitted and cured. I have seen and spoken to the parents and children of Arab non-citizens whose eyesight and lives have been saved in Israeli hospitals. Whether waiting at the Health Fund or in a clinic of the hospital, patients of every ethnicity and religious persuasion are treated with the same respect by medical professionals who themselves hail from the same diverse backgrounds.
Instead of swallowing the lies spouted by the immoral majority those who instructed the NZ Ambassador at the WHO to vote for the slanderous lies contained in the resolution could have visited Israel to learn the truth for themselves. That however would mean abandoning preconceived policies. Obviously, this is a step too far. NZ’s invisible non-resident Ambassador, safely ensconced in Turkey, could easily do some homework and see at first-hand what the real situation is. The PM, Foreign Minister or a designated Cabinet Minister or even a delegation of cross party MPs could visit Israel and ascertain the facts.
When one doesn’t want to have preconceived and ill-informed mantras demolished the best strategy is to pretend that the false narratives spouted against Israel at UN meetings are the revealed truths.
That is unfortunately the continuing policies of NZ Governments.
Grade F for failure and flunking any sort of moral honesty is definitely well earned.
Failing grades are clearly also applicable to other countries and individuals and I would be remiss if I did not mention just a few of the whoppers which surfaced this past week:
Iraq has made any contact with Israel by its citizens an offence punishable by death.
The EU Parliament President in a speech at the Knesset claimed that “to be antisemitic is to be anti European.” Well, you could fool me on that one.
The PA announced and CNN (among others) agreed that Israel had deliberately killed the Al Jazeera reporter. The fact that the PA refuses to let Israel analyze the bullet involved and CNN’s star “witness” is a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council who has a record of praising the murder of Israeli civilians, is seemingly irrelevant as far as the media is concerned.
The UN Human Rights Chief “asks” China to “rethink” its policies against the Uyghur minority. This is as useful as Neville Chamberlain asking Nazi Germany to rethink its genocidal actions against Jews.
At the latest monthly Israel bashing session of the UN Security Council, Russia’s delegate expressed his “deep concern over the oppression of Christian and Muslim believers by Israel and the restriction of their access to holy places.” This piece of incredible hypocrisy delivered with a straight face and endorsed by France, Ireland, Albania & Estonia, must surely qualify them for a double grade F for failure.
In consistently voting to condemn Israel for every trumped-up crime, New Zealand keeps good company with the world’s worst abusers.
Definitely and without doubt a perfect qualification for flunking grades.
Michael Kuttner is a Jewish New Zealander who for many years was actively involved with various communal organisations connected to Judaism and Israel. He now lives in Israel and is J-Wire’s correspondent in the region.
We must stop the powerful use of words as inciteful education – opinion
Three weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau for the first time with March of the Living on Holocaust Remembrance Day. As I walked with Jews from the Diaspora and Israel, and Holocaust survivors, I was awakened and frightened by the power of words: the impact they can have on others, and the damage they can cause. Hitler’s ideas grew from words on paper to a full-fledged Holocaust in which six million Jews were methodically killed.
When I returned home to Jerusalem, especially in the lead-up to Jerusalem Day this weekend, I reflected on how words are now being used in my hometown as weapons of incitement.
Today in my beloved Jerusalem, words too often incite, demonize and delegitimize instead of being used as a clarion for peace and tolerance. My time in Poland learning about how words can inspire hatred, which led to the unspeakable horrors of the Shoah, is eerily similar to what I hear from the Palestinian Authority’s mosques, media and education system, which is poisoning the impressionable minds of Palestinian children.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, responsible for educating Palestinian children, teaches them that Israelis stole their land and have no right to exist in a Jewish state. UNRWA’s mission has evolved into the demand for the right of return of the descendants of Palestinian refugees in perpetuity, a guarantee of never solving the conflict.
As with everything in the Middle East, if you think you understand an issue, that is a good litmus test that you should step back and reevaluate your preconceived conception. We live in a time where revisionist history, editorialized news and demonization of ideas are accepted if it fits your preconceived narrative.
TEXTBOOKS SAID to be produced by the Palestinian Authority which contain anti-Israel and anti-Western bias are put on display on Capitol Hill by the NGO Palestine Media Watch. (credit: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES/JTA)The Palestinian Authority and UNRWA provide education for children in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, rather than providing an education that focuses on core subjects needed to succeed in life, the education system is used instead to indoctrinate its young people at the most impressionable ages. It teaches them that their neighbors stole their land, inciting hatred against the State of Israel, the Israeli people and the Jewish people.
The education problem
HOW SIGNIFICANT is the problem? Over 300,000 children in every school in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), east Jerusalem and Gaza use these textbooks – even though they do not adhere to the principles of the UN: “promoting peace, tolerance, coexistence and non-violence.”
Last year, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini acknowledged the antisemitism in PA textbooks. “We largely agree with the conclusion.
“antisemitism, intolerance – absolutely: these are the issues identified by UNRWA.”
UNWRA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini
According to JNS, The European Parliament passed a resolution targeting UNRWA for teaching “hate speech and violence” in its schools, harshly criticizing the education material that incites and teaches antisemitism. The body has threatened that unless changes are made to the “hate speech, antisemitism and incitement to violence in Palestinian Authority and UNRWA textbooks,” they will end their funding. Unfortunately, in contrast the EU, the body that actually provides the funding refused to condemn or reduce funding to the agency.
Yet UNRWA continues to provide these textbooks that it receives from the PA.
In textbooks published by the UNRWA and the PA, students are indoctrinated to “defend the motherland with blood,” teach that Israelis are “Satan’s aides” and solve math problems using martyrs (i.e. terrorists) who killed innocent Israelis.
The biased education system, coupled with the disinformation and antisemitism shared on social media, creates an atmosphere in which Palestinian children are taught to hate rather than work toward peace and acceptance. Social media is the lifeblood of generation Z.
On TikTok, with over a billion users, there was a 912% increase between February 2020 and May 2021 in antisemitic comments and a 41% increase in antisemitic posts. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Facebook failed to remove 89% of posts reported as being antisemitic last year.
Incitement on social media
SOCIAL MEDIA is a dangerous place where falsehoods spread like wildfire. The power of social media is why we must work to stop the brainwashing of children in the current Palestinian educational system. Between social media and the current PA curriculum, there is very little chance of convincing Palestinian children why peace and co-existence are the best possible outcomes for our communities.
The material taught in schools by the PA and UNRWA has real-life effects on both Israelis and Palestinians as Palestinians turn toward terror. In 2022, eighteen people have lost their lives so far due to terror attacks targeting Israeli citizens.
Two weeks ago, three Israelis lost their lives in a terror attack perpetrated in Elad, leaving behind sixteen children without their fathers. The terror attack was performed by 19- and a 20-year-old Palestinian who grew up near Jenin, going through the PA/UNRWA education system. You can connect the dots where antisemitism also permeates the PA media, the calls from the PA-controlled mosques and the educational system.
Terror and an educational system that fosters it have claimed the lives of 1,396 Israelis since the start of the Second Intifada. Unfortunately, and inaccurately, an Israeli representative – Regional Affairs Minister Issawi Freij – told a UNRWA conference against the Foreign Ministry’s policy of changing the education system that the agency and the PA have already made changes.
Words are more powerful than we often think, and when hateful words are used to teach such young people, it leads to violence that has taken so many lives. The books used to teach young Palestinian children are calls to action, destabilizing the region and providing a roadblock to peace.
It is imperative that despite Freij’s missteps, we Israelis and the international community work to change the PA’s and UNRWA’s education system. Every child deserves the right to an unbiased education, as education should be used to develop a person’s intellectual capacity rather than as a way to push a violent political agenda.
I spoke to the UN Security Council’s hearts today
An organization known as the “Parents Circle” dispatched Robi Damelin to the US legation at the UN to testify at the UN Security Council about the death of 68 Arab children in Gaza and the necessity of education for Palestinian children.
US ambassador at the UN Linda Greenfield hosted & endorsed the testimony of Robi Damelin at the UN Security Council.
Have asked – What do the Parents Circle and the US Legation at the UN say about UNRWA children trained with weapons on the front line?
THE UNRWA CHILD SOLDIER – English
What do the Parents Circle and the US Legation at the UN have to say about the PA/UNRWA curriculum which trains Palestinian Arab children for total war?
https://israelbehindthenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Jews-in-Palestinian-Authority-Schoolbooks-in-UNRWA-Use.pdf
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On Thursday, May 26, 2022, 11:32:23 PM GMT+3, Robi Damelin, bereaved Israeli mother, Parents Circle <robi@parentscirclefriends.org> wrote:
Dear David,
“There is hope. I can tell all of you here that if there is no hope, there will never be peace. It is a remarkably important part of the peace seeking equation.”
–Robi Damelin, bereaved Israeli mother, briefing the UN Security Council
Today, I was invited by the U.S. Delegate to the United Nations to brief the UN Security Council. The meeting focused on the situation in Israel and Palestine, the escalation of violence and settlement expansion.
I spoke to their hearts. I told them how this conflict has affected me and the 600 bereaved Palestinian Israelis in the PCFF.
I stressed that peace is not possible without reconciliation.
I invited them to come to Palestine and Israel and see the human cost of the conflict on the ground.
I reminded them of the 68 children who were killed in the most recent war in Gaza. I asked them if any of them knew their names.
I urged them not to take sides.
I demanded that they maintain a sense of hope, and to never give up.
The Parents Circle knows that people listen with their hearts. Even the U.N. Security Council.
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In peace,
Robi Damelin
Bereaved Israeli mother
Parents Circle – Families Forum
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