UNRWA – A HAMAS ORGANIZATION

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68123222

Key UN Gaza aid agency UNRWA runs into diplomatic storm

By Mark Lowen, in JerusalemBBC News

In Gaza, a strip of land fast becoming a wasteland, few international aid bodies can still operate. The United Nations is one of them.

Its Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, was founded in 1949, working in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, caring for the 700,000 Palestinians who were forced or fled from their homes with the creation of the state of Israel. Funny thing though, we didn’t hear anything about the 2,000,000 Jews who left their homes from Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, and Tunisia. 

It runs medical and educational facilities, including teacher training centers and almost 300 primary schools – as well as producing the textbooks that educate young Palestinians. (yeah they produce textbooks to educate that Jews stole their land – should be the other way around) In Gaza alone, it employs some 13,000 people. As the biggest UN agency operating in Gaza, it has been key to humanitarian efforts. Israel rejects that claim and has often criticised the set-up of UNRWA for the way it allows refugee status to be inherited.

In 2022, the Israeli watchdog IMPACT-se said UNRWA educational material taught students that Israel was attempting to “erase Palestinian identity, steal and falsify Palestinian heritage, and erase the cultural heritage of Jerusalem”, adding that the agency promoted “anti-Semitism, hate, intolerance and lack of neutrality”.

The European Commission identified what it called “anti-Semitic material” in the schoolbooks, “including even incitement to violence”. The European Parliament has called repeatedly for EU funding to the Palestinian Authority to be conditional on removing such content. UNRWA has previously said that reports made about its educational material were “inaccurate and misleading” (of course they would deny it after caught red handed) and that many of the books in question were not used in its schools.

In 2018, the administration of Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ceased financial support altogether for UNRWA, calling the body “irredeemably flawed”.

Israel’s foreign minister has labelled UNRWA “the civilian arm of Hamas” and said it should not have a role in post-conflict Gaza, which begs the question: if the United Nations won’t be allowed to pick up the pieces of a shattered territory, what will?