How UN schools use our tax money to teach Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews
Through uncovered photographic evidence, UN Watch reveals how UNRWA, despite its claims to be a humanitarian agency, has forged an unholy alliance with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations. This secret relationship allows the terrorist organizations to significantly influence the policies and practices of a UN agency with 30,000 employees, and a $1.5 billion annual budget that is funded primarily by Western states.
The report shows how UNRWA’s international officials, and its senior local managers, routinely meet with terrorist groups in Lebanon and Gaza, mutually praise each other for “cooperation,” and describe each other as “partners.”
The terrorist groups frequently make demands of UNRWA and influence its decisions. Moreover, when the terrorists oppose specific actions by UNRWA—such as the introduction of biometric IDs for beneficiaries of UNRWA financial assistance, an ethics code affirming LGBT rights, or suspension of employees for promoting terrorism—the terrorist groups are often able to foil implementation, including by issuing threats.
New UN Watch video shows how Justin Trudeau, Jordan’s Queen Rania, Owen Jones, Catherine Colonna and many others mindlessly parrot UNRWA’s false “lifesaving” mantra. The truth is the opposite. UNRWA’s actual purpose is to perpetuate hatred, war and terrorism.
Enough is enough. It’s time to #ReplaceUNRWA. Over 160,000 activists have already joined the campaign. Add your name to the list by signing the petition today.
UNRWA is in gross breach of the neutrality commitments that it recently made to donors in connection with the April 2024 Colonna Report. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has caved into the demands of a terrorist coalition in Lebanon to reinstate Hamas-linked school principal and union leader Fateh al-Sharif, following a two-month pressure campaign against UNRWA’s senior management in Lebanon.
The report presented to the Dutch parliament details Fateh al-Sharif’s links to Hamas and other terrorist groups, his celebration of October 7th, his incitement to violence, and his coordination of political activities on school grounds involving children.
On February 5, 2024, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced the appointment of an “Independent Review Group” with the stated purpose of assessing whether the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) “is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.”
A brief examination of all of the parties involved in the review group confirms that they are not unbiased, objective observers. Rather, the review has been rigged since the beginning.
Eyewitness accounts reveal that UNRWA employees including top directors openly steal and resell free humanitarian aid on UNRWA premises.
Frustrated at the administration’s inaction and sometimes even facing reprisals for reporting thefts, many employees have resorted to airing their grievances to a UNRWA-related chatroom run by a disgraced former employee who is still highly involved in the agency.
Meanwhile, Lazzarini’s band-aid solution seems to be to give Palestinians “more cash liquidity” which only serves to further reward the corrupt and entrench the profiteering system.
The international summit addressed the humanitarian situation in Gaza and planned for a future beyond UNRWA. The goal was to develop a program of action for the international community to fully ensure the humanitarian and other needs of Gazans, while preparing to transition away from a failed agency.
The summit took place as a side event to the 2024 opening of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which gathered the UN’s highest officials, including secretary-general Antonio Guterres, and foreign ministers from around the world.
Don’t let your government continue spending your money on the radicalization of Gaza. Humanitarian aid and UNRWA’s toxic mandate must be immediately decoupled. Aid should flow through other agencies which already operate in Gaza, and which are experts at this task everywhere else in the world, such as the WHO, the World Food Programme, or UNICEF.
It’s time to stop the perverse logic of an agency that perpetuates war. It’s time to replace UNRWA.
Notwithstanding the repeated denials by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and its insistence that it has zero tolerance for hatred and antisemitism, UN Watch continues to find abhorrent antisemitism and support for jihadi terrorism by UNRWA staff on social media. This report details how UNRWA teachers in a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram group cheered and celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre while at the same time asking when their UNRWA salaries will be paid. The UNRWA staff in the group shared photos and video footage of those events and prayed for the terrorists’ success and for Israel’s destruction, in clear violation of UN rules.
This is the latest in a series of reports on UNRWA staff antisemitism and incitement to jihadi terrorism which our research proves is systemic and widespread. Since 2015, UN Watch has exposed over 150 UNRWA staff Facebook pages that contain antisemitism and incitement to jihadi terrorism in blatant violation of UN neutrality. UNRWA’s typical response to our research has been to disparage our human rights organization and downplay the problem as reflecting just a few bad apples. The UNRWA Telegram group featured in this report completely eviscerates UNRWA’s denials and exposes the extent of UNRWA’s failure to do the bare minimum to address its staff’s neutrality violations.
UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer addressed U.S. Congress to ask it to take the lead in dissolving UNRWA. During his remarks, Mr. Neuer presented UN Watch’s new report, which details how UNRWA teachers in a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram group cheered and celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre.
With credible evidence that at least 12 UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 attacks, 1,200 employees are linked to terrorist groups, and 6,000 have family members with ties to terrorist groups, it is immoral to continue funding the agency with taxpayer dollars.
The real core of the problem is the agency’s mission, which is to perpetuate the war of 1948 and send the message to Palestinians that their true home is in Israel, and where they live is merely a refugee camp. Plenty of other international agencies provide humanitarian aid to every other conflict zone on earth. The time to find alternatives to UNRWA is now.
When UN Watch confronts the UN with evidence of incitement to violence and antisemitism by UNRWA teachers, the UNHRC’s chair moves to stop Hillel Neuer from delivering his speech. For years UNRWA’s response to the allegations has been to silence, deny, and smear UN Watch.
The agency has not once contacted UN Watch for its evidence. They have never disclosed what disciplinary measures — if any have ever been taken against staff identified in UN Watch reports. They continually demonstrate that they are not interested in resolving the issue or making effective reforms.
UN Watch has published over a dozen reports over many years exposing the systemic promotion of hatred and violence by UNRWA staff. Such practices constitute a gross breach of UNRWA employees’ neutrality obligations as enshrined in the UN Charter and in UNRWA’s Staff Rules and Regulations. UN Watch has documented over 180 UNRWA employees celebrating terrorism, glorifying nazism and publicly calling for the extermination of Jews.
Even more alarming, however, is the fact that UNRWA places the education of impressionable Palestinian youth in their hands. UNRWA perpetuates the crisis by allowing hate to be engraved into the minds of children and thereby raising the next generation of terrorists.
UN Watch is a non-profit organization dedicated to holding the United Nations accountable to its founding principles. UN Watch is funded entirely by charitable donations
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