American Tax Dollars Support Education in Hate

April 28 2023

Founded in 1949, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which serves to keep descendants of Palestinian refugees in a condition of permanent statelessness, receives about $1 billion a year in international support, and employs some 30,000 individuals. The majority work in the agency’s schools in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and those Arab states where Palestinians are denied citizenship. Shany Mor describes the education these schools provide in hating Jews.

UNRWA knows it has a problem, and its method of dealing with the problem not only doesn’t solve it, but it reveals how deep the rot is. In response to a previous report in 2022, UNRWA’s response was a brief suspension of six teachers and no subsequent action.

UNRWA routinely deflects criticism of anti-Semitism in its educational materials with the excuse that it is only using material from its “host countries,” specifically the approved textbooks of Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority. It’s a wholly inadequate excuse for an organization that derives all its funding from donor countries like the United States, Canada, and the European Commission, and it’s not even true.

A 2021 study showed that UNRWA’s own material used during the coronavirus pandemic was rife with bigotry and glorification of terrorists, including the infamous Dalal Mughrabi who carried out the Coastal Road Massacre in 1978 that killed 38 Israelis. UNRWA’s response then was typical: denial followed by verifiably false claims that the problem had been rectified, peppered throughout with criticism for those organizations doing the hard work they refused to do and uncovering the problems in their curriculum and hiring practices.

Other UNRWA-created materials promote “armed struggle” against Israel and encourage “martyrdom.” Textbooks routinely demonize Israelis and Jews, and one even describes the firebombing of an Israeli bus as a “barbecue party.”

Read more at Newsweek

More about: Anti-Semitism, Palestinian refugees, U.S. Foreign policy, UNRWA

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula