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.”

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.