While Secretary Blinken was in the Middle East, the Knesset discussed what to do about the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an organization whose purpose is to perpetuate the Israel-Palestinian conflict and to keep Palestinians in a permanent state of dependence and penury. UNRWA is also deeply entangled with Hamas and other terrorist groups. But perhaps the greatest damage is done by its schools—and not only because they sometimes double as arms warehouses. Peter Berkowitz writes:
Given U.S. interests in Middle East stability in general and the post-Israel-Hamas-war reconstruction of Gaza in particular, American policymakers must grasp the preaching of hatred, violence, and Islamist supremacy woven into Gaza education. One obstacle is that many U.S. diplomats—even more the younger career foreign-service officers who staff them—will have been indoctrinated at American universities in opinions and ideas that bear an uncanny resemblance to certain ugly dogmas championed by the jihadists.
UNRWA teachers develop students’ reading comprehension through a story that celebrates suicide bombers and the decapitation of Israeli soldiers. A map for fourth graders in UNRWA schools erases Israel by placing a Palestinian flag over all the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. A fifth-grade reading lesson, “Hooray for the Heroes,” glorifies Palestinians “associated with war, violence, religious extremism, and terrorism,” [according to a recent, detailed report], but “does not include scientists, doctors, engineers, or athletes.” UNRWA schools teach sixth-grade students that “the Zionists are the terrorists of the modern age, and they are fated to disappear.”
It may be the last message, even more than the anti-Semitism and the valorization of violence, that is the most damaging. So long as Palestinians believe history is inexorably on their side, they will continue to reject the sort of compromise that might bring peace.
Read more on RealClearPolitics: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/01/07/hamas_pa_and_unrwa_educate_gaza_schoolchildren_for_jihad_150291.html