UNRWA let Hamas control its schools, report claims

[Twiglets1]

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) knowingly employed Hamas terrorist leaders as principals and teachers in Palestinian schools, “turning classrooms into incubators of hate,” according to a report published on Wednesday.

UNRWA, which raises $1 billion annually from Western countries, knew about Hamas’s grip on schools “and did nothing,” according to the report by Geneva-based NGO U.N. Watch.

“For years, governments have been writing billion-dollar checks to UNRWA believing they were investing in peace and tolerance. Our investigation reveals the shocking truth: UNRWA’s classrooms have been hijacked by Hamas and turned into incubators of hate. Donor states must confront the reality that they are financing terror by proxy,” said U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.

The report—titled “Schools in the Grip of Terror: How UNRWA Allowed Hamas Chiefs to Control Its Education System”—largely corroborates Israeli intelligence findings that more than 15% of UNRWA’s senior educators in Gaza, in 60 UNRWA institutions, are members of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist groups.

The report explains that UNRWA’s operations on the ground are controlled by local Palestinian leaders, and not by the handful of international staff such as Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, who serves only as the public face, fundraiser and advocate for UNRWA.

Many of these local leaders are Hamas operatives, including the thousands of UNRWA teachers and staff, especially in Gaza and Lebanon, according to the report.

It adds that of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees, more than 99% are local Palestinians; only 120 are international staff.

The report moreover stresses that this is not new.
The international body has fostered a pro-terrorism environment in Palestinian schools for over 75 years of its existence, consistently betraying its vowed mission to educate Palestinian children with values such as peace, tolerance, and universal human rights, it states.

Instead, it has “handed them over to the very operatives who recruit child soldiers, glorify suicide bombers, and preach the annihilation of a UN member state.”

Some of the most infamous Palestinian terrorists were products of the UNRWA education system, the report claims, including the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Massacre and Mohammed Deif, the now-deceased commander of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, one of the masterminds of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.

The late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh himself praised the Palestinian U.N.-based unions for their “role in the path of jihad.”

www.jns.org/unrwa-let-hamas-to-control-its-schools-report-claims/

UN watch, the organisation set up seemingly with sole purpose of defending a genocidal state. It's a bit like those scholars for genocide or whatever they called themselves isn't it who hastily set themselves up so they could go against every major NGO and the UN and say no, no genocide there. It's a bit weird if you ask me, all of these people dedicating their time to defending a state that are committing illegal occupation, apartheid, rape, torture, mass starvation, mass killings. Do they just really love disgusting acts of violence or really hate Palestinians, I haven't figured that one out yet.

No - Scholars for Genocide is a Mickey Mouse organisation that anyone can join for $30, which has been used to discredit Israel.

Of course Hamas controls UNWRA and the Palestinian education system. To think otherwise is pure fantasy.

What don't you like about it?

UN Watch is a Geneva-based non-governmental organization (NGO) whose stated mission is "to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter". It is an accredited NGO in Special Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council and an Associate NGO to the UN Department of Public Information.

Agence France-Presse has described UN Watch as "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel". The organisation has been active in denouncing human rights abuses worldwide, for instance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, China, Cuba, Russia and Venezuela, often using its allotted time at the UNHRC to allow for dissidents and human rights activists to speak. Primarily, UN Watch denounces what it views as anti-Israel sentiment at the UN and UN-sponsored events.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Watch

Palestinian school curriculum glorifies violence, violating pledges to reform (March 25th, 2025)

An online school curriculum, produced by the Palestinian Authority for Gaza pupils amid the Israeli war against Hamas, continues to glorify violence and martyrdom and is rife with antisemitic stereotypes that are being taught in Hamas-run classrooms which praise the Oct. 7, 2023 attackers, a British think tank said on Monday.

The London-based NGO Impact-se (the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education) study finds that the textbooks being used this year for nearly 300,000 Palestinian schoolchildren in grades 1-12 in Gaza erase the State of Israel from the map and are replete with “graphic depictions of violence,” and antisemitism.

The report also notes that at least four newly reopened Gaza schools under Hamas control openly celebrate the single worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust using textbooks and teaching materials rife with incitement.

The P.A.’s abridged online textbooks continue to use antisemitic narratives and imagery, despite earlier commitments to adhere to UNESCO standards of education, the study finds. For example, an 11th-grade history textbook peddles the ancient stereotype that Jews control the world through an image of a hand bearing a Star of David gripping a globe; an Islamic education textbook further reinforces antisemitic tropes, portraying “the Jews” as “deceitful, immoral and manipulators who are hostile to Islam,” according to the report.

www.jns.org/palestinian-school-curriculum-glorifies-hate-and-violence-violating-pledges-to-reform/

No, that's scholars against genocide that you are thinking of. I'm talking about the eejits that set themselves up after scholars against genocide, like the UN and all major NGOs, determined that Israel are committing genocide. You know the ones like UN watch who insist that despite all evidence to the contrary Israel are definitely not genocidal maniacs hell bent on getting Palestine for themselves, what did that Israeli minister call Gaza today 'a real estate bonanza'? But no, this is definitely about Hamas and the hostages 🙄

From the same article:

The concept of jihad is exalted in the educational system, depicted as “the peak of Islam” and a direct path to “achieving martyrdom.” Graphic descriptions in poetic imagery portray martyrs as “climbing mountains of their gushing blood.” Accompanying exercises ask students “How did the martyrs face death?” and describe how “death charged them with its pickaxe.”

Starting in 1st grade, martyrs are glorified as having divine status. Children are taught literacy exercises for the Arabic letter H (hā) using the term “shahīd” (martyr); while jihad is explicitly described as one of the “gates to paradise,” the study said.

The new P.A. materials also teach science and mathematics through a lens fueling violence and hatred of Israel. A 3rd-grade math exercise asks students to write the number of martyrs killed during the violent First Intifada against Israel; a 9th-grade statistics lesson asks students to calculate the number of “martyrs” killed by Israel.

The head of the organization that carried out the study said on Monday that the P.A. has failed the “acid test” after it signed an agreement with the E.U. committing to reform its curriculum.

“We see again that the P.A. continues to deeply embed hatred and violence in its curriculum and brazenly continues to teach antisemitism, the glorification of terrorism, and the dehumanization of Israelis, said IMPACT-se CEO, Marcus Sheff. “Palestinian classrooms remain a breeding ground for extremism, with new educational materials reinforcing the same old dangerous narratives.”

https://www.jns.org/palestinian-school-curriculum-glorifies-hate-and-violence-violating-pledges-to-reform/

I wish I could say I was shocked and surprised. I'm concerned where the westerners who celebrated 7/10 learned their hatred too.

No idea where the Westerners who celebrated 7/10 learned such extreme hatred towards Israel.

Maybe someone could enlighten us?

They don’t seem to work either

Sure.

So it comes from two sources:

1. Simple anti semitism- certain religions/ cultures have historically been more anti semetic (Muslims and Catholics for example) than say Protestants or Hindus.

2. The left - left wing politics (since Marx) sees society through a lens of where someone makes money someone else loses out, Proletariat and Bourgeoisie , winners and losers, oppressors and oppressed, victims and perpetrators.
   The winner , oppressor, Bourgeoisie or perpetrator is the richer, stronger or bigger party and is always the bad side.
   Therefore Israel with a modern military fighting against militarily weaker Hamas is the bad side or a "David and Goliath".

This explanation of Western left wing politics is well understood by Hamas. When Hamas attacked on the 7th October they knew that they could not militarily defeat the whole of Israel. What they wanted to do was create such horrific atrocities that Israel would have to retaliate massively and to take hostages so that Israel would enter Gaza. The more Gazan civilians that get killed and suffer then the more support Hamas received from the Western left.

Hamas are therefore incentivised to use civilian human shields and control aid in order to increase the number of civilian deaths and suffering.

Thank you @1dayatatime

What you say is depressing but makes sense.

Reading this board regularly I have absolutely no idea.

"UN Watch is a leading voice combating antisemitism and anti-Israel bias at the UN engaging in advocacy at the highest levels of government and countering misinformation in the media."
Hmm. Funny they'd come to a pro Israeli finding isn't it?

Dies that make them wrong with their findings about antisemitism in Palestinian schools?

Yes, very probably it does actually

And you say this having read the whole thread I assume… unbelievable.

Welcome back! So we have moved on from defending what is now a proven genocide to attacking the UN and turning the conversation to Hamas - who could have predicted that turn of events. Nothing excuses genocide.

If we are looking at damaging education systems please look at Israel’s two tier system where jewish and arab students are sent to different schools with all the investment going into the jewish schools. The testing system is geared to getting jewish kids into Uni while neglecting those in the arab schools. Here’s a report from Human Rights Watch:
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/ISRAEL0901-01.htm

Here is an article in Haaretz about how Israel is pushing the settler, zionist agenda in schools:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-10-31/ty-article-opinion/.premium/how-israeli-schools-teach-religious-nationalism-as-the-only-way-to-be-jewish/0000017f-f408-d47e-a37f-fd3c8fb80000

Here’s one about indoctrination in Israeli Schools to portrait Palestinians as terrorists:
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/nurit-peled-elhanan-interview/

It’s always important to consider bias.
There was an UN commissioned independent report on this:

“The Colonna review, an assessment of Unrwa’s neutrality drafted with the help of three Nordic research institutes and due to be published later on Monday, makes clear that Israel has yet to substantiate any of its broader claims about the involvement of Unrwa staff in Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
The three Nordic research bodies were the Swedish-based Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, the Norwegian Chr Michelsen Institute, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/22/israel-unrwa-staff-terrorist-links-yet-to-provide-evidence-colonna-report

Here’s the UN’s response to the concerns and more details of their investigations:

https://www.unrwa.org/unrwa-claims-versus-facts-2025

Who went away that you are saying Welcome back?

It’s not a proven genocide, it’s a genocide in the opinion of some people. Not an opinion shared by everyone - including the UK government currently.

The UN are not an organisation that should be immune from criticism. They are an organisation with an anti Israel bias as has been discussed on other threads & proven by how often they vote against Israel compared to all other countries.

Some of us never moved away from shining a spotlight on Hamas - they are after all the terrorists who triggered this current war and the organisation that Israel are fighting. We are not “turning the conversation to Hamas” - Hamas ARE the conversation just as much as Israel (or should be).

It’s fair to criticise Israel’s education system but it’s also fair to criticise the Palestinian education system. The PA relies on EU funding to operate and will have to drastically reform if they expect this funding to continue going to them in future. It’s not in keeping with EU values for children to be taught antisemitism or to glorify terrorism and in particular not appropriate to celebrate 7/10.

Reforming Palestinian education should be something we can all agree on. The PA promised to reform the curriculum but has so far failed to do so and considering they want to take over from Hamas in running Gaza, this casts doubt on their suitability to do so.

Yes- it’s not been proven in court that it’s not a genocide, but to see pictures of what has happened in Gaza, to know what has happened with regard to obstruction of aid, to know that Israel accepted higher number of civilian deaths and for lowly Hamas members, to be fully aware of the limitations of the aid distribution system Israel put in place AND to hear the rhetoric coming from leaders in the Knesset- it would only be the wishful thinking to consider what has happened is not a genocide.

But if you wish, it’s not a genocide- still - when we see the devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it still seems inappropriate to discuss a heavily biased report on the prior education system. A system which independent analysts have not found systematic issues with.

What is a more immediate concern is how the children in Gaza are going to be adequately fed, housed and provided medical care.

Israel bombed Gaza’s only specialist children’s hospital 3 times last night using robot bombs that clearly won’t differentiate between civilians and soldiers. It has destroyed 25 high rise buildings in Gaza city where these children could live after the war.

A Knesset member have spoken of need to “demolish” Gaza.

The more basic needs of children are a far more immediate concern.

(Please, let’s not have a discussion about the merits or otherwise of Hamas’s ceasefire deal - it’s been had repeatedly.)

So don't come on this thread if you don't want to discuss the subject of this thread. Is literally everything you do focussed on what you consider to be a genocide in Gaza? Is nothing else 'appropriate'? Do you not read about anything else, not listen to any other radio, or watch anything else on tv? Do you speak to friends only about Gaza? Is it even inappropriate to go to work, assuming your job is not about Gaza? Who decides what is appropriate?

I would say its entirely appropropriate to think about the challenge of deradicalisation for the future of Palestine and the 'prior' education system is part of that, as is inderstanding the people and organisations that will be part of shaping the future.

Good grief the children have no chance with this type of 'education '

"The concept of jihad is exalted in the educational system, depicted as “the peak of Islam” and a direct path to “achieving martyrdom.” Graphic descriptions in poetic imagery portray martyrs as “climbing mountains of their gushing blood.” Accompanying exercises ask students “How did the martyrs face death?” and describe how “death charged them with its pickaxe.”"

No they don’t and this should concern everyone.

Not immediately denied or the subject changed because it isn’t something Israel can be blamed for. Plenty of other threads for that, this one is about the malignant influence of Hamas in Palestinian schools.

Bear in mind this news article was from 2021, long before the 7th October 2023 attack.