MESSAGE
| DATE | 2023-11-14 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout - NYLXS] Gaza and the UN
|
ofisrael.com
UNRWA textbooks still include hate, antisemitism despite pledge to remove — watchdog
By ToI Staff 7 July 2022, 12:51 pm 5 Edit
6–8 minutes
An Israeli watchdog has found that educational textbooks produced by the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency continue to contain incitement to violence against Israel and hatred of Jews, despite promises to remove such content.
Instead, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has hidden the material by removing it from its public educational online portal, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) said in a statement Thursday.
According to an IMPACT-se report, UNRWA-produced educational literature “contains material that encourages jihad, violence and martyrdom, promotes antisemitism, and promotes hate, intolerance, and lack of neutrality.”
“False conspiracy theories teach students that Israeli policies include attempts ‘to erase Palestinian identity,’ to ‘steal and falsify the Palestinian heritage,’ and to ‘erase the cultural heritage of Jerusalem,'” the statement said.
The educational content, which was distributed in the West Bank and Gaza this year, does not appear on UNRWA’s new educational portal, even though it was produced by the official UNRWA Department of Education.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the terms
“They were drafted, supervised, approved, printed, and distributed to thousands of students by UNRWA teachers and staff, whose names also appear on the materials as contributing to or supervising the content,” IMPACT-se said.
IMPACT-se noted that UNRWA claims that it posts all of its self-produced material on the website for the sake of transparency.
There was no immediate comment from UNRWA on the report.
Cover pages of UNRWA-produced education material. (IMPACT-se)
IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff said in the statement that UNRWA promised last year to remove all offending content.
“It seems that UNRWA has interpreted this as removal from the website where it can be scrutinized, rather than removal from actual classrooms,” Sheff said. “UNRWA was again made aware of our concerns just two months ago.”
Among the content that IMPACT-se flagged was a grammar exercise teaching that “the Palestinians sacrifice their blood to liberate Jerusalem,” the statement said.
Other exercises include sentences about “Jihad warriors” against “the occupier,” commitment to “liberate” Palestine, and “resisting the enemy courageously,” according to the report.
A poem teaches students that to die as a martyr by killing Israelis is a “hobby.”
“The poem glorifies the rejection of a peaceful ceasefire during battle, presenting peace-making as a sign of weakness,” it said.
Islamic education material depicts Jews as “inherently treacherous, and hostile to Islam and Muslims,” including another grammar exercise implying that Jews are impure and defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem.
“Israel is described as having been implanted by an imperialist, European, colonial, anti-Arab conspiracy with the goal of dividing the Arab world,” IMPACT-se said.
Israel is erased from the UNRWA material and the entire area of the Jewish state is labeled as modern-day Palestine. Students are given exercises of naming Israeli cities as Palestinian, it added.
Philippe Lazzarini, center, Commissioner-General of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), talks during press conference af at the Balakhiya area in Shati refugee camp, Gaza Strip, on October 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
IMPACT-se said its report shows that UNRWA material does not live up to its claim to align with “UN values of neutrality, human rights, tolerance, equality, and non-discrimination with regard to race, gender, language, and religion.”
The group said it had met with UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Philip Lazzarini in May to raise its concerns over “hate materials produced by UNRWA and secrecy over teaching materials.”
IMPACT-se also provided Lazzarini with a copy of its report before it was published.
Though Lazzarini has said there are “robust internal mechanisms” to ensure the content matches UN values, IMPACT-se accused UNRWA of refusing to make the process public “or to disclose key documents, and the exact methods it uses to combat the deeply problematic Palestinian curriculum.”
IMPACT-se noted that in June, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield raised the issue of UNRWA textbook content at a House Appropriations Committee budget hearing and declared it was “a red line for all of us.”
Sheff said the majority of the $338 million that the US funds for UNRWA goes to education.
“Surely, the will can be found to enforce policy, given that red lines are being crossed so egregiously,” he urged.
In January 2021 a similar report from IMPACT-se found UNRWA-produced material to be “rife with problematic content that contradicts stated UN values.”
In a statement released following the publication of that report, UNWRA vowed again to crack down on incitement.
UNWRA chief Lazzarini said in a tweet at the time that “there was no place [for] incitement to hatred/violence in UNWRA schools.” He asserted that the inciting material had been published by accident.
A Palestinian woman attends a demonstration outside UNRWA’s Headquarters in Gaza City, August 16, 2015. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Israel has long pushed for UNRWA’s closure, arguing it helps perpetuate the conflict with the Palestinians, since it confers refugee status upon millions of descendants of those originally displaced around the time of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
US President Donald Trump’s administration supported Israel’s stance by cutting aid in 2018. Washington had been providing UNRWA $300 million a year, roughly a third of its core annual budget. The Biden administration has reinstated the funding.
There has been similar criticism of textbooks produced by the Palestinian Authority.
The European Parliament passed a resolution in 2020 condemning the Palestinian Authority for continuing to include hate speech and violent material in school materials, stating it “is concerned that problematic material” in Palestinian school textbooks had not been removed.
However, in January this year, IMPACT-se found that the PA textbooks have remained largely unchanged.
Palestinians reject the argument that their textbooks constitute incitement. In a speech to the United Nations last year, PA President Mahmoud Abbas defended the curriculum as merely expressing the Palestinian national narrative.
On Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 10:49:05PM -0500, Ruben Safir wrote:
> https://forward.com/opinion/566841/hamas-schools-indoctrination-antisemitic-textbooks-gaza/
>
> The roots of Hamas' terror attack can be found in Gaza’s schools
> Samuel Breslow
> 6–7 minutes
>
> Palestinian students attend a national education lesson at the Dar
> Al-Arqam school in Gaza City, founded by Hamas, in 2006.
>
> Palestinian students attend a national education lesson at the Dar
> Al-Arqam school in Gaza City, founded by Hamas, in 2006. Photo by Abid
> Katib/Getty Images
>
> At the core of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza is a question: When Israel
> withdrew from the coastal Palestinian enclave in 2005, why did the
> romantic vision of it as a place that would function as a fit home for
> its citizens turn into the hellish reality of a failed state run by a
> terrorist organization? The easy and popular theories — a military
> blockade by Israel, a civil war between Palestinian political factions —
> miss a fundamental point. The roots of this generation of Hamas
> terrorism resides in ideas fomented in Gaza’s education system for
> decades.
>
> While serving in Congress between 2001 and 2017, I studied what goes on
> in Palestinian schools. I reviewed their textbooks, met with educators
> and diplomats, and introduced legislation and amendments compelling the
> Department of State to monitor antisemitism in foreign classrooms. I saw
> firsthand that a generation of Palestinian children were being taught at
> an early age to reject living peacefully with Israel. They read about it
> in their schoolbooks and heard about it from their teachers. They were
> raised on a steady curriculum of violent rejectionism. My colleagues and
> I in Congress were unable to change that reality.
>
> Now, as the world reels from the devastation of Hamas’ terrorism,
> understanding how Palestinian children are taught is essential to any
> discussion of the future in the region.
>
> Free morning newsletter
>
> A startling 47% of the population in Gaza is under 18. A European human
> rights group recently reported that 91% of these children “suffer from
> some form of conflict-related trauma,” having grown up in impoverished,
> unsafe conditions and lived through multiple devastating rounds of
> warfare with Israel. This is a recipe for radicalization, supercharged
> by the fact that Hamas has sought to directly cultivate antisemitic
> attitudes in its education system.
>
> The children of Gaza have three education options: Those classified as
> refugees attend schools run by the United Nations Reliefs and Works
> Agency. Most others attend schools run by Hamas, the de-facto governors
> of Gaza. And there are a handful of private schools.
>
> A 2013 New York Times article said that Gaza schools run by Hamas and
> the U.N. both use the Palestinian Authority curriculum that is also
> taught throughout the West Bank, but that “Hamas has added programs,
> like a military training elective” and other teachings to “infuse the
> next generation with its militant ideology.”
>
> This curriculum “includes references to the Jewish Torah and Talmud as
> ‘fabricated,’” the Times reported, and a description of Zionism as a
> racist movement whose goals include driving Arabs out of the entire area
> between the Nile in Africa and the Euphrates in Iraq, Syria and Turkey.”
>
> This is a curriculum designed to indoctrinate and radicalize its
> students in support of Hamas’ terrorist aims.
>
> Even the comparatively moderate Palestinian Authority textbooks are
> problematic. In 2020, the European Union’s Parliament adopted three
> resolutions condemning the authority “for continuing to teach hate and
> violence in its school textbooks,” following a study confirming
> incitement in the curriculum. To teach physics, a textbook showed
> students “a picture of Palestinians hitting Israeli soldiers with
> slingshots,” the study found, while another “promotes a conspiracy
> theory that Israel removed the original stones of ancient sites in
> Jerusalem and replaced them with ones bearing Zionist drawings and
> shapes.”
>
> UNRWA schools in Gaza, too, are replete with antisemitism. A 2018
> article in The Times of Israel cited examples including the lionization
> of Dalal al-Mughrabi, who led a 1978 attack on a bus in Tel Aviv that
> killed more than 30 people, as a “heroine and martyr of Palestine,” and
> the description of the victims of an attack in Psagot, a settlement in
> the occupied West Bank, as “a barbecue party.”
>
> When I hear Israeli survivors of the massacre describe the sheer hate
> and absence of humanity in the eyes of their attackers, I’m unsurprised.
> Those eyes were forced open to a false, hate-filled view of Jews for
> years.
>
> Now, the children of Gaza — who have grown up in poverty, lost family
> members due to the ongoing violence, and been taught to hate the Jewish
> people — will be tasked with rising from the ashes of a brutal war
> triggered by Hamas’ indiscriminate murder of innocent Israeli civilians.
> Hamas has failed all of Gaza, yet those who have suffered most are the
> children.
>
> Israel, the United States and other regional partners must work to build
> a better future for these children. That means an education system that
> abolishes hate from its curriculum. That means a government that teaches
> children how to build, not blow up. That means free and fair elections.
>
> That means an end to Hamas’ reign of terror, and schools that do not
> teach students to hate their neighbors.
> Related
>
> opinionAn Israeli airstrike just destroyed my family home in Gaza. I
> refuse to be consumed by hate and revenge
> opinionHamas is guilty of inhuman violence. What about the
> Palestinians who cheered them on?
>
> Rep. Steve Israel represented Long Island in the United States
> Congress from 2001-2017. He now directs the Brooks Institute of
> Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University. You can
> follow him at -at-repsteveisrael.
>
> The views and opinions expressed in this article are the
> author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the
> Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion.
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 10:45:39PM -0500, Ruben Safir wrote:
> > The contention that the schools in Gaza are not teaching anti-semetism
> > is laughable if it wasn't so sad.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > The U.N. Is Central to Life in Gaza. Now Its Mission There Is
> > Collapsing.
> > Jared Malsin and Anas Baba
> > 7–8 minutes
> >
> > Your browser does not support the audio tag.
> >
> > This article is in your queue.
> >
> > RAFAH, Gaza Strip—Huddled in classrooms and crouching under tarps slung
> > up in the courtyard, Palestinians seeking refuge from the fighting
> > raging in Gaza have crowded into a United Nations-run school here near
> > the Egyptian border.
> >
> > The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees runs 183 schools
> > in the Gaza Strip, most of which have been pressed into service as
> > shelters. The agency, which also runs bakeries and clinics and provides
> > financial aid, has been central to life in the Palestinian enclave for
> > more than 70 years.
> >
> > As Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules Gaza,
> > battle, the agency says its ability to cope is fraying. More than 100 of
> > its workers have been killed. An Israeli blockade, imposed after Hamas’s
> > Oct. 7 attack on Israel, has cut off almost all shipments of food, fuel,
> > water and medicine.
> >
> > On Tuesday, a U.N. spokeswoman said lack of fuel meant the agency’s
> > functions would “start gradually collapsing” as ambulances, sewage and
> > sanitation systems shut down.
> >
> > At least 66 people sheltering in U.N. compounds have been killed in the
> > fighting, and more than 550 others injured, the U.N. says. Hamas, which
> > is designated by the U.S., the European Union and others as a terrorist
> > organization, has blamed Israel, saying it is attacking U.N. sites.
> >
> > Israel’s military says Hamas has built tunnels near some U.N. schools
> > and fired rockets from areas close to them. Hamas didn’t respond to a
> > request for comment on allegations it builds tunnels under the schools
> > or uses them to hide materiel.
> >
> > Since the Hamas assault on Israel—which included terrorist attacks on a
> > music festival and agricultural communities and killed 1,200 people,
> > according to Israeli authorities—the country has waged a campaign of
> > airstrikes and ground operations it says are aimed at eliminating Hamas.
> >
> > On Sunday, the U.N. said shelling from an Israeli warship hit a
> > guesthouse where the agency’s international workers stay. The Israeli
> > military said it “carried out a strike based on operational
> > requirements, adjacent to a U.N. building.”
> >
> > UNRWA said it inspects its schools to make sure that there is no
> > military equipment or activity that could compromise their neutral
> > status. Spokeswoman Tamara Alrifai said buildings were inspected before
> > the war and that the agency had monitored those entering the schools
> > since.
> >
> > Last year, UNRWA identified what it called a man-made cavity underneath
> > the grounds of one of its schools in Gaza, in what it said was a
> > “serious violation of the agency’s neutrality and breach of
> > international law.” The agency protested to the local authorities in
> > Gaza, it said.
> >
> > “We ourselves are very intent on making sure that our schools remain
> > neutral U.N. places, but we cannot speak for what Hamas does or doesn’t
> > do under our schools,” Alrifai said.
> >
> > Israeli military officials say Hamas operates in and near civilian
> > buildings. The Israeli government also accuses UNRWA of employing Hamas
> > militants—an allegation it denies.
> >
> > “Hamas has taken control of the whole of Gaza including U.N.
> > installations. We have done everything we can in this intensive war to
> > avoid damage to any international installation,” said a senior Israeli
> > military official. He said some were “hit because Hamas put weapons
> > inside schools.”
> >
> > More than three-quarters of a million people have descended on UNRWA
> > school shelters since the outbreak of war. The average number of people
> > per shelter now is more than 6,250, which the U.N. said is nine times
> > higher than the intended capacity.
> >
> > In times of peace, U.N. schools form a core part of Gaza’s education
> > system, teaching about 300,000 pupils, or about half the total number of
> > students in the strip. “They come out of here as engineers and doctors
> > and lawyers,” said Abu Hisham Subih, a 55-year-old who took shelter in
> > the school here after the war broke out.
> >
> > Israel says the schools’ curriculum, which is shared by those operated
> > by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, contains antisemitic
> > material and teaches hatred.
> >
> > The agency’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, said the
> > allegation was “false and insidious.” The agency says that it adapts
> > textbooks to teach core U.N. principles such as tolerance and
> > nondiscrimination.
> >
> > In times of war, Palestinians flock to the schools for shelter. “It was
> > incredible at first the rush to these UNRWA schools with the deep belief
> > that the schools are protected,” said Alrifai. “But the reality is that
> > in Gaza there’s nowhere safe.”
> >
> > Across Gaza, more than 11,000 people, more than half of them women and
> > children, have been killed since Oct. 7, according to health authorities
> > in the Hamas-run enclave. The figures don’t distinguish between
> > civilians and militants.
> >
> > On Monday, UNRWA said it received reports from witnesses that Israeli
> > security forces entered one school and two health centers in Gaza City
> > and used the installations for military operations.
> >
> > The U.N. said witnesses reported that Israeli soldiers conducted
> > interrogations and arrested some people sheltering in the installations.
> > The Israeli military didn’t respond to a request for comment.
> >
> > U.N. officials say they share the coordinates of all U.N. installations
> > in Gaza with both sides each day.
> >
> > Palestinians say they continue to seek shelter in the schools because
> > they have nowhere else to turn. “The people in this school, their homes
> > are destroyed. Where are they going to go? In the streets?” said Subih,
> > the Palestinian camped out here.
> >
> > Founded to address the needs of Palestinians who fled their homes during
> > the 1948 war at the creation of Israel, the agency now serves both the
> > refugees and their descendants, the majority of Gaza’s more than two
> > million residents.
> >
> > UNRWA’s blue and white logo is everywhere in the strip, a symbol of
> > stability amid years of political and economic turbulence.
> >
> > Hundreds of thousands of people remain in northern Gaza, many of them
> > still in U.N. schools, with rapidly shrinking supplies, the agency says.
> > The U.N. says it hasn’t been able to verify the number of people in the
> > shelters in the north since Oct. 12 due to a lack of access and
> > communications.
> >
> > In the south, U.N. schools have become severely overcrowded.
> > Palestinians wait in line for hours each day for bread, water and other
> > essentials. Brawls and disputes have begun breaking out in the lines as
> > frustration builds, according to the U.N.
> >
> > Officials at the agency are increasingly worried about the spread of
> > gastrointestinal and other diseases in the packed facilities, where 160
> > people share one toilet and 700 a shower.
> >
> > Issa Fayoumi, a teenager from Rafah who took shelter in the schools,
> > said drinking water is available only once a day. “And the bathrooms,”
> > he said. “I swear to God.”
> >
> > Fatima AbdulKarim contributed to this article.
> >
> > Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin-at-wsj.com
> >
> >
> > --
> > So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
> > that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
> > proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
> > http://www.mrbrklyn.com
> >
> > DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
> > http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
> > http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
> > http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
> > http://www.brooklyn-living.com
> >
> > Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
> > but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Hangout mailing list
> > Hangout-at-nylxs.com
> > http://lists.mrbrklyn.com/mailman/listinfo/hangout
>
> --
> So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
> that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
> proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
> http://www.mrbrklyn.com
>
> DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
> http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
> http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
> http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
> http://www.brooklyn-living.com
>
> Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
> but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
_______________________________________________
Hangout mailing list
Hangout-at-nylxs.com
http://lists.mrbrklyn.com/mailman/listinfo/hangout
|
|
