J. Peter Pham & Michael I. Krauss have just released a report on the UN Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA which details the organizations origins and its long history of supporting Hamas with money and equipment, supplying text books and ciriculum that advocates the destruction of Israel and provides maps with no mention of Israel.

Here are some of the gory details from the report:

UNRWA’s anti-Semitism is not merely doled out to the press, however. The agency runs one of the region’s largest networks of schools, in which similar “ideas” are inculcated into a new generation of potential militants. Over the years, the “educational” materials currently in use in UNRWA schools include the following:

* Its tenth grade textbook History of the Contemporary and Modern World defines Zionism as “a racist ideology and political movement that appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century” and informs its readers that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were “a group of confidential resolutions adopted by the [Basel Zionist] Congress…the goal of which is world domination.” [And we dare criticize Hamas’s Covenant?]

* Readers of its fifth grade textbook Physical Geography, its tenth grade Geography of the World’s Continents, and other volumes with maps will search in vain for any mention of Israel.

* The high school textbook Health and Environmental Sciences contains a unit entitled “The Racist Annexation and Separation Wall and Its Impact on Environment.”

* The fourth grade reader Our Beautiful Language gives students this assignment: “Let us research and write [an essay] about one of the Palestinian martyr leaders [suicide bombers].”

If UNRWA’s abetting of terrorism were limited to verbal incitement of refugees, it might arguably be tolerable within a broader framework that was encouraging peace. But the record shows that the agency’s complicity extends to “sticks and stones” as well to words. Consider three facts, selected from literally hundreds over the years:

* After his arrest in August 2002, Nidal ‘Abd al-Fataah ‘Abdallah Nizal, a UNRWA ambulance driver and Hamas activist from Qalqiliya in the West Bank, admitted that he used his official vehicle to transport munitions to Hamas terrorists and to carry official orders to them.

* Nahd Rashid, a senior UNRWA official in Gaza before his arrest in August 2002, confessed that he used his UNRWA vehicle to transport armed members of the Popular Resistance Committees (an affiliate of the supposedly moderate Fatah faction) to kill Israeli soldiers at the Karni entrance to Israel. He also used the car on another occasion to move a 25-pound bomb.

* In May 2004, armed Palestinians were filmed using UNRWA ambulances to transport terrorists (and possibly also the remains of fallen Israeli soldiers).

These are not isolated cases. They are symptomatic of a culture within UNRWA, whose employees’ union has been dominated by Hamas since 1990. For example, currently all but 8 of the 54 union officials in the Gaza local are directly tied to Hamas. This virtually ensures that the majority of new hires will either share terrorist views by conviction or be quickly co-opted into it as a condition for continuing employment.

You must read the whole thing.

HT/ The Volokh Conspiracy where I first came across this story and who did some follow up and found:

The schools are operated directly by UNRWA — it is a huge operation, involving over 600 primary, elementary, and secondary schools with over 16,000 teachers … and nearly half a million students.

The passages cited in are articles are all from textbooks currently in use. Incidentally, the UNRWA’s official dodge when confronted with this is “The curriculum in the Agency’s schools is determined by the education authorities in the locations where it operates.

Now is it any wonder that the UN comes out with a new resolution condemning Israel every other week?

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