Thread by @UNWatch

BREAKING: UNRWA, the UN agency that runs schools for Palestinians, has announced it is investigating 10 of its staffers after UN Watch exposed 100 teachers and school principals that praise Hitler and incite anti-Jewish hatred and terrorism on social media.unwatch.org/unrwa-announce…

UNRWA’s statement also suggested they may have penalized up to 40 more employees appearing on the list of UNRWA employees guilty of incitement, published in this week’s report by UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights group that monitors the United Nations. unrwa.org/newsroom/offic…

The unprecedented speed of UNRWA’s response follows strong demands made by Israel’s Ambassador to the US & UN Gilad Erdan, who sent the UN and UNRWA harsh letters of complaint, calling on UNRWA to fire the perpetrators.
israelhayom.com/2021/08/04/erd… @giladerdan1

Amb. Erdan also called on US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield to demand urgent explanations from UNRWA, which may have prompted the agency to respond.

The US is now UNRWA’s largest donor, with $318 million in funding in 2021. It has promised to hold UNRWA to account.

Despite UNRWA's welcome announcement of partial investigations, the agency's response was sharply criticized by Hillel Neuer, the head of UN Watch, in the statement below.

@HillelNeuer: ”UNRWA’s reply misses the point entirely. If the agency employs dozens of teachers and school principals who quote Hitler and praise Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist attacks, the issue isn’t their social media posts and their so-called ‘neutrality breaches’...

...but rather the fact that UNRWA’s education system is repeatedly hiring and putting in the classroom teachers that admire Hitler and propagate hatred and terrorism.”

”Deleting a post on Facebook does not remove the hate in those teachers’ hearts and minds. It does not solve the problem. And UNRWA's claim that certain teachers were not employed with the agency at the time that they advocated racism or terrorism is equally beside the point.”

”Palestinian children deserve to be fully protected from teachers of hatred and racism. Zero tolerance in schools means you remove racists from the classroom, period.”

”We regret that UNRWA is trying to kill the messenger by maliciously attacking UN Watch for vetting their teachers regarding racism and terrorism, a minimal form of oversight that the agency itself has failed to exercise.”

”UNRWA accuses us of ‘unfounded & politically-driven assertions’ yet fails to cite a single example. By contrast, UN Watch’s reports, including our new list of 100 UNRWA staffers guilty of incitement, are replete with supporting factual evidence in footnotes, links, screenshots.”

”Facing serious allegations about widespread support for antisemitism and terrorism among its educators, UNRWA is burying its head in the sand, falsely pretending that these are isolated cases. The opposite is true.”

”We know and have documented that for every UNRWA teacher that praises Hitler or Hamas terrorist attacks on social media, there are dozens of that teacher’s UNRWA colleagues who endorse the posts. (See at pp. 46, 47, 162 & 195: unwatch.org/wp-content/upl…)

The problem is systemic.”

”Regrettably, in breach of its obligations as a United Nations agency, UNRWA has repeatedly refused to engage with UN Watch, an accredited NGO with the United Nations, regarding evidence of their teachers’ incitement.”

”As documented in our report, since 2015 UNRWA has ignored direct requests made to their leadership, including correspondence sent directly to the previous head of UNRWA.”

”If and when UNRWA is serious about investigating evidence of incitement by their teachers, we stand ready at any time to meet with Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini—in Geneva, Jerusalem or anywhere else—to provide substantial additional information that we have collected.”

”Finally, it is unacceptable for UNRWA to make vague and non-specific denials concerning documented evidence of UNRWA staff incitement.”

”Especially given the agency’s ethics crisis and credibility gap that caused Switzerland and other donor countries to freeze funding to UNRWA in 2019...”

unwatch.org/unrwa-ethics-s…

...it needs to show minimal transparency and accountability by publicly detailing which charges they reject, and to explain why they are not firing UNRWA teachers who publicly propagate antisemitism and support for terror.”

“We are now calling on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to appoint an independent and impartial commission of inquiry to fully investigate the pandemic of hate that has infected UNRWA’s educational system.”

”UNRWA’s failure to fire a single teacher of hate, and its scurrilous resort to ad hominem attacks on those seeking to combat antisemitism, makes it clear that they are incapable of investigating themselves on incitement, just like on corruption and abuse.”

”They are incapable of protecting Palestinian children from teachers who poison their hearts and minds with an education of hatred and violence.”

End of statement by UN Watch director Hillel Neuer and the press release.

Online here: unwatch.org/unrwa-announce…