The strange thing about UNRWA (and the Red Cross)

An intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt relativism that sees evil, makes excuses and walks away indifferent

UNRWA archive

With the Gaza Strip in ruins and over a million displaced, should we be talking about defunding a UN organization catering to Palestinian refugees? Oddly, maybe so. And as we examine the beleaguered United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), we might also consider the more nuanced situation of the Red Cross. Humanitarians are rarely at their best when dealing with an evil like Hamas.

UNRWA is reeling after after revelations by Israel that a number of its staffers participated in the Oct. 7 invasion and massacre of 1,200 people in Israel. The U.S. – which provides about a third of its roughly $1 billion annual budget – and about a dozen other countries, from the UK to Japan, have suspended funding.

But the real problem with UNRWA is not that it lost control of a few of its 13,000 staff in Gaza. The problem is that on a far wider scale it seems to be a willing enabler of Hamas, a group that is not dedicated to the Palestinian national cause but rather to scuttling any peace deal with Israel enroute to a jihadi Islamic caliphate. And that attaches to the wider calamity of a intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt relativism that sees evil, makes excuses and walks away indifferent.

UNRWA runs hundreds of schools in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza – wherever there are Palestinian refugees, who are almost in all cases the descendants of refugees from almost 80 years ago. It schools most of the kids in Gaza. Schools absorb the vast majority of its budget. As such, UNRWA has been fully complicit in educating generations of Palestinian children to glorify martyrdom and struggle.

“UNRWA has willfully chosen to teach millions of schoolchildren to embrace violence and jihad over peace and hope – but it is a path which we can no longer afford to walk down,” says Marcus Sheff, who heads IMPACT-SE, an NGO that advocates for education reform in the region.

The group’s November 2023 report entitled “Textbooks and Terror” makes for grisly reading. It identifies scores of UNRWA teachers who promote hate and violence on social media and finds “a systematic insertion of violence, martyrdom, overt antisemitism, and jihad across all grades and subjects, with the proliferation of extreme nationalism and Islamist ideologies throughout the curriculum, including science and math textbooks.”

To be fair, the materials in question are not UNRWA’s – they originate with the West-Bank based autonomy government known as the Palestinian Authority. While I favor returning the PA to power in the seaside strip of Gaza – from which Hamas expelled it in 2007 – there is a reason why people speak of a need for massive reform. That Hamas accepts the PA’s curriculum tells you much about the degree to which the “moderate” PA’s syllabus encourages peaceful coexistence.

Examples from the report: Teachers teach Grade 6 students that “The Zionists are the terrorists of the modern age, and they are fated to disappear.” The perpetrator of a 1978 attack inside Israel that killed 35 people including 9 children is hailed as “immortal” in the “hearts and minds” of Palestinians. Reading comprehension is taught through a violent story promoting suicide bombings by those who “wore explosive belts, thus turning their bodies into fire” whereupon Israeli body parts “become food for wild animals on land and birds of prey in the sky.” Palestinian girls are encouraged to kill, be killed, and send their children to die. And so on.

UNRWA’s sin is one of omission – but boy, is it a doozy. It has refused to deploy its status and leverage to insist on changes – as would befit its lofty mission statements and the founding principles of the UN. Not only does it have the right to ask for such changes, but one might see it as required under its “duty of care” – a notion stipulating that UNRWA staff are expected to act in accordance with humanitarian principles and uphold the highest standards of professionalism and integrity.

Instead, there are persistent credible reports that Hamas was able to stash weapons in UNRWA facilities. One released hostage reported being held by a UNRWA teacher. Israel released intel claiming a tenth of UNRWA staff had ties to terror groups. And so on. It adds up to a devastating indictment, and the EU has called on the organization to investigate all Gaza staff.

I understand if UNRWA officials felt they had to bow before a homicidal mafia, leave the curriculum as is, and hire aspiring terrorists.  It isn’t easy.