Bidenites Increase Aid to Relentlessly Antisemitic UNRWA

BY HUGH FITZGERALD

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/06/bidenites-increase-aid-to-relentlessly-antisemitic-unrwa;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Didn’t Joe Biden just reveal to the world, to great fanfare, his administration’s “first ever national strategy to combat antisemitism”? And then, just a few weeks later, the State Department announced an increase in aid to UNRWA, one of the foremost spreaders of antisemitism in the world.

Vijeta Uniyal wrote about this for Jihad Watch here, and more on this moral failure can be found here: “US Increases Aid to UNRWA Despite Concerns About Antisemitism Taught in Its Schools,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, June 22, 2023:

The US Department of State has increased its 2023-24 contribution to the UN agency assisting Palestinian refugees despite widespread concern that antisemitism and jihadi violence is openly taught in schools it administers in the Palestinian territories.

It’s not just a “concern” – it’s a fact that “antisemitism and jihadi violence” are taught in UNRWA’s schools, and not only the schools in the Palestinian territories, but in UNRWA schools all over the Middle East.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), founded in 1949 to provide humanitarian and social services to Palestinian refugees, will receive an additional $16.2 million this year, the State Department announced on Wednesday, bringing the total dollar amount it will rake in from the US under a framework agreement finalized in April to $223 million. Since 2021, the US has provided UNRWA $940 million….

The announcement that UNRWA will receive still more money from the Bidenites – even though it was only an additional $16.2 million – is infuriating. It’s not just the money; it’s the principle. Raising the aid given to UNRWA shows the disconnect between Biden’s rhetoric about combatting antisemitism (with input from, among other doubtful groups, CAIR) and his administration’s actions. The Bidenites show their determination to ignore UNRWA’s relentless antisemitism even as the administration is full of self-congratulation about its “national strategy to combat antisemitism.”

In May, Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) reintroduced the “Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act,” which would enforce reporting and oversight of educational materials produced by UNRWA, and earlier this year, Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced legislation that would make its funding contingent on the completion of an annual audit conducted by the Secretary of State.

Both bills, if they became law, would help pressure UNRWA to revise its texts. Congressman Sherman wants an annual report prepared for Congress on UNRWA’s educational materials, and any evidence of their antisemitism. Congressman Roy’s bill is even more important, because funding for UNRWA would now depend on what an “annual audit” would show. Both bills have been made necessary because the Bidenites have simply decided to punt on the whole question of antisemitism taught in UNRWA schools. They have never bothered even to ask, or cajole, or threaten UNRWA into cleaning up its schoolbooks.

The Bidenites have no intention, as the last three years have shown, to hold UNRWA to any of its promises to clean up its textbooks. Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan simply don’t care about the poison of antisemitism that the Agency has been feeding Palestinian children for decades. Not a single UNRWA text, according to Marcus Sheff, has shown improvement, while the texts in Saudi schools have been stripped of much of their antisemitism; Emirati schools now offer courses on the Holocaust; Moroccan schools now have courses on the history of Moroccan Jewry and their contributions to the country.

“Examples of antisemitic content described in previous Impact-se reports include a grammar lesson that uses the sentence, “The Palestinians sacrifice their blood to liberate Jerusalem,” and “Arabic Drill Cards” for 9th graders that say, “When the [Muslim] nation is negligent in protecting al-Aqsa, then the Jews will dare to defile it.” Additionally, Israel does not appear on any maps.

This is the content that encourages Palestinian children to yearn to be shahids, martyrs, who will “sacrifice their blood” to “liberate Jerusalem” from the “filthy Jews,’ which can only be achieved, UNRWA lessons hint, by ridding the world of those Jews who are constantly threatening to “defile” Al-Aqsa (“Al-Aqsa is in danger”), though exactly how that “defiling” is supposed to be achieved by the Jews is never revealed. The only real “defiling” of Al-Aqsa has been that committed by the Palestinians who use the mosque both as a storehouse for weapons – rocks, fireworks, bottles for Molotov cocktails – and as a fort, from which these Palestinians hurl those weapons at Israeli police and Jewish visitors to the Mount.

Teachers and staff employed by UNRWA incite antisemitism, terrorism, and hate on social media, as well, according to a report released in March by Impact-se and UN Watch, which cited over 200 examples of UNRWA teachers promoting hateful content on social media, including a Syrian math teacher’s praising a March 2022 terrorist attack in Israel that claimed four lives, a Lebanese teacher’s calling the architect of several attacks a “martyr” and “noblest of souls,” and a Syrian UNRWA employee’s sharing on social media a photograph of Hitler, which she captioned, “there are still some people you need to burn.”

Biden could get his “national strategy for combatting antisemitism” up and running in the best possible way, by announcing that “my administration can no longer tolerate the persistent antisemitism in UNRWA texts and teaching materials, and today I am announcing that no further American aid will be given to UNRWA until all of those antisemitic texts and materials are removed.” That would get UNRWA’s attention. That would do some good.