world news
UNRWA school celebrates Hamas’s ‘jihad warriors’ in Gaza – report
A school in Nablus run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) posted a video to its official Facebook page in which a young student called for the victory of Hamas’s “Jihad warriors” in Gaza and evoked Mohammad’s defeat of the Jews at Khaybar, per a new report from the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se).
In the video, several dozen assembled students call out “Amen” after each line recited by the boy, who is flanked by what appears to be an UNRWA school administrator. It also shows students reading a passage from a fifth-grade Islamic Education textbook that incites violence and Jihad against Israel.
The report also documented several examples of teachers at UNRWA schools in Gaza praising the attacks on social media, and found ties between Hamas terrorists and UNRWA schools.
At least 14 teachers had taken to social media to praise the massacre, both while the atrocities were still ongoing and weeks later.Sarah Alderawy, an UNRWA teacher in Gaza, took to Facebook on October 7 to post a video of Hamas terrorists shooting at Israeli cars that day. The video was captioned with a verse from the Quran that read “We will surely come to them with soldiers that they will be powerless to encounter, and we will surely expel them in humiliation, and they will be debased.”
UNRWA teacher Ebrahim Al Azaia posted a video on Facebook of a rocket landing in a parking lot in Israel. He included the caption “What a splendid sight!” Afab Talab, a teacher at an UNRWA school in Gaza, posted on the day of the attacks that they represented the “first real victory” on the way to liberating all of Palestine, along with a video montage of the infiltrations, the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, and Israelis at a party fleeing for their lives.
The report also found that more than 100 Hamas terrorists were confirmed to have graduated from UNRWA schools, and stated that is statistically likely that the majority of the 3,000 terrorists who perpetrated the October 7 massacre attended UNRWA institutions, which make up half of all schools in Gaza. In one terrorist’s car, a diploma from an UNRWA-run school was found.
UNRWA, which has received nearly $1 billion from the US over the past 5 years, and similar amounts from the UK, EU, and others, uses textbooks written by the Palestinian Authority, which have been found to consistently promote Jihad, antisemitism, and suicide attacks against Israelis. The report gave several more examples of this from 2023 textbooks, including excerpts from math and science lessons. In one example, a fourth-grade math problem reads: “The number of martyrs of the First Intifada (the Intifada of Rocks) is 1,392 martyrs, and the number of martyrs of the Al-Aqsa Intifada is 4,673. The number of martyrs in the two intifadas is _________ martyrs.”
Another demonstrates Newton’s Second Law of Physics by displaying an animation of a Palestinian aiming a slingshot at approaching Israeli soldiers, and asks students to identify the forces that affect the projectile after its release from the slingshot and spring. First-graders are taught as part of a grammatical exercise that “Jihad is one of the gates to paradise.”
A chapter discussing the role of women in combat in Islam glorifies a woman who fatally stabbed a Jew as “justly an example of a brave Muslim woman in defense of the Muslims.”
Most graphically, an eighth-grade Arabic textbook contains a story for reading comprehension glorifying suicide attacks against Israeli soldiers. The story praises Palestinian fighters in the battle of Karameh, describing how they “wore explosive belts, thus turning their bodies into fire burning the Zionist tank.” An illustration is shown depicting a Palestinian spraying bullets at Israeli soldiers in a tank. The story then describes how the soldiers’ bodies and body parts became “food for wild animals on land and birds of prey in the sky.”
UNRWA’s history of using educational materials that glorify terrorism
Glorification of terrorism in textbooks used by UNRWA has been reported on for several years. UNRWA’s policy is to use textbooks that are provided by local educational authorities, despite this not being listed as a requirement in the UN’s mandate to the organization. An UNRWA official told The Jerusalem Post in 2020 that the organization’s protocol was to review all educational materials given to its teachers by local educational authorities, but rather than to censor or refuse to use them, to instruct its teachers to simply skip over potentially inciting material.
UNRWA’s chief spokeswoman told Foreign Policy Magazine in 2021 that “there is zero tolerance” in UNRWA schools for “incitement, antisemitism, and discrimination.”
However, UNRWA has itself directly published material containing the glorification of terrorism and antisemitism. An IMPACT-Se report from 2021 found that UNRWA had sent its schools self-study materials for students to use at home during the coronavirus pandemic, which “egregiously violated” UN, UNESCO, and UNRWA’s stated values and standards. The material, which contained the official UNRWA symbol, contained antisemitic material as well as calls for “martyrdom, violence, and Jihad,” per the report.
UNRWA subsequently acknowledged that it had “mistakenly” published inappropriate material for student use, and stated that the issue had been dealt with and that future instances would be prevented through a rigorous review process. However, a July 2022 report by IMPACT-se found that self-published material from UNRWA continued to encourage “jihad, violence, and martyrdom,” as well as “antisemitism, conflict discourse, hate, andintolerance.”
Former US president Donald Trump cut off all American funding for UNRWA in 2018, drawing outcry from Palestinian rights advocates. President Joe Biden restored the US’s relationship with the organization in 2021, with the US having sent nearly $750 million to the organization over the past three years.
The United States is deferring the removal of certain Lebanese citizens from the country, President Joe Biden said on Friday, citing humanitarian conditions in southern Lebanon amid tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
The deferred designation, which lasts 18 months, allows Lebanese citizens to remain in the country with the right to work, according to a memorandum Biden sent to the Department of Homeland Security.
“Humanitarian conditions in southern Lebanon have significantly deteriorated due to tensions between Hezbollah and Israel,” Biden said in the memo.
“While I remain focused on de-escalating the situation and improving humanitarian conditions, many civilians remain in danger; therefore, I am directing the deferral of removal of certain Lebanese nationals who are present in the United States.”Increased attacks since Oct.7
Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since Hezbollah announced a “support front” with Palestinians shortly after its ally Hamas attacked southern Israeli border communities on Oct. 7, triggering Israel’s military assault in Gaza.
The fighting in Lebanon has killed more than 100 civilians and more than 300 Hezbollah fighters, according to a Reuters tally, and led to levels of destruction in Lebanese border towns and villages not seen since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.
On the Israeli side, 10 Israeli civilians, a foreign agricultural worker and 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed. Tens of thousands have been evacuated from both sides of the border.
Hezbollah is an Iran-backed terrorist group and the most powerful military and political force in Lebanon.
world news
Preparing for war: Haifa mayor describes city’s infrastructure changes tensions in North escalate
Haifa mayor Yona Yahav spoke this past Monday with Lior Rosenfeld on Radio North 104.5FM about the escalation of the war in the North and his entry into political office amidst the security situation.
Yahav began, “I cannot speak on behalf of the North as I don’t know exactly what’s happening there. No one updates me, as if we are not the largest and most important city in the North. Tomorrow, the Home Front Command is coming to see us for the first time, and we will see what they have to say. We are doing everything to ensure that the city itself and our residents are safe and know what to do in case, God forbid, missiles fall on us. They are more accurate than those in 2006.”
Yahav also discussed the city’s preparations for a war in the North.
“We are now changing the entire method of building public structures,” Yahav said. “We are preparing them for prolonged stays. The minimum will be four consecutive days in shelters and such buildings, which require preparation. For example, installing toilets, which we don’t have today, and we have given instructions to build them in places close to where new houses are being built. This has been fully understood, and developers have begun to understand that the talk about evacuation and reconstruction has undergone drastic changes in light of the security situation. For example, road width needs to be maintained for the sake of evacuating residents on these roads. These are things that were not considered until now and must now be taken into account.”
Yahav’s plans for the success of Haifa’s future
Yahav then discussed his appeal to the transportation minister to stop the Highway 23 Carmel Tunnels’ toll charge.
“We called on the transportation minister to stop the discrimination. Haifa and the North are always discriminated against compared to central Israel, and there’s no reason for this. There are huge tunnels dug in Jerusalem that do not cost residents any money to pass through. There’s no reason why the tunnels dug in Haifa should include a toll. I speak on behalf of Haifa residents, and we are preparing to petition if we do not receive an answer.”
Regarding his entry into his mayoral role about three months ago, Yahav said, “I found a completely ruined city. They destroyed the municipality, and it’s very difficult to move things around. I don’t understand how residents sat idly by and kept quiet. We are trying to go to government offices to fix relations, to get funds, to move projects to bring in fees – and we are doing all this in a short time.
“The ministers are acting openly and with the goodwill to help. I am now waiting for the money on the table. The casino building in Bat Galim will be a luxurious hotel on the Bat Galim seashore. This neighborhood will undergo a complete transformation and will be the most beautiful neighborhood in the country. It will also be the only neighborhood facing a recognized beach. We came to make a change, and we will succeed.”
In conclusion, he touched on the issue of wild boars: “You won’t be able to follow them because soon you won’t see them anymore.”
world news
‘Psychological operation’: Turkey condemns FM Katz social media post depicting toddler Erdogan
Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Ministry released a statement on Sunday condemning a social media post made by Foreign Minister Israel Katz, in which Katz presented Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan as a toddler on the lap of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Katz, in a Sunday post on X, wrote “Erdogan @RTErdogan finances and arms terrorist organizations of Hamas to carry out attacks and murder against Israelis. The General Security Service captured a squad of students from Bir Zeit who were employed by the Hamas headquarters in Turkey to carry out murder attacks in Israel, through training and weapons and tens of thousands of dollars provided to them.
“Erdogan turned Turkey into a state that supports terrorism and subjects Turkey to the Iranian axis of evil in the name of extreme ideology and blatant anti-Semitism.”
Katz’s comments were made in reference to a recently thwarted terror attack planned by the student Hamas cell in Bir Zeit University, north of Ramallah. The attempted attack, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said, was directed by Hamas’s base in Turkey.ארדואן @RTErdogan מממן ומחמש ארגוני טרור של החמאס לביצוע פיגועים ורצח נגד ישראלים. שירות הביטחון הכללי לכד חוליית סטודנטים מביר זית שהופעלו ע”י מפקדת החמאס בטורקיה לביצוע פיגועי רצח בישראל, באמצעות אימונים ונשק ועשרות אלפי דולרים שסופקו להם.ארדואן הפך את טורקיה למדינה תומכת טרור… pic.twitter.com/R0SCjYdngN
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) July 21, 2024
Turkey condemns the social media post
The Turkish ministry responded “The Israeli Foreign Minister is trying to hide Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians behind a series of lies, slander and disrespect.
“Israel’s dirty propaganda targeting Türkiye and President Erdoğan, and psychological operation attempts will not bear fruit.
“The members of the Netanyahu Government, who have killed nearly forty thousand Palestinians in Gaza and are now trying to start a regional war in order to stay in power, will be tried in international courts and held accountable for their crimes.
“Türkiye will continue to speak the truth and defend the right of the Palestinian people to live in justice and peace.”
The ministry cited data provided by the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Additionally, Turkey has repeatedly asserted that it does not categorize Hamas as a terrorist organization – despite its western allies acknowledging it as such and its proven attacks on Israeli civilians.
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