The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) pledged to investigate 10 of its staff members for anti-Israel hate speech following a report by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch that highlighted such activity.
“The agency takes each allegation seriously. It has immediately launched a thorough investigation,” UNRWA stated.
Earlier this week, UN Watch reported that 22 UNRWA school employees had authored social media posts that glorified terrorism, including against Israel, denied Israel’s right to exist, advocated violence over peace, put Hitler in a positive light and blamed Jews for the COVID-19 pandemic.
The UN Watch report gave 97 examples of such media posts dating back to 2015, of which 21 examples were from 2021 and another 10 were from 2019.
“We are concerned that some of the posts violate our rules and policies, and should misconduct be found, UNRWA will take immediate administrative or disciplinary action,” the agency said in response to the report.
But it did not pledge to fire the employees, explaining that when it dealt with such violations of its policy in the past, those employees were censured or fined.
UNRWA has been under fire for incitement in teaching material at its schools and in employee social media posts.
It has pledged “zero-tolerance” for such behavior and has signed an agreement with the Biden administration to uphold that standard.
US resumption of funding to the agency, which now stands at $313.8 million, is based on that agreement.
UN Watch has called on UNRWA to fire employees engaged in incitement against Israel, antisemitism and glorification of terror.
It has also demanded that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres investigate UNRWA’s educational system, which it runs for 539,000 Palestinian refugee children in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
“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,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said.
“They are incapable of protecting Palestinian children from teachers who poison their hearts and minds with an education of hatred and violence,” he said.
UNRWA in turn accused UN Watch of exaggerating the depth of the problem for political reasons. It was an allusion to the fact that many of the agency’s opponents often use the issue of incitement to argue that the organization which services 5.6 million Palestinian refugees should be dismantled.
“UN Watch – an organization with a deep history of unfounded and politically-driven assertions against the agency,” UNRWA called the watchdog group.
Twelve of the people named in the UN Watch report were not associated with the agency, UNRWA said, adding that the ten who did work for the organization made up a small fraction of its staff of over 28,000 employees.
“In previous reports over a five-year period, UN Watch identified a total of 101 cases where UNRWA personnel allegedly posted content on social media that was in breach of its Regulatory Framework, including the neutrality policy,” the agency said.
But “upon investigation of these cases, UNRWA found that 57% of the allegations could not be tied to personnel employed by the agency at the time of the reported incident,” it said.
“To suggest that hate is widespread within the agency and schools is not only misleading and false, but validates sensationalist and politically-motivated attacks that deliberately harm an already vulnerable community: refugee children,” UNRWA said.
Neuer said his organization stood by its assertion that all 22 of those named worked for UNRWA at the time they posted problematic material on social media, charging that the agency is just trying to kill the messenger.
He said there was “corroborating data,” including photos and other documents, that showed these employees worked for UNRWA.
“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... and students who endorse the posts. The problem is systemic,” Neuer said.
“UNRWA’s reply misses the point entirely,” he said. “If the agency employs dozens of teachers and school principals that quote Hitler and praise Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist attacks, the issue isn’t their social media posts, but rather the very fact that UNRWA’s education system is repeatedly putting in the classroom teachers that support Hitler and terrorist attacks.”
Israel's Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan wrote a letter to UNRWA in the wake of the UN Watch's report. Over the weekend he said that UNRWA's announcement of an investigation was unsatisfactory. "UNRWA continues to pay salaries & sponsor antisemitic, pro-terrorism teachers. I will fight until this practice stops," he said.