Campaigning to Reform UNRWA

ICJW is actively involved in a new campaign to reform UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that actively promotes the indoctrination of Palestinian children to grow up hating Israel and Jews.

Joan Lurie Goldberg, one of ICJW’s representatives at the United Nations in New York, is leading a new advocacy and social action group, UNRWA: Stop Teaching Hate.  The campaign group is made up of the informal caucus of Jewish NGOs at the UN in New York and like-minded friends of the JNGO group.

The campaign group is led by Dr. Joan Lurie Goldberg, Ellen Sloame Fawer and Dr. Deborah Singer Soffen. At the October meeting of the informal Caucus of Jewish NGOs at the UN (shown here), hosted by Hadassah, the group was addressed by Brooke Goldstein, Executive Director of the Lawfare Project, who is deeply committed to the UNRWA textbook situation.

The mission of the UNRWA: STOP TEACHING HATE Caucus is to ensure that the UNRWA & Palestinian Authority curricula conform to standards of peace, tolerance and the rights of the child as required by United Nations principles.  It is immoral to use textbooks to teach Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews while glorifying martyrdom. The educational materials in current use vilify and deny the existence of Israel, and use maps on which Israel, a UN member state, is not mentioned.   Through advocacy and communication with the US Congress, UN member states, NGOs, wider civil societies and individuals, we aim to end the use of US and donor nation UN aid dollars and personnel to teach violence and terrorism in school. Curricula reforms are essential if we are to see an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

UNRWA has been defunded by the US. However, other nations summoned to a “giving” conference, have pledged sufficient funds to preserve UNRWA’s operations. We are waiting to see what will the fate of UNRWA be? No matter what happens, we have a job to do… to ensure that the text books are reformed and the teachers are vetted to make sure they are no longer committed to incitement.

They explain: “The world needs to recognize that a leading cause of the failure to achieve peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is the hate-filled, incitement in the education provided to young Palestinians over the last three generations. We are working to increase awareness of this situation and, eventually, achieve changes in the current educational curricula.”

The group invites other organizations to join their campaign and encourages concerned individuals to engage with the conversation about reforming UNRWA. Please spread the word about this campaign and get involved by commenting and posting articles and ideas on their website www.reformUNRWA.com

Articles about the campaign were published in the Jerusalem Post, in the Times of Israel and in the Algemeiner.