SWC Calls On US Foreign Relations Committees To Close UNRWA Permanently; End Refugee Welfare State and Empower Palestinian Peace Seekers to Oversee Education

November 30, 2023

Jewish Human Rights Organization Calls for End to Refugee Welfare State and Empower Palestinian Peace Seekers to Oversee Education

LOS ANGELES – The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is calling on the US Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees to permanently close the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) following proof that UNRWA schools have been used to launch missiles against Israeli civilians, store weapons, and that one UNRWA employee held an Israeli hostage for 50 days in his home.

In letters to the Foreign Relations Committees, the SWC wrote:

• Despite protestations that UNRWA’s educational curriculum is there to promote peace, the opposite is true.  Children are taught to revere mass murdering terrorists, the legitimacy and even the existence of the Jewish state is ignored or denied. And worst of all the right of return—another way of expressing the goal of erasing Israel is a central theme in classrooms.
  
  
• UNRWA, which teaches much of the young Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, has contributed to the brainwashing of students, denying the legitimacy of their Jewish neighbors. These students who spend summers receiving military training grow up with one goal: Kill Israelis and remove them from the land of Israel.
  
  
• A few days ago, AWRAD -  a research and consulting firm based in the Palestinian Authority’s capital of Ramallah -  surveyed the opinions of 668 residents across the West Bank and Gaza during the fourth week of the war in face-to-face interviews conducted online. In its most revealing find, 85% of those polled support the “October 7 attacks” either strongly or at least somewhat.