In order to promote peace, one must educate for peace and not hatred. The waves of protests in east Jerusalem and other places in Israel, are ignited all too often, but these are the result of seeds of hatred that were sown in schools and other places years ago.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
In recent years we have witnessed a sharp, consistent, and alarming rise in antisemitism in the world, particularly in Europe and the US. This modern antisemitism, which incites hatred against Jews and Israelis, has sadly led to a series of tragic acts of violence and murders, amongst them, the murder of Sara Halimi in France. With the memory and lessons of the Holocaust before us, which was the outcome of a murderous political antisemitic ideology, we, members of the Jewish community, wish to expose these seeds of hatred that are sown systematically, before it is too late.
Unfortunately, we have come to know that it is precisely in schools run by the UN that students are exposed to curriculums that are tainted with antisemitic messages, and which promote violence. Therefore, we must stand together, and demand a deep reform of the curriculum used by The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), so that no more children consume this hatred-filled, antisemitic content.
Programs and curricula have often been set and approved for use by the Palestinian Authority itself. But recently the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) claimed that it was actually UNRWA employees who composed and disseminated problematic educational materials that could be interpreted as harsher and more extreme than those approved even by the PA itself.
In the first decade of its operation, UNRWA committed to removing contents that encourage hatred, specifically towards Israel, from school textbooks and materials. Unfortunately, this task did not succeed, nor did it properly monitor the issue. UNRWA uses Palestinian Authority official textbooks which are used in hundreds of schools in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, according to the mandate given to them by the Host Country curriculum.
The textbooks include content that has already been strongly condemned by the UN Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination in 2019.
Over the past year, UNRWA has written, produced and distributed educational materials for use in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which reached more than 320,000 students, including, according to some claims, such problematic content.
UNRWA Commissioner General Philip Lazarini and other UNRWA officials, who were exposed to the materials, were forced to admit that this content was contrary to UN values and pledged to address the issue by November 2020. But from information and findings we have, they did not do so.
We are united in our belief that hatred, antisemitism and glorification of terrorism have no place in textbooks of any educational institution, especially in UN schools. We, therefore, call on the organization, headed by Secretary General Antonio Guterres, to take all necessary measures to ensure that this will not happen in the future.
The required measures include the immediate publication of all information about the examination processes and instructions regarding the curriculum, as well as publication of the content of textbooks currently used in schools, and in particular, factual content about Jews and Israelis. Furthermore, we recommend that the UN Secretariat independently review procedures related to the content being studied and publish the relevant findings. Promoting peace in the Middle East is a strategic and moral obligation of both the United States and the UN. Only by educating for peace and tolerance, and uprooting antisemitism, can we hope and believe that this vision will come true.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
