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Thursday, August 20, 2015

Israel's Channel 10 airs my UNRWA expose (video)

Israel's Channel 10 has reported on my findings that many UNRWA teachers have been posting antisemitic, pro-terror and even pro-Nazi photos and posters on Facebook.

Arutz-7 summarized the Hebrew report:

Teachers working at United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon and Jordan have received no disciplinary action for supporting anti-Semitism and terrorism on social media, the Elder of Zion [sic] blog has revealed in an ongoing investigative report.

According to the blog's findings, the teachers often published Facebook posts against the Jewish state and in support of terrorist activity. Even a director of one of UNRWA's schools was complicit, praising a terror attack carried out in 1978.

Other questionable uploads include a picture from Oday Al Masri, an UNRWA teacher in Jenin, featuring a swastika.

The organization responded by telling teachers to tone down the hate-fueled posts, concerned more with its reputation than the terrorism and anti-Semitism its employees were promoting.

In response, several teachers removed their affiliation with UNRWA on their Facebook accounts and/or changed their privacy settings. Several pages, as well as an UNRWA teacher's group featuring jihadist videos, were also taken down.

However, no teachers have been dismissed or even reprimanded for their actions.

In light of Elder of Ziyon's recent update to the scandal, a UNRWA spokesman told Channel 10 that if the reports prove credible, the organization would see the guilty parties were punished.

"If there are any charges, and if this is true, then it's a very big issue and we'll take care of it. If there is a suspected breach of neutrality on the part of employees, we will investigate and take significant steps, including dismissal," the spokesman claimed.
Chris Gunness - the spokesperson here - is lying, as he always does.

We know that UNRWA is aware of my reports about this from last year, and that they pressured teachers to remove their posts or to stop identifying themselves as UNRWA employees. There is no other explanation as to why so many of the posts disappeared right after I would write about them. But now that Israeli media picked up on the story, Gunness is pretending that UNRWA will "investigate and take significant steps, including dismissal."

If there had been any disciplinary action, Gunness would have said so. And if any teacher would have been fired for posting antisemitism on Facvebook, there would have been protests in the UNRWA schools - after all, there was a teacher's strike when UNRWA once tried to suspend a single Hamas member.

So of course UNRWA is aware of this and has ignored it, hoping that no one from the media would contact them.

There is some deja vu here, because in 2013 I also revealed an UNRWA dean of education posting Hitler quotes on his Facebook page. The Washington Free Beacon contacted Chris Gunness who responded very similarly.  And he knows very well that most reporters will not follow up to find out if what exactly UNRWA did to fix the problem.

In that case, as now, the Hitler poster was taken down but the dean still has his job.

In other words, this is another example of an UNRWA coverup of how its teachers regularly flout its own written standards. Gunness and his bosses are not interested in solving the problem, they spend their efforts into getting reporters to go away.

I did speak to the reporter about my findings of antisemitism in UNRWA's own websites, but he decided not to include that.

Here is the video of the Hebrew report, including a short audio clip from me:



Arutz-7's video is here: