Using commercial advertisement including billboards in several cities around the world and paid Google ads on multiple websites, the Government of Israel has stepped up its disinformation campaign against UNRWA.These ads are the latest in a series of a wider campaign against UNRWA by the Government of Israel, which continues to publicly call for dismantling the Agency.This latest global effort by a UN member state to label a UN agency as a terror organisation may amount to hate speech using corporations that are supposed to promote commercial products.This campaign is creating immense reputational damage to UNRWA...Those responsible for the spread of disinformation, including advertisement companies must stop and be held accountable. Regulations must be put in place to control the spread of such damaging and possibly dangerous messages.
So UNRWA is trying to pressure advertising companies to censor ads because they are "disinformation" and "hate speech."
What, exactly, is the disinformation, and how, exactly, is this "hate speech"?
The Israeli government site that details its charges against UNRWA says this:
New intelligence collected by Israel since October 7th shows that over 10% of the 510 employees in UNRWA's education system in the Gaza Strip who hold senior positions (school principals and their deputies, directors and deputy directors of training centers) are members of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which are designated terror organizations.
It shows details about 10 of the over 50 school principals and directors, showing which schools they headed and their terrorist affiliations.
Moreover, some of these schools that they headed had Hamas tunnels underneath, and many of them employed supplemental materials - under UNRWA's name -that glorifies terror and "martyrdom." (See the IMPACT-SE report.)
Can UNRWA point to a single example of "disinformation" here? Of course not.
A careful look at UNRWA's page disputing the charges against it indicate that it is spinning furiously. For example, it appears that the media misrepresented the Israeli claim above that over 10% of UNRWA senior school officials were associated with terrorism as saying that 10% of all UNRWA staff in Gaza were members of Hamas. UNRWA says that it had not received confirmation of the media claim, but ignores Israel's actual claim. Moreover, UNRWA says that as of January, Israel hadn't shared details of terror linked individuals, while Israel says that they did - in March.
There is not a single thing on the government website pointed to by these ads that UNRWA has shown to be false.
Other evidence of UNRWA ties to Hamas, such as this sporting event sponsored by Hamas and promoted by UNRWA's school principal/Hamas operative as having "our boys" participating, are not mentioned or countered. (There were Hamas tunnels underneath that school, Al-Maghazi Boys Preparatory School B.)
So much for "disinformation." But what about "hate speech"?
Hate speech, by definition, is abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds. Criticizing an organization in no way can be considered hate speech. On the contrary, it is free speech in its most classic sense - and UNRWA is evidently against free speech.
If UNRWA is claiming that ads that expose their ties to terror are Islamophobic, that indicates that they believe that Hamas represents Islam.
The good news is that UNRWA is admitting that the campaign is damaging UNRWA's reputation. This is seventy years too late.
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