UNRWA Teachers Promote Nazis, Antisemitism, Anti-Gay Hate
UNRWA's funders—the U.S., the EU, the UK, Sweden, France—need to to urgently investigate why UNRWA teachers praise Hitler and the Nazis and incite antisemitism and anti-gay hatred. Urge them to create a commission of inquiry now into UNRWA
Why do peace organizations rely on ‘alternative facts’?
A prime example features in Breaking the Silence’s tour of the Southern Hebron hills region. In Susiya, tourists are taken to a well opening in the ground, roughly a meter square. As I stood there, the guide explained that the IDF had pushed an entire vehicle into the well. “Here, if you look, there’s a Subaru car deep inside,” he claimed. “They pushed it inside in order to poison the well.” A detached white car door lies on the ground adjacent to the hole.PMW success in US Congress
It sounds dreadful. Initially, I was shocked. There’s just one problem: As anyone who’s been there can attest, no car is actually visible. That’s because there isn’t one in there at all. The aforementioned door is nothing but a devious, strategically positioned prop. And after taking a moment to think about it, I realised the sheer impossibility of ramming a whole car through a one meter square opening. But how many people simply accept the story unquestioningly?
Another time, Breaking the Silence uploaded a story to its Hebrew Facebook page, claiming that a Palestinian family was instructed to leave home eight times in one year so that the army could perform drills nearby. At the time, I was part of My Truth, an organisation that had refuted a number of Breaking the Silence’s lies. Although I had already developed a deep mistrust of the organisation by this point, this claim was too strong to ignore. I was concerned by the possibility that the IDF could acts so callously.
Anxious to verify the details, I relayed concern to my boss that we should tread carefully in case the army had indeed marked out this family’s land as a firing zone. I advised that it would be prudent to examine the case further. And so we did. We obtained aerial photographs of the area from 1999 and from 2016. In so doing, My Truth uncovered what really happened there: Whereas the 2016 photograph clearly showed homes, the image from 1999 showed uninhabited land. When the area was declared a closed military zone that year, no Palestinian village existed there. The family then deliberately chose to live in a military firing range, in defiance of both the law and common sense. Put simply, Breaking the Silence’s claim that the army was cynically embarking on a training exercise and using this as a cover to evict a family was a barefaced lie.
Representatives Ted Budd and Mark Sanford introduce the No Bonuses for Terrorist Act of 2017 (Feb. 9, 2017)
A new bill introduced by U.S. Representatives Ted Budd (R-NC) and Mark Sanford (R-SC) aims to ensure that American taxpayer dollars will not be used to reward Palestinian terrorists. Palestinian Media Watch first revealed to the international community in 2011 that the Palestinian Authority pays significant monetary rewards to terrorists. Since then, PMW has documented the PA’s continued practice of using foreign aid money to reward terrorism in a series of follow up reports:PMW report prompts Wiesenthal Center's condemnation of German-Palestinian sports agreement
The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud (April 27, 2016)
Is the PA Lying to Western Donors? (May 18, 2015)
Compilation of PMW Reports on PA Salaries to Terrorist Prisoners (Feb. 13, 2013)
The No Bonuses for Terrorist Act of 2017 (H.R. 789), if passed, will require the US Secretary of State to certify that the PA and PLO have terminated all financial rewards to terrorists and their families. In describing the new bill, Representative Ted Budd showed his familiarity with PMW’s findings in The PA’s Billion Dollar Fraud, which exposed last year that the PA has funneled its salary payments to terrorists through the PLO in order to deceive donors:
“Although our current law allows reductions in aid to the Palestinian Authority based on the amount of payments they make to terrorists and their families, they’ve found a way around this by giving to third party organizations - like the Palestinian Liberation Organization.”
- Representative Ted Budd [Feb. 1, 2017]
The No Bonuses for Terrorist Act is designed to close all loopholes. If the US Secretary of State is unable to certify to Congress that the PA and the PLO have ceased payment of financial rewards for terror, the aid money designated for the PA will be redirected towards funding Israel’s Iron Dome program.
Following Palestinian Media Watch's disclosure this week that Germany signed a sports agreement with one of the Palestinian Authority's most outspoken terror promoters, Jibril Rajoub, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging Chancellor Angela Merkel to "suspend this unthinkable agreement until the Palestinian Authority removes all names of terrorists from all sectors of Palestinian sport and their acts of terror be publicly condemned by Ramallah." [Simon Wiesenthal Center website, Feb. 7, 2017]
The Wiesenthal Center suggested that Germany instead encourage joint football matches between Israelis and Palestinians. PMW has documented that Rajoub, in his capacity as head of the PA's Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs and the Palestinian Football Association, has described such peacebuilding matches as "a crime against humanity." He has similarly announced, "I won't allow and won't agree to any joint game between Arabs and Israel." [Official PA TV, July 1, 2013]
PMW has documented that it is PA policy to present terrorists as role models. Naming sporting events after terrorists is one of the many ways the PA glorifies and honors terrorists.