Israel Launches Plan to Replace Terror-promoting UNRWA Schools in Jerusalem

“The lessons in the UNRWA textbooks are about incitement against Israel and anti-Semitism,” says Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum.

By United With Israel Staff 

The Jerusalem City Council approved a plan on Tuesday night “to construct an educational campus for Education Ministry schools near the city’s Arab Shuafat and Anata neighborhoods…outside the pre-1967 borders but within Jerusalem’s municipal borders,” reports Arutz 7.

“These schools will be an alternative to the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools which currently dominate the area,” says the news website, adding that the project will cost NIS 7.1 million ($2,055,617).

“UNRWA in Jerusalem represents the only UNRWA entity under full Israeli control,” says David Bedein, the Center for Near East Policy Research, author of Roadblock to Peace – How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict and an active voice in efforts to reform UNRWA.

“Given the fact that Israel can act to assert its control over UNRWA policies in Jerusalem, the previous Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, in his final few months in office in 2018, suggested that Israel terminate UNRWA’s operations in Jerusalem,” Bedein told United With Israel.

“Picking up where Barkat left off,” he added, “Jerusalem’s new Deputy Mayor, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, now serving Arab communities in Jerusalem, has embarked on an ambitious program to counter the influence of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA in Jerusalem’s schools.”

“As the holder of the Foreign Relations Portfolio in the Jerusalem Municipality, it is my responsibility to inform the donor countries about UNRWA [of] the lack of proper education in their schools,” Hassan-Nahoum wrote on Facebook on Monday.

She says that the main issued to be addressed must be “how we need to change the UNRWA curriculum for the sake of the children growing up in eastern Jerusalem. The curriculum does not have proper Hebrew or secular studies lessons and perpetuates terrorism. The lessons in the UNRWA textbooks are about incitement against Israel and anti-Semitism. The children graduate UNRWA schools not knowing Hebrew, English, and math at the level that makes it possible for them to work in and integrate into the modern world.”

The Jerusalem deputy mayor says that her “plan is to replace the UNRWA curriculum with a curriculum of opportunity in order to provide the necessary skills for children to become high level workers and members of society.”