How did seemingly innocuous United Nations summer camps for thousands of Palestinian children jump to the forefront of the horrific war in the Middle East?
The UN Relief and Works Agency provides summer camps for children of more than 5 million descendants of Arab evacuees of the 1948 war who live in 59 temporary refugee camps established in the wake of Israel’s War of Independence, which dislodged half a million Arabs, intentionally or unintentionally.
UNRWA established an elaborate school system that enables any journalist worth his salt to understand what the agency is teaching the next generation of Palestinian youth — who are instructed that they must adhere to the right of return, even by force of arms, to homes and villages their grandparents or great-grandparents left after 1948, though their villages are now Jewish communities in Israel.
UNRWA policy stands in contrast to the UN High Commission for Refugees policy for the rest of the world, which assures the next generation it won’t suffer the indignities of refugee-camp life.
As an independent journalist who wanted to communicate the Palestinian passion for war, I engaged Arab TV reporters to film summer camps in and around UNRWA schools in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem for the last 15 years.
You can see the footage at www.cfnepr.com/205640/Movies.
What the UNRWA summer camps preach is hardly a message of peace and reconciliation.
Instead, Palestinian children learn the art of guerrilla warfare.
These summer camps, financed by 67 nations, including America, through UNRWA donations, show fully armed children learning the art of kidnapping, throwing explosives, hijacking vehicles and invading Jewish collective farms.
They demonstrate a shocking prelude to the Oct. 7 incursion into 24 Jewish communities, when young Arab attackers gleefully applied the violent exercises they learned in UNRWA summer camps.
The youths’ UNRWA summer-camp experiences reinforced the violence taught in the Palestinian Authority school curriculum.
How did I get access to the textbooks?
To get the curriculum, I met with Yasser Arafat, founding chairman of the PA.
It’s hard for the Western mind to grasp how the PA leadership expresses pride for its lethal curriculum.
He readily authorized our news and research agency to review the PA school texts UNRWA uses.
We were granted access to more than 1,000 textbooks.
For 25 years, our office has evaluated PA textbooks, engaging professional translators Israeli and American intelligence could not access, unless, of course, they chose to stop by for a cup of coffee at our office in Jerusalem.
Palestinian Authority-issued school books used in PA schools, including UNRWA schools, feature scores of maps labeling all of Israel “Palestine.”
They praise terrorists, such as Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in a 1978 attack that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children.
They deny any historic Jewish presence in what is called Palestine and almost never advocate for peace and coexistence with Israel.
Thanks to online technology, you can peruse our translations of Palestinian Authority textbooks UNRWA uses via the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center’s online site.
Before Oct. 7, few people showed interest.
But by December, we had 7.2 million hits on our site: IsraelBehindtheNews.com.
Denial of reality, which defined Israel before Oct. 7, no longer exists.
The public, thanks to modern technology, can instantly view videos or read about the chilling truth being played out daily.
David Bedein is the director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
