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Rare good news: Thanks to UN Watch's relentless campaign, UNRWA teachers are now complaining that they are unable to glorify Hamas terrorists on social media, or incite hatred and violence towards Jews and Israelis.

The article below from the anti-israel Electronic Intifada website, "UNRWA stifles employee speech on Palestinian rights," reveals how UN Watch's reports exposing the antisemitism of UNRWA teachers have caused the U.S., Canada and other Western donor states to pressure UNRWA to stop the antisemitic hatred promoted by their teachers.

Much more work needs to be done. But the achievements revealed by this article underscore why we at UN Watch refuse to give up.

UNDERMINING PALESTINIAN RIGHTS

But union representatives are unhappy with the way UNRWA is interpreting its rules.

Muhammad Shuweideh, with UNRWA’s employee union, condemned the measures taken under the pretext of neutrality, which he called a “broad term with various interpretations.” The agency “lacks clear standards of this concept,” he said, to use it against its employees.

He argued that the agency itself, by interpreting neutrality in this way, was itself no longer being neutral. Instead, he said, UNRWA was infringing on employees’ rights for the sake of Israel.

In addition, he charged, there have been changes made to school curricula that directly undermine Palestinian history and rights otherwise enshrined under international law.

These include, he told The Electronic Intifada, efforts to omit descriptions of 1948 Palestinian villages and towns, avoiding any reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, as well as silencing discussions around concepts such as the right of return and the right to resist.

And he is not the only one to see the suspensions as evidence that UNRWA is, wittingly or otherwise, colluding with Israel against Palestinian rights.

Head of the Gaza-based International Commission to Support Palestinians’ Rights, Salah Abdalati, condemned the suspensions and said the July US-UNRWA agreement was a dangerous development for Palestinian rights.

In 2018, the administration of Donald Trump ended US funding – by far the largest contribution of any single state – for the agency. Abdalati said the Biden administration has exploited negotiations to restore some funding for UNRWA to extract concessions from the agency, hence the suspensions.

Accusations that the Palestinian curriculum incites hatred are really about ending any talk of resistance or the right of return, he said. The right of return of Palestinian refugees is sanctioned by general refugee rights as well as a number of UN resolutions starting from UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948, he pointed out.

It is “very dangerous” to link US funding to political conditions, though Abdalati pointed out that this is something successive US administrations have been working on for years by forcing a gradual reduction of UNRWA services.

Submitting to such conditions, he said, “runs counter to UNRWA’s principles of independence and neutrality.

THE POVERTY TRAP

Gaza’s difficult economic situation has left UNRWA employees at the mercy of the agency. With few job prospects and poverty looming, staff are reluctant to risk one of few reasonable sources of livelihood in the impoverished coastal strip.

Salma, 33, has worked as a science teacher in UNRWA schools for three years.

She left her work in Gaza’s public school system for the UN’s better pay rate in order to provide for her family’s needs. And in those years, she has managed to pay off her debts, save money for an apartment and provide for a family of six.

But it has come at a cost.

“People have envied me my salary,” she told The Electronic Intifada. “But they don’t know how humiliated I feel.”

“This agency, which should defend our rights, instead controls me. I’m forced to stay silent about politics and away from any national activities to keep my job.”

Salma has become inactive on social media. Likewise, many of her colleagues have deactivated their social media accounts or created fake ones. Like Salma, they also fear talking about the Palestinian cause or against UNRWA’s policies inside their schools.

“We fear even protesting the policy,” Salma said. “This was my dream job. It’s become a nightmare.”

In recent years, a number of UN employees have been forced to resign, including Suhail al-Hindi who was the former head of UNRWA’s employee union. He was effectively pushed out in 2017 after the agency learned that he was affiliated with the Hamas movement.

Al-Hindi, now chairman of Gaza’s professional associations, has no regrets though.

“I didn’t feel sorry for the loss of a job that cancels the identity of UNRWA employees,” he told The Electronic Intifada.

“I cannot be separated from my cause. My job won’t get me back to my homeland. Staying faithful to my right of return and right to resist is what will get me back.”

Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman is a journalist living in Gaza.