One of numerous antisemitic FB posts by UNRWA teachers previously sent by UN Watch to the Canadian PM. (UN Watch)
UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group, called on Canada to use its newly announced status as a $25 million donor to support a commission of inquiry into the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teachers’ pervasive incitement to antisemitism and terrorist attacks in their Facebook posts.
Canadian International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau announced on Wednesday that Ottawa will be giving $25 million to UNRWA.
UN Watch forwarded the names of the UNRWA staffers and links to their Facebook pages to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In 2010, Canada’s Conservative government, led by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, removed funding to UNRWA due to the agency’s well-documented support for terrorism, such as offering its facilities for use as terrorist bases and donating vehicles for the transport of weapons.
While the Trudeau government, elected in October 2011, preemptively promised to fund training for UNRWA staff “on the proper and neutral use of social media,” UN Watch said that this approach misses the point.
“The core issue is not what UNRWA teachers reveal online, but the fact that racists are being hired in the first place to teach children,” said Hillel Neuer, the Canadian-born lawyer who heads UN Watch, an independent non-governmental monitoring organization accredited to the UN in Geneva.
“We’re not calling merely for hateful posts to be removed—we’re calling for every antisemitic teacher to be fired, and for the senior UNRWA officials who keep recruiting them to be fired too.”
“Sadly, UNRWA itself refuses to respond to our repeated reports of racist incitement by their school teachers and principals, and so the only recourse is for donor states like Canada to demand accountability,” Neuer continued.
“Because UNRWA is turning a blind eye to incitement that is pervasive and systematic, and which abuses the hearts and minds of vulnerable Palestinian children, we call on Prime Minister Trudeau to support an independent and international commission of inquiry, to investigate the culture of impunity for perpetrators of racism and incitement that pervades UNRWA,” he declared.
Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada, a leading human rights organization, said that “UNRWA has a track record of problematic behaviour that can be clearly construed as collaborating with Hamas and indoctrinating Palestinian youth to believe that violent struggle takes precedence over establishing peace.”
“To turn over $25 million in aid to an agency that has supported the Palestinian Authority’s sustained campaign to rewrite Judeo-Christian history, incite violence, and delegitimize the state of Israel is an insult to Canadian taxpayers,” Mostyn stated.
By: World Israel News Staff
With files from UN Watch
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