Palestinian children enrolled in schools operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East are reportedly being taught to “fight back and resist” so that “Palestine will be liberated and our lands will return to us by the good grace of Allah.” 

That’s a direct quote from a 14-year-old student studying at an Unrwa school at Ein Arik, who is featured in a harrowing interview released by a United Nations monitoring group, UN Watch, on Wednesday. The video is just one of the documents that UN Watch — a strident critic of the agency — has pulled out from its “massive new trove of evidence” that put on display Unrwa’s “complicity with terror.” 

The video features a student, Mohammad Mahmoud Ali Khalil, conversing with an unidentified individual about his views on Palestine and Israel. Citing the October 7 massacre as being tied to the “right of return” that he is taught in school, the young student pushes the message that violence against Jews is the only solution to the conflict. 

When asked if Jerusalem should be divided between Jews and Palestinians, the young student bluntly responded that “Jerusalem is ours” and that “we will give our souls so that it won’t go to the Jews.” He later says that the “solution for Jerusalem” is “we kill the Jews. We get rid of the Jews.”

The boy, who said that he hopes to be “a resistance fighter” when he grows up, also wished “by the grace of Allah, most high” for Jews to be “wiped out from all of Palestine.” 

The interview offers further evidence that the teachings of Unrwa schools stray significantly from the “UN values” like “tolerance, equality and non-discrimination” that the organization claims defines the curriculum. 

Last week, a Middle East education watchdog group, IMPACT-se, released a report finding that more than 10 percent of the 510 employees that hold senior positions in Unrwa’s education system at Gaza are members of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 

At three of those schools, whose principals were found to be Hamas operatives, the educational materials were found to encourage “libels against an non-recognition of Israel” and include “content promoting hatred and violence against Israel.” 

“This latest IMPACT-se report emphasizes that by promoting violence and demonizing Israel, UNRWA schools in Gaza foster the kind of hatred that fuelled the atrocities of 7 October 2023,” the group said in a statement. “These latest revelations about Hamas’s central role in UNRWA schools further reinforce that UNRWA’s educational system is not fit for purpose.”

Additional documents released on Thursday by UN Watch trace Unrwa’s corruption to the very top — offering evidence that Unrwa’s previous leader, Pierre Krahenbuhl, repeatedly organized secret meetings with leaders of Palestinian terrorist groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. 

During one gathering in 2017 at Beirut, Mr. Krahenbuhl was reported to have stressed the “spirit of partnership” between Unrwa and the terror groups and invited the various leaders in attendance to raise any “criticisms, observations, concerns or issues” they might have with Unrwa, promising he could potentially “change it or even entirely tear it up.”

UN Watch notes that one member in attendance at the meeting, Hamas’s chief of foreign relations, Ali Baraka, was recently indicted by the American government for “heinous crimes.” 

Such evidence challenges Unrwa’s prevailing claim that any examples of corruption are isolated incidents and that there is “no substance supporting a blanket description of ‘the institution as a whole’ being ‘totally infiltrated.’” 

America has historically been one of the largest financial contributors to Unrwa, having provided the agency with more than $7.3 billion since 1950. However, in January of this year, under the Biden administration, America — along with several other UN members — paused its funding after 12 agency employees were found to have been involved in the October 7 attack on Israel. All other countries aside from America have since resumed sending funds to the agency.