UNRaveling UNRWA claims
It is not often that one sees anything as misleading as “Attacking UNRWA’s education system risks the lives of students” ( October 25) praising UNRWA’s educational programs.
In this heavily biased account by Gwyn Lewis, UNRWA director of operations in the West Bank, she fails to mention that UNRWA textbooks do not show Israel on their maps; do not teach that the Jews lived in this land continuously for over 2,000 years ( before Islam existed and the first Moslems arrived); that no Jewish society has ever sought to remove or kill Arab settlers; that the Declaration of Independence appealed to the Arabs to join the Jews in the new State of Israel as full citizens; that Israel offered the Palestinians a twostate solution several times only to be rebuffed by the Arab leadership and answered by vicious intifadas; that terrorists and martyrdom are wicked and unproductive and that their leaders have all been corrupt.
She does not say that the pupils are taught about the benefits of peace ( which they are not) and she fails to understand that their idea of peace is not the same as ours: on a recent TV program, several Arabs were asked in Ramallah if they wanted peace. “Of course,” was the immediate answer, but when asked if that included peace with Israel, almost all said “no” emphatically.
The well- publicized examples of the textbooks these children use will perpetuate another generation of indoctrinated Jew- haters.
Tellingly, Gwyn Lewis does not deny that hatred appears in UNRWA textbooks. She merely ( implausibly?) claims that where such material appears, “we simply do not teach it or include it in our classes.”
Among the things I most disagree with in the UNRWA article is the writer talking about educating “the next generation of Palestinian refugees.”
Sorry, but there is no “next generation” of refugees. The 1948 war was 72 long years ago. The few genuine refugees from that war who are still alive are now quite aged. The status of “refugee” is not a title that can be handed down generation after generation to one’s grandchildren, great- grandchildren and beyond.
A child is Gaza is a Gazan – not a next- generation refugee. Educating them, as UNRWA does, to view themselves as “refugees” embeds resentment and hatred into their psyches. Conflict and violence – not peace and goodwill – are likely to result.
MIKE SINGER Ashdod
Gwyn Lewis’s defense of UNRWA leaves important questions unanswered.
In the late 1940s, between 400,000 and 700,000 Arabs fled the Arab- initiated violence that failed in its goal of preventing Israel’s rebirth in the Jews’ ancestral homeland. No more than 30,000 of those Palestine refugees are still alive. Why does UNRWA have nearly 6,000,000 people registered on its rolls?
In the first three decades following Israel’s rebirth, she absorbed and uplifted 800,000 Jews who’d been thrust from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East, while rehabilitating Holocaust survivors; recovering from damages inflicted by Arab forces; and dealing with terrorist incursions from land illegally held by Egypt and Jordan between 1948 and 1967. Surely, the original Palestine refugees could have been easily resettled in Arab lands, where the refugees did not have to adapt to a new climate, learn a new language, or live among people unfamiliar with their religions and customs.
Even if Palestinian leaders ever deign to negotiate with Israel and establish a real Palestinian state ( as opposed to the fictional state recognized by so many UN members and NGOs), there is no sign that the leaders will drop their demand that Israel take in millions of UNRWA- registered “refugees,” thereby changing the