Hamas, UNRWA and the Holocaust

GAZA, Aug. 31 2009 (Xinhua News Agency ) -- The Islamic Hamas movement and the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) argued on Monday over the inclusion into the curriculum of UNRWA preparatory schools a course on human rights that speaks about the "Jewish Holocaust."

UNRWA educates some 200,000 refugee children aged between 6 and15 in the densely populated Gaza Strip, which has been ruled by Hamas since it routed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces and seized control of the enclave in June 2007.

A course of human rights for the 14-year-old children of eighth grade in schools run by UNRWA in Gaza angered Hamas when it talked about the Jewish Holocaust.

The Popular Committee of Palestinian refugees, a pro-Hamas group in the Gaza Strip, severely slammed the UNRWA and demanded it to "immediately" erase the part that speaks about the Holocaust from the Palestinian pupils' curriculum.

The committee sent a letter to the chief of the UNRWA office on Sunday, calling on the UN relief organization to erase the Holocaust subject from the human rights books.

Husam Ahmed, the Popular Committee's coordinator in the Gaza Strip said the material, which is included in the human rights subject, "was formed in a way that shows sympathy with the Jews." He warned of having an attitude "to construct a generation that supports the Jews and the Holocaust" in the Palestinian territories.

Ahmed warned that "if UNRWA ignores our demand, we will organize protests, rallies and demonstrations that are allowed by the law."

"We call on UNRWA to erase the subject ... and stop any future attempt to insert strange concepts or cultures that contradict with the Palestinian values, traditions and principles," said the committee's letter.

"We are against it because those who added the subject to the curriculum aim at playing with the feelings and thoughts of our children," said the pro-Hamas popular committees' letter.

Meanwhile, the interior ministry of Hamas de facto government in Gaza said in a statement that "it expresses astonishment because UNRWA curriculum is talking about the Jewish Holocaust."

"We reject teaching our pupils such thoughts that contradicts with our Palestinian beliefs," said the interior ministry statement, which called on the ministry of education "to check if such news is right."

Meanwhile, UNRWA denied that it teaches the Holocaust in preparatory schools and also denied that the Holocaust is included in the pupils' curriculum.

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

ArishMell · 70-79, M

Nothing from either Hamas or Beijing would surprise me.

I know it is presently pre-occupied with trying to destroy Israel (it has never made that a secret); and I don't think Israel's understandable response is right; yet I wonder when Hamas and their supporters will say anything about China's pogrom against the Uyghurs. After all, these are fellow Muslims but are no threat to anyone, yet are under attack from a powerful government intent on destroying their culture simply for being the Muslim, Uyghur culture.

Indeed, it was Western journalists based in a nominally-Christian, highly-ecumenical and politically secular, "Western" nation who first revealed that to the world. Not the Iranians or Saudis.

To be fair to Hamas, if that's possible, what's happening to the Moslems in China seems not noticed by Iran or Saudi Arabia either. I would add Pakistan and Afghanistan but as next-door neighbours to China's stolen lands of Tibet, they've stronger reasons not to upset the delicate little souls in Beijing.

All five countries' rulers are not only despots, they probably also have no love for the country called Israel, or the Jews, at all. Yet what love can there be between anti-religious China, the four vicious theocracies and the utterly inhumane Hamas? Even Saudi Arabia and Iran are not good friends. Their only thing in common is despising "The West" and its values, and they see Israel as part of "The West", perhaps due to being friends with their common enemy, the USA.

They are as bad as each other.

It took me a while to work out what Hamas is trying to achieve, if Beijing reported it accurately; as it might have done here, even if selectively. I think that by playing Devil's Advocate, trying to see it from Hamas' and China's perspective.

I decided that essentially, Hamas wants no-one to have any sympathy for the Jews, no-one to understand them and their history; no-one to understand why the nation called "Israel" was carved out of Palestine (which it was, by the League of Nations, as a sort of recompense to the massacre the post-WW2 Jews themselves named 'The Holocaust'). It wants everyone to see the Jews only as enemies.

A position no doubt suiting Xi Jinping and his cronies, whom we won't mention all the while showing their own utter contempt for the Islamic culture within a very remote region of China. Just as their predecessors showed utter contempt for the Tibetan, mainly-Buddhist, culture.

A dirty business all round.
Who wins? No-one - at least, not in any sensible, constructive ways.
Who loses? All those Jews, Arabs and Christians who simply want to live in peace amongst each other.