Several UNRWA staffers praised Hamas’s October 7 massacres, report finds

Some members of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees have expressed praise for the atrocities committed by the Hamas terror group on October 7, according to a Monday report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) organization.

The report details social media posts by numerous Gaza- and West Bank-based members of UNRWA, which provides welfare and humanitarian services for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars and their descendants. The posts by staff members, including teachers and educational staff, expressed praise or approval of the October 7 onslaught, during which thousands of terrorists murdered 1,400 people in Israel, mostly civilians massacred amid brutal atrocities, and abducted at least 245 to the Gaza Strip.

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More broadly, the IMPACT-se study found that at least 100 Hamas members who have carried out terror attacks against Israelis in recent years are graduates of the UNRWA education system.

This includes Moaz Saad Al-Masry, one of the Hamas terrorists who killed Lucy Dee and two of her daughters, Maia and Rina, in a shooting attack in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley in April.

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The report said that over half of Gaza’s 500,000 school pupils attend UNRWA-operated educational institutions, and that the Palestinian Authority curriculum taught in these schools “is replete with antisemitism and encourages violence,” while UNRWA staff add their own harmful educational materials to the curriculum.

Previous IMPACT-se reports have demonstrated that “UNRWA educational materials incite to violence, glorify martyrdom, demonize Israel, and promote antisemitism,” the report added.

“Time and again we have warned that UNWRA staff and school materials have created a breeding ground for terror. Our worst fears have now been tragically realized with the horrific attack on October 7,” said IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff.

“All governments that fund UNWRA, including the United States, must urgently review and concurrently freeze financial support to UNRWA to help ensure that another generation is not lost to the evils of hatred and incitement.”

A report in the Wall Street Journal claims that the White House is planning to transfer $320 million worth of precision-guided bombs to Israel

In October 2004 France 2 allowed three French journalists to view the raw footage—Denis Jeambar, editor-in-chief of L'Express; Daniel Leconte, former France 2 correspondent and head of news documentaries at Arte, a state-run television network; and Luc Rosenzweig, former editor-in-chief of Le Monde.[4] They also asked to speak to the cameraman, Abu Rahma, who was in Paris at the time, but France 2 apparently told them he did not speak French and that his English was not good enough.[103]
 
Jeambar and Leconte wrote a report about the viewing for Le Figaro in January 2005. None of the scenes showed that the boy had died, they wrote. They rejected the position that the scene had been staged, but when Enderlin's voiceover said Muhammad was dead, Enderlin "had no possibility of determining that he was in fact dead, and even less so, that he had been shot by IDF soldiers." They said the footage did not show the boy's death throes: "This famous 'agonie' that Enderlin insisted was cut from the montage does not exist."[9][73]
 
Several minutes of the film showed Palestinians playing at war for the cameras, they wrote, falling down as if wounded, then getting up and walking away.[73] Jeambar and Leconte concluded that the shots had come from the Palestinian positions, given the trajectory of the bullets.[73]

A third perspective, held by Arlette Chabot, France 2's news editor, is that no one can know who fired the shots.[9]

Les employés du Département d'Etat ont émis une critique cinglante de la gestion de la guerre Israël-Hamas par l'administration Biden dans un mémo dissident obtenu par POLITICO, arguant que, entre autres choses, les Etats-Unis devraient être prêts à critiquer publiquement les Israéliens.
 
Le message suggère une perte de confiance croissante des diplomates américains dans l'approche du président Joe Biden face à la crise du Moyen-Orient. Il reflète les sentiments de nombreux diplomates américains, en particulier aux échelons intermédiaires et inférieurs, selon des conversations avec plusieurs membres du personnel du ministère et d'autres rapports. Si ces désaccords internes s'intensifient, il pourrait être plus difficile pour l'administration Biden d'élaborer une politique à l'égard de la région.
 
Le mémo contient deux demandes essentielles : que les États-Unis soutiennent un cessez-le-feu et qu'ils équilibrent leurs messages privés et publics à l'égard d'Israël, notamment en émettant des critiques sur les tactiques militaires israéliennes et le traitement des Palestiniens que les États-Unis préfèrent généralement garder secrètes.
 
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"Nous devons critiquer publiquement les violations par Israël des normes internationales, comme le fait de ne pas limiter les opérations offensives à des cibles militaires légitimes", indique également le message. "Lorsqu'Israël soutient la violence des colons et les saisies illégales de terres ou fait un usage excessif de la force contre les Palestiniens, nous devons faire savoir publiquement que cela va à l'encontre de nos valeurs américaines afin qu'Israël n'agisse pas en toute impunité."
 
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La « tolérance » américaine face à un nombre aussi élevé de victimes civiles « engendre le doute sur l’ordre international fondé sur des règles que nous défendons depuis longtemps », indique le document. Il soutient que les États-Unis doivent tenir Israël et le Hamas pour responsables de leurs actes.
 
Il est peu probable que les exigences du mémo aboutissent auprès de Biden ou de ses principaux collaborateurs, du moins pas de si tôt.

Why is Nasrallah holding back — or being held back by Iran — from a full assault on Israel? Some analysts believe Tehran is still reveling in the “success” of Hamas’s Oct. 7 operation, thrilled that Israel’s outreach to the Arab world has been stalled and that the war in Gaza is stoking regionwide, even global, anger at Israel and the US.
 
Since Hezbollah is the most valuable of Iran’s assets, the regime in Tehran is reluctant to have it damaged and degraded, as it would inevitably be in a direct confrontation with the Israel Defense Forces. Even if it were to fight the IDF to a standstill, as it did in 2006, Hezbollah would suffer massive losses. With its economy shackled by economic sanctions, Iran would need years, decades even, to restore its proxy to peak fighting capacity.
 
And Tehran has other reasons to keep Hezbollah fighting fit: It needs Nasrallah to protect other Iranian constituencies and interests.

In addition to allowing Tehran to maintain a constant level of menace against Israel, Nasrallah’s forces serve two other no less important purposes: They maintain the ascendancy of the Shiite faction over the country’s two other principal sects, the Sunnis and Maronite Christians. (Founded on a strict Shiite worldview, the Islamic Republic takes very seriously its self-appointed role as protector of the sect.) And they prop up the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, the most vulnerable of Tehran’s marionettes in the Middle East.
 
Iran can’t afford to have Hezbollah stand down from either task. Assad may have survived a long, bloody civil war with the help of Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, but he has been left with the responsibility of repairing a devastated country while ruling over a resentful populace. Spasms of anti-regime protest, the most recent only last month, are a reminder of his precarious position. For its part, Lebanon is perennially on the precipice of economic and political implosion, with the attendant risk of a revival of tripartite sectarian violence.
 
Were Hezbollah to commence full-scale hostilities with Israel, the economic shock would almost certainly push Lebanon over the edge. Nasrallah would then be required to defend Hezbollah’s interests. He would also have to divert some of his resources, men and materiel from Syria — enabling the opposition to Assad to regroup. With Russia embroiled in the war in Ukraine, Iran would be left carrying much of the burden, a position unfamiliar to the theocrats in Tehran, who prefer to have others doing the heavy lifting.
 
Nasrallah may conceivably act on his own initiative and put his forces where his mouth is: His speech on Friday deserves close listening. But in opening a second front against Israel, Hezbollah would also open two other fronts for Iran to contend with. His masters in Tehran would not be pleased.