So I read the letter and the report. I don’t think it proves enough to support their case for shutting down UNRWA.

First, from the letter:

On October 24th, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that the Hamas massacre of October 7th “did not happen in a vacuum.” He was right. The attacks were perpetrated by Palestinians who for generations were indoctrinated with hatred.

That’s evidently not an effort to view the context impartially. They may have been indoctrinated, but there is also the context of Palestinians’ experience over decades. Whatever your views, this is relevant context that this letter conspicuously overlooks.

The very existence of a Telegram group of 3,000 teachers in which members celebrate Hamas atrocities…

This wording is vague. How many of the members do this? We’re all members of Lemmy communities where some people say offensive things. We don’t all agree with everything any member says. Is the Telegram group like this? I don’t see the report establishing that these aren’t just “a few bad apples” (the response they say they have had from UNRWA).

I come back to the words of Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, said in 2018, but valid today more than ever: “UNRWA has become part of the problem. It supplies the ammunition to continue the conflict. By supporting UNRWA, we keep the conflict alive. It’s a perverse logic.”

I followed the link they cite, via X/Twitter to an English article and the original source. They’re quoting him out of context and it’s misleading. He’s not saying this at all for the same reasons as UN Watch are. Here’s what he said:

It worked as a solution for a long time, but has become part of the problem today. It provides the ammunition to continue the conflict. Because as long as Palestinians live in refugee camps, they want to go back home. By supporting UNRWA, we keep the conflict alive. It is a perverse logic, because everyone actually wants to end the conflict. Therefore, the UN General Assembly would have to deal with it in depth again.

He’s arguing that the existence of UNRWA keeps alive unrealistic dreams of returning home for people who probably never will, and that this exacerbates tensions. It has nothing to do with alleged antisemitism in UNRWA, yet this letter presents his remarks as if he is agreeing with UN Watch’s claims.

The letter refers to UN Watch’s report, which I also read:

https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/UN-Watch-UNRWA-Terrorgram-.pdf

This report does indeed show there are some nasty views expressed by UNRWA staff on Telegram. There is unarguably antisemitism. But I don’t see that the report disproves the UNRWA’s claim that this is just “a few bad apples”.

Firstly, in the report they admit that

Anyone can access the [Telegram] group.

But then they go on:

Where possible, UN Watch matched Telegram nicknames with full names and identifying data on the UNRWA employee lists circulated in the group. However, in most cases, this was not possible because the nicknames were not sufficiently unique. In some cases, UN Watch was able to corroborate UNRWA employee status via the chat history in the group or other public information. Nevertheless, due to the overwhelming evidence that this is a group for UNRWA teachers, as detailed in the next section, UN Watch applies a presumption that all group members are in fact UNRWA teachers.

They admit this is an unwarranted presumption, yet they go ahead and make it.

This report details how UNRWA teachers in a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram group cheered and celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre while at the same time asking when their UNRWA salaries will be paid.

So there are 3,000 people in the group, and a lot of it is about employment issues:

As stated in the group description, the purpose of the group is to coordinate negotiations for improved contracts and working conditions for UNRWA teachers employed under temporary (daily or monthly) contracts, even though many of the group members have been working at UNRWA for years.

The numerous group discussions about UNRWA salaries, schedules, and teaching materials, as well as confidential UNRWA employee lists with ID numbers, documents with the UNRWA logo, letters on UNRWA letterhead, including from UNRWA Gaza Director Thomas White, and photos of teachers protesting in front of UNRWA schools, confirm the group is for UNRWA teachers. Group members also used the Telegram group to share answers to UNRWA training exam questions, including trainings on ethics and integrity and social media neutrality.

Here they seem to admit that the group is largely used to discuss UNRWA employment matters as in its stated purpose. Again, they don’t establish how much of the content is antisemitic. For all we know it could be a small fraction.

The UNRWA Telegram group was created by Hani Jouda, who advocates for the rights of UNRWA staff and is listed among the group admins as the owner.

The fact that he’s an admin doesn’t necessarily imply that his views are the views of everyone in the group. As they say, the stated purpose of the group is to discuss employment contracts and working conditions for UNRWA employees. Out of 3,000 members they cite 30 as making antisemitic statements or statements in support of Hamas attacks, so that’s 1% of the group’s membership. We don’t know why the admins don’t moderate such content. Maybe they’re sympathetic or maybe they’re just poor moderators.

UNRWA has 30,000 employees, so the report establishes that at least 0.1% of their employees are antisemitic or endorse Hamas attacks.

On its website, UNRWA also boasts that 95% of its staff members have completed its social media and neutrality course. The high completion rate for UNRWA’s social media and neutrality course, however, is meaningless. As detailed in Annex A, chat history and files found in this UNRWA Telegram group establish that UNRWA staff do not take this course seriously and help each other pass it by sharing the exam questions and answers in advance—in effect, cheating.

This comes across as clutching at straws. UNRWA claims 95% of its employees have completed a social media neutrality course, and the response is that some of them cheat in exams? That seems weak. If you had conclusive proof that UNRWA was supporting antisemitic terrorism you wouldn’t have to complain that their employees cheat in tests.

It also hasn’t been established that the antisemitic remarks shown in the report from 0.1% of employees are from within the 95% who completed the course and not the 5% who didn’t.

I’m not arguing that there isn’t an antisemitism problem within UNRWA, just that we can’t tell how much of a problem it is from this report. The report only proves that 0.1% of UNRWA employees have made antisemitic and/or pro-Hamas comments online, yet on this basis UN Watch are arguing that UNRWA should be shut down. If we were to shut down every organization where 0.1% of its employees had made offensive remarks online, there wouldn’t be any organizations left.

The report feels like it’s trying to make more of the evidence than it warrants. Maybe there really is a bigger problem, but it needs a more thorough report than this to expose it.