View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.

An international NGO whose recent report exposed the antisemitic hatred expressed on social media by some employees of UNRWA during the Israel-Hamas conflict in May has rejected a proposal for “neutrality training” by the head of the UN agency.

In its report published earlier this month, the Geneva-based UN Watch found 113 instances of incitement to violence by employees of UNRWA — the UN humanitarian agency dedicated to the descendants of Palestinian refugees of the 1947-48 war —  in clear violation of  the agency’s rules, according to the report.

Among the social media posts cited by UN Watch was one from math teacher Nahed Shrarawi, in which she shared a video that included an image of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler along with inspirational quotes. Another UNRWA teacher in the West Bank, Husni Masri, shared a post promoting conspiracy theories about Jews, including that Jewish people want to rule the world and destroy Islam and were responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to UN Watch, such hatred among UNRWA’s 30,000 staff members is a far greater problem than the report shows, as the incidents included in the report pertain only to those with Facebook accounts and who openly identify as agency employees.

On Thursday, UN Watch said that it “rejected” a proposal from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to engage staff in “neutrality training.”

“Facing serious allegations about widespread support for antisemitism and terrorism among its educators, UNRWA is burying its head in the sand, falsely pretending that these are isolated cases,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “The opposite is true.”

Neuer added that “since 2015, UNRWA has ignored direct requests made to their leadership, including correspondence sent directly to the previous head of UNRWA. If and when UNRWA gets serious about investigating evidence of incitement by their teachers, we remain ready at any time to meet with Commissioner-General Lazzarini in Geneva, Jerusalem or anywhere else, and to provide substantial additional information that we have collected.”

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, sent a separate letter to Lazzarini on Wednesday expressing skepticism at the training proposal.

“Given the troublesome history of UNRWA textbooks and teaching materials having included violent and antisemitic content that your organization has pledged to remove, I expect more from you than mere ‘retraining,’” Erdan wrote.

“Teachers that teach violence, hatred and antisemitism have no place in a UNRWA classroom, or any classroom for that matter, and should be fired at once,” the Israeli envoy added.