Students at a UNRWA School in Gaza, in 2011. Photo: UN / Shareef Sarhan.

I found this document, titled “The historical development of human rights throughout history,” at an UNRWA Arabic website dedicated to human rights.

It goes through the human rights postures of a number of civilizations, from ancient times to today. It is dated June 2014.

Here is what it says about human rights in Judaism:

Judaism is a heavenly religion revealed to the Prophet of Allah Musa [Moses], peace be upon him, included human rights through its focus on the goal of liberating the individual and the community. The right to freedom from oppression is a supreme value highlighted in Jewish holy books (Rashidi: 2005: 60). The commandments of Moses, peace be upon him, include prohibiting murder, adultery and theft.

But if we look around us at communities supposedly protecting human rights and at well-known oases of democracy we do not see [human rights] but instead charges that the victim was a terrorist or supporter of terrorism, and also pornography justified freely as rights. We see monopoly and fraud justified by the right of ownership and earnings in any form (Mokbel: 2005: 5) All of this happened as a result of distortion and misinformation by the Jewish clergy. The Jews in the sixth and seventh centuries promoted social corruption (1981: 39), and the claim that they are God’s chosen people demonstrates that the Jews did not know anything about human rights.

Of course, it has nothing bad to say about human rights in Islam.

I cannot tell if this is an official UNRWA curriculum or if it is merely considered good enough to be posted on the UNRWA human rights website as reference material. The author appears to be an UNRWA human rights instructor, so it seem likely that this is being taught, today, in UNRWA schools.

The last time I pointed out that UNRWA Arabic websites included things that were clearly against UN principles, the sites were quietly removed without UNRWA admitting anything. On the contrary – UNRWA still insists that it is a liberal organization that supports human rights and does not teach hate.

Let’s see what happens this time.