Hamas–UNRWA Holocaust dispute

The Hamas–UNRWA Holocaust dispute erupted on 31 August 2009 following a perception in the Gaza Strip that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) planned to include a course on human rights that speaks about the Holocaust in the eighth-grade curriculum of preparatory schools it runs in the territory. Militant Islamic movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, protested, calling the Holocaust "a lie made up by the Zionists" and demanding the removal of the offending content from the curriculum. Some officials of the United Nations agency initially responded by denying that it teaches the subject of the Holocaust in its schools or that it plans to teach it in its new curriculum. This denial drew criticism from various groups and individuals.

UNRWA runs 221 of more than 600 primary and secondary schools in the Gaza Strip, educating some 200,000 children between the ages of 6 and 15. The Gaza Strip has been ruled by Hamas since it seized control of the enclave in June 2007 by defeating Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces. According to the Associated Press, "Hamas has been trying to cement control over Gaza, while the U.N. agency is increasingly emerging as a shadow government, providing services to some 1 million of Gaza's 1.4 million people".

The Holocaust is not taught in U.N.-run schools for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, nor is it taught in Palestinian government schools in the West Bank or Gaza. There is also no evidence that it was taught in Palestinian schools when these were under Israeli control between 1967 and 1994.

Protesting what it said were plans to teach eighth-graders in U.N. schools about the Holocaust, the Hamas-affiliated Popular Committee of Palestinian refugees sent an open letter to the chief of UNRWA offices calling the Holocaust "a lie made up by the Zionists" and demanding it "immediately" erase the part that speaks about the Holocaust from the Palestinian pupils' curriculum. Husam Ahmed, the Popular Committee's coordinator in the Gaza Strip, said the material, which was to be included in a course on human rights, "was formed in a way that shows sympathy with the Jews".

The interior ministry of the Hamas de facto government in Gaza expressed astonishment over the UNRWA curriculum's acknowledgement of the 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."

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Wikipedia