Richard Ferguson, The Aus­trali­an, January 18, 2021

The Depart­ment of Foreign Affairs and Trade is invest­ig­at­ing rev­el­a­tions the UN’s top Palestini­an aid agency — to which Australia con­trib­utes $10m a year — has been pub­lish­ing violent, anti-Semitic materials in Gaza Strip and West Bank classrooms.

Maths equations counting the number of “martyrs” in the First Intifada between Israel and Palestine claim Israel is dumping toxic waste into the West Bank, and multiple mentions of “jihad” have been found in school ­materials given to students in ­Palestini­an areas.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East has apo­lo­gised for the school materials, claiming they were quickly produced by teachers when the Palestini­an Ter­rit­or­ies went into various COVID-19 lockdowns last year.

• Australia has already slashed it con­tri­bu­tions to the trouble UN agency in the past year, and a DFAT spokesman said it warned UNRWA it had a respons­ib­il­ity to remain impartial in the decades-long Israeli-Palestini­an conflict.

“DFAT is making further inquiries into this matter,” the spokesman told The Aus­trali­an.

“UNRWA has a fun­da­ment­al oblig­a­tion to remain unbiased and impartial while it delivers its human­it­ari­an mandate. DFAT has reit­er­ated to UNRWA the import­ance it places on non-­dis­crim­in­a­tion, equality and neut­ral­ity in the education programs that UNRWA supports.”

Com­ment­ing on the rev­el­a­tions, the chief executive of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, Peter Wertheim, said: “We have never objected to Australia providing aid which genuinely benefits needy Palestini­ans. But UNRWA is now doing far more to per­petu­ate conflict between ­Israel and the Palestini­ans.

“Instead of nurturing young Palestini­ans with the knowledge they will need to lead sat­is­fy­ing and pro­duct­ive lives as citizens in a future Palestini­an state, UNRWA is feeding their hearts and minds with the poison of ­racism and violent extremism.

“It is time for Australia to look for new, more con­struct­ive partners through which to channel its assist­ance.”

A report from Israeli group The Institute for Mon­it­or­ing Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education said the school materials cir­cu­lated by UNRWA in March and October last year contained multiple anti-Israeli and antisemitic ref­er­ences.

Textbooks said Israel wanted to take Palestini­an lands for strategic value, made com­par­is­ons between Israeli prisons and the Spanish Inquis­i­tion, and referred to Israel as “The Occu­pa­tion”, “The Zionists” and “The Enemy”.

An UNRWA spokesman has said in a statement that the materials should never have been published and they got into the hands of children as a result of corona­virus lockdown trans­itions.

“As soon as the issue was iden­ti­fied, the agency conducted a thorough review of the material that UNRWA developed and took steps to address it,” he said.