Biden State Dept Privately Downplayed Use of ‘Jihad’ and ‘Occupation’ in UNRWA-Made Study Materials, Saying Only ‘Some Other Audiences’ View the Terms as ‘Inappropriate’
6th February 2025
When the Biden administration resumed funding to the United Nations relief agency for Gaza, it penned an internal memo aimed at defending UNRWA over its production of childhood “educational materials” that encourage violence and demonize Israel. Some of those materials included references to “jihad” and Israeli “occupation”—terms that the Biden State Department wrote are “in line with U.N. principles” and only “viewed as inappropriate by some other audiences.”
The memo, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon through a records request from watchdog group Protect the Public Trust, came roughly two weeks after the Biden administration restored tens of millions of dollars in funding to UNRWA in April 2021 following a pause during President Donald Trump’s first stint in the White House. Written by deputy assistant secretary Nancy Izzo Jackson for Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it addressed “examples of criticism” targeting UNRWA and laid out the State Department’s “response.”
The first section, titled, “Educational Materials,” notes that UNRWA made “home-learning ‘cards,’ based on the Palestinian Authority’s educational curriculum, to supplement textbooks sent home” during the COVID pandemic. Some of those cards, according to a January 2021 report from research firm Impact-se, included the “encouragement of violence” and accused Israel “of deliberately dumping radioactive and toxic waste in the West Bank.”