By New York Post (World News) | Created at 2026-10-19 11:05:44 | Updated at 2026-10-19 12:14:28
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A Palestinian teacher in Gaza says a higher-up threatened to cut out her tongue when she challenged coworkers teaching students to hate Jews and embrace violence — and is now warning the poisonous lessons could lead to another Oct. 7.
The veteran UNRWA educator told The Post in an exclusive interview that an administrator at her school confronted her with scissors days after she got into a heated argument with another teacher over what she described as the indoctrination of young girls.
“[The school official] told me, ‘We’ll make you wish for death, and if you don’t stop arguing, we will cut your tongue,’ ” she recalled through a translator.
The 40-year-old geography teacher, who has spent 15 years working for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said the incident underscored the dangers of challenging extremist rhetoric in Gaza’s classrooms — a problem she believes has only intensified since the war with Israel.
“Today [the danger is] more intense than ever because the children are actually suffering” from Israeli attacks, she said.
The confrontation occurred at a UNRWA school in Gaza City that has since closed amid the war and been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians. The teacher said the threats left her afraid to speak out, particularly because she feared retaliation against her family.
But she has now decided to come forward given because she realized Gaza’s education system is cultivating a new generation of extremists.
“As a teacher, it’s my duty to convey an accurate picture and call upon the world to save our children from these ideas,” she said.
“My most important message is that we need to care about who is teaching our kids.”
The teacher, whose name The Post is withholding for her safety, said she initially sought employment with UNRWA because she believed a school operated under the auspices of the United Nations would offer children protection from Hamas’s culture of violence.
Instead, she said, she discovered an educational environment where some teachers openly encourage hatred of Jews and glorify the terror group’s struggle against Israel.
“I was shocked to find the reality was far different from what I had imagined,” she said.
She recalled witnessing a sixth-grade history teacher blame Jews for Palestinian suffering and tell students that Hamas had emerged to correct historical injustices.
Another teacher urged young girls to continue Hamas’s struggle against Jews, later boasting to colleagues about the ideas she was instilling in students, the educator said.
“I was really appalled by the ideas being told to those children,” she said.
She said it was her confrontation with that teacher that set off the series of threats that ultimately silenced her.
She said she feared pursuing the matter through school administrators at the time, unsure which officials might have ties to Hamas.
Speaking out against Hamas has long carried serious risks in Gaza, where Human Rights Watch has documented arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture of critics, including during a sweeping crackdown on protesters in 2019.
The woman’s allegations come amid years of controversy surrounding UNRWA, the UN agency that provides education, healthcare and humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees.
Critics have long accused the agency of tolerating antisemitism and the glorification of terrorism in its schools, with scrutiny intensifying after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of roughly 1,200 people in Israel.
A UN investigation subsequently found evidence indicating that nine UNRWA employees may have participated in the attack, prompting their dismissal.
A January 2026 report by the US Government Accountability Office also documented problems with Palestinian Authority textbooks used in UNRWA schools, including involving material inconsistent with UN principles of neutrality and nonviolence.
UNRWA has maintained that it does not tolerate incitement or support for terrorism and has pointed to safeguards intended to preserve neutrality in its operations.
The agency did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.
The teacher said she believes the school indoctrination problem has grown worse since the war began.
She said some of the same educators who promoted extremist ideas before the war are returning to classrooms elsewhere in Gaza.
And with children traumatized by the fighting, she said she fears they are particularly susceptible to teachers who blame Jews for Gaza’s devastation without acknowledging Hamas’s role in triggering the war.
She estimated that half or more of the teachers she encounters in Gaza believe violence against Jews is necessary to achieve Palestinian political goals.
The teacher warned that many Palestinians condemn the devastation that followed Oct. 7, without rejecting the massacre itself.
“They hate the consequences of October 7. They hate the war that October 7 brought upon them. But they don’t hate October 7 itself,” she said.
Unless that mentality changes, the teacher said, she fears history will repeat itself.
“If the upcoming generations in Gaza have the capabilities to make another attack, they will make it,” she warned.
She called for an overhaul of Gaza’s schools, including changes to the curriculum and independent oversight of teachers.
“It’s more important than disarming Hamas or changing who will govern Gaza,” she said. “Because this can change the future.”
