Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Things are not always as they seem. In fact, when it comes to the “redevelopment” of Gaza, they are rarely as they seem. This was illustrated recently in a local community in North Carolina: a popular Mediterranean eatery and a local synagogue co-sponsored a community fundraiser for an organization called “Gaza Children Village.” 100% of the proceeds for a day in late April were donated to this nonprofit benefiting war orphans in devastated Gaza. The fundraiser initially attracted favorable attention from the entire spectrum of public opinion on Gaza. On the surface, it seemed like a straightforward humanitarian fundraiser to help war-ravaged children in Gaza. But, as we will see, it turned out to be associated with an Israeli agenda to pacify and disempower the Palestinian people.

• “Gaza Children Village” (GCV) was launched in 2025. A NC-based neurosurgeon was instrumental in its formation and serves on its Board of Directors. The ambitious plan is to develop an all-encompassing village for 20,000 orphans. The village would provide nutritious meals, shelter, education, health care, and trauma-informed psychosocial support. There is no question that all of these services are absolutely necessary. However, GCV does not operate independently. They must be vetted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) through their civilian outreach arm, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). Their activities are scrutinized by COGAT. Gaza Children Village would not be in Gaza at all if they did not coordinate with COGAT/IDF and pass muster with them. Essentially, Gaza Children Village is an IDF-approved project. Let that sink in. The IDF carried out a genocide in Gaza. Its 2-year saturation bombing campaign likely killed over a hundred thousand Palestinians, 18,000 of whom were children. The IDF destroyed homes and hospitals, mosques, schools and universities, water treatment plants. The vast majority of the population is chronically sick, severely malnourished, and huddling in tents. Remember also that it was COGAT/IDF that brought us the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), which operated “death traps” masquerading as food distribution sites, and killed over 1,300 desperate Palestinians seeking food in the summer of 2025. Since the so-called “ceasefire,” Israel has killed 226 school children in Gaza. Many children gathering for education in tents and open areas have been bombarded by Israel. After all these murders, and creating the largest population of child amputees in the world, they are enthusiastic supporters of Gaza Children Village. Hmmm. Wonder why?

• Mixed in with providing two nutritious hot meals a day, prosthetic fittings, and psychosocial support, GCV is offering “Academies of Hope.” One of its pillars is a “Peace Curriculum.” Sounds great, right? Except that it is edited by the Israeli government. The “peacebuilding” it teaches distorts Palestinian history. There is no mention of the Nakba (the 1947-1949 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, in which over 750,000 Palestinians were driven off their land into neighboring countries and forbidden to return). Absent is the real history of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. There is no mention of Palestinian resistance to Zionism or Israel’s settler-colonial project, or the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the sake of Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality. The “peace-aligned” curriculum guts Palestinian history and emphasizes instead a kind of apolitical, unquestioning attitude, and calls it “peace.” As Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper has said, “Israelis don’t want peace; they want peace AND QUIET.” The IDF-approved “peace curriculum” aims to deliver exactly this propagandized, quiet, and docile Palestinian population, starting with the youngest children. The curriculum, as quoted on their website, “has been carefully restructured to remove harmful or inflammatory content and replace it with lessons grounded in…coexistence…and shared humanity.” The “Peace Curriculum” is reminiscent of the White Christian Nationalist curricula springing up across the U.S., such as Prager University, which obscure and distort the history of slavery, racism, and genocide of Indigenous people in American history, and try to replace truthful history with gaslighting and whitewashing.

• Just as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was designed to replace the food distribution function of UNRWA, the Gaza Children Village is designed to replace UNRWA’s education and psychosocial support function. UNRWA has been doing both of these things, and much more, in exemplary ways, since its founding by the United Nations in 1948. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) was established as a way for the international community to provide for the human needs of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons in the wake of the Nakba. UNRWA has been a trusted lifeline for the Palestinian people for over 75 years. The purpose of replacing UNRWA is the systematic dismantlement of the support of the international community for the Palestinian people. Israel has always shown great hostility to UNRWA, thwarting their work at every turn for decades. Most recently, they accused UNRWA of harboring Hamas members in their ranks and urged the nations of the world to pull their funding for UNRWA. This was an unsubstantiated smear campaign that caused considerable damage. Although many nations have restored their funding to UNRWA, Israel has banned UNRWA from operating in Gaza. Remember also that Israel has banned dozens of the world’s leading independent humanitarian organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and the Norwegian Refugee Council, from operating in Gaza. Those who are permitted to operate in Gaza must agree to open their records, including confidential personal information, to the IDF, and submit to its rigid controls. Supporting Gaza Children Village will undoubtedly bring some tangible benefits to traumatized war orphans. But supporting this organization also plays directly into an insidious, nefarious agenda of the IDF - to create a docile Palestinian population, to deny them the dignity of self-determination, and to continue disempowering them.