Palestinian Authority ‘hoodwinking’ UK donors over hate-filled textbooks
New report from an Israel-based monitor group found the PA was still producing materials 'which contain a great deal of violent and hateful content', despite promises not to
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
The Palestinian Authority has been accused of “hoodwinking” its donors — which include the UK — in a continuing row over the content of its school textbooks. And the Commons parliamentary chair of the Conservative Friends of Israel, Stephen Crabb MP, has urged the UK government to reconsider its aid strategy to the Palestinian Authority.
In a new report, IMPACT-se, an Israel-based monitor group which studies education materials in the Arab world, has found that despite promises to revise its textbooks, the PA has produced new, parallel teaching materials for the current school year, “which contain a great deal of violent and hateful content”.
Marcus Sheff, the UK-born chief executive of IMPACT-se, said: “Faced with a clear call by the EU for them to create new textbooks free of hate and antisemitism, the PA simply reprinted the old ones, then produced thousands of pages of new teaching material with content worse than the textbooks themselves”. He said the PA had “doubled down on teaching the hate that donor nations said they could no longer tolerate”.
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Among the new teaching material, say IMPACT-se, is “teaching about the ‘characteristics’ of Jews who are devious and treacherous, and Israelis who are described as ‘Satan’s aides’. The material demands that students should die as martyrs to liberate the Al-Aqsa mosque, and explains that those who do so by killing infidels (Christians and Jews), will receive grace and be greatly rewarded”.
Jews are routinely described as “devious, treacherous and hostile”, while Israel is demonised and characterised as Satanic. The report says that science instruction “is hijacked to radicalise students. For example, potential energy is taught through the use of slingshots and an illustration of a young boy with a slingshot”.
The Geneva Convention, says the report, is taught by showing a graphic image of corpses, while accusing Israel of mass murder.
Israel is entirely erased from maps, and Israeli cities are mislabelled as Palestinian.
Mr Sheff said that IMPACT-se had presented its new findings to the EU Commission, which “had no knowledge of the textbook status or the newly created material.” He added: “The EU was apparently unaware of any of this. The majority of the EU’s donation to the PA goes to its education sector, so one has to ask what the EU delegation to Ramallah actually knows about what goes on in PA schools”.
Last year the EU made a commitment to oversee an improvement in the content of Palestinian textbooks, notorious for their use of the counting of Palestinian “martyrs” to teach mathematics. An EU spokesman said: “We will not let off until we see change happen and we get assurances that no questionable content in books are in use”, adding that “one would have to draw conclusions” if the PA failed to change.
Stephen Crabb MP, parliamentary chair of the Conservative Friends of Israel, told JN: “I am deeply troubled by reports that the PA has continued its refusal to remove material inciting violence against Israel and promoting antisemitism from its school textbooks. This has now been compounded by further harmful learning resources produced by the PA for the 2021-2022 school year. This material is extremely detrimental to the wellbeing of Palestinian children and makes peace harder to achieve.
“I welcome the UK government’s decision no longer to fund Palestinian teachers directly to draft and teach this curriculum, yet our continued support for UNRWA funds the use of this curriculum in its schools in the West Bank and Gaza. I urge the UK government to deliver on its stated zero-tolerance approach to antisemitic incitement by reconsidering its aid strategy to ensure that UK taxpayers’ money promotes peace”.
The director of Labour Friends of Israel, Michael Rubin, said: “Yet again, the Palestinian Authority is breaking its own promises to remove antisemitic and violent content from its curriculum for school children.
“Textbooks filled with antisemitic tropes, glorifying terrorists and violence against civilians, and erasing Israel from maps, are not the kind of education that Palestinian children need to promote peace, reconciliation and coexistence. Sadly, the UK government has repeatedly failed to consistently, forensically and firmly raise this issue with the PA. The PA should immediately demonstrate its commitment to peace with Israel by countering incitement, not actively promoting it to the next generation”.
The Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohammed Shtayyeh, has rejected calls to make changes to the school textbooks. He told a PA cabinet meeting that “everything mentioned in the textbooks is an accurate and honest description of the suffering our people have been going through for more than seven decades” and that the Palestinian curriculum “cannot be judged by standards far removed from [the Palestinian] people’s history and culture.”
An FCDO spokesperson said: “The UK condemns hatred, violence and antisemitism and are clear it should have no place in education.
“We continue to urge the removal of such content to the highest levels of the Palestinian authority.”
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