EU finally releases report of incitement, antisemitism in PA textbooks
The report, completed in February, includes dozens of examples of encouragement of violence and demonization of Israel and of Jews.
By LAHAV HARKOVPalestinian children learn Islamic lessons on summer vacation as COVID-19 restrictions ease in Gaza.(photo credit: MOHAMMED SALEM/ REUTERS)
The European Union has released its report on Palestinian Authority textbooks four months after its completion, showing instances of antisemitism and incitement to violence.Friday’s release of the report – excerpts from which were first published in The Jerusalem Post earlier this month – sparked condemnations across the European Parliament.The report, completed in February, includes dozens of examples of encouragement of violence and demonization of Israel and of Jews.Twenty-two members of the European Parliament from a range of major parties demanded last week that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen withhold aid to the PA over the books, which “preach antisemitism, incitement and the glorification of violence and terrorism... violating fundamental EU values and our declared goal to help advance peace and the two-state solution.”EU Parliament Budgetary Affairs Committee Vice Chairman Niclas Herbst called for 5% of EU funding to the PA and UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, to be withheld and redirected to NGOs that adhere to UNESCO education standards.“The fact that EU assistance to the PA education system is used to produce antisemitic propaganda material that encourages hatred, violence and terrorism, instead of promoting a peaceful solution to the conflict, harms the prospect of coexistence and establishing good and encouraging neighborly relations,” the Foreign Ministry said.The European Commission must take the report seriously and take practical steps to stop European aid until the problems with the report are rectified, it said, adding that the EU can closely monitor where its funding is going.The report was only released after the European Parliament made three different declarations condemning antisemitism in the PA curriculum, as well as dozens of parliamentary questions, said Marcus Sheff, CEO of IMPACT-se, which studies textbooks in the Middle East.“While deeply flawed, [the report] states what has been obvious to all for years: that the Palestinian Authority systematically incites over a million children to antisemitism, hate and violence every school day,” he said. “The question remains: Will the EU finally take action to condition EU funding to the Palestinian authority on reforms to the curriculum as the European Parliament has demanded?”The EU commissioned the report in 2019 from the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research and kept it under wraps for four months following its completion. Brussels directly funds the salaries of teachers and the writers of the textbooks, which encourage and glorify violence against Israelis and Jews, according to the report.The report is almost 200 pages long and examines 156 textbooks and 16 teachers’ guides. The texts are mostly from 2017-2019, but 18 are from 2020. Excerpts from the report were previously published in the German newspaper Bild.The report includes dozens of examples of encouragement of violence and demonization of Israel and of Jews.The textbooks present “ambivalent – sometimes hostile – attitudes toward Jews and the characteristics they attribute to the Jewish people... Frequent use of negative attributions in relation to the Jewish people... suggest a conscious perpetuation of anti-Jewish prejudice, especially when embedded in the current political context.”An exercise in one religious-studies textbook asks students to discuss the “repeated attempts by the Jews to kill the prophet” Muhammad and asks who are “other enemies of Islam.”“It is not so much the sufferings of the Prophet or the actions of the companions that appear to be the focus of this teaching unit but, rather, the alleged perniciousness of the Jews,” the report said.The report identifies “the creation of a connection between the stated deception of the ‘Jews’ in the early days of Islam and the insinuated behavior of Jews today,” calling it “extremely escalatory.”One textbook ties Muhammad’s aunt, who clubbed a Jew to death, to a question about Palestinian women’s steadfastness in the face of “Jewish Zionistic occupation.”One textbook promotes a conspiracy theory that Israel removed the original stones of ancient sites in Jerusalem and replaced them with ones bearing “Zionist drawings and shapes.”The concept of “resistance” is a recurring theme in the textbooks studied, along with calls for the Palestinians to be liberated via a revolution. To clarify the concept, one textbook has a photo with the caption, “Palestinian revolutionaries,” featuring five masked men toting machine guns.Glorification and praise of terrorists who attacked Israelis can be found not only in history or social-studies books, but also in science and math books, such as one that mentions a school named after the “shahid” (martyr) Abu Jihad, a leader of the First Intifada.A demonstration of Newton’s Second Law, which says force is equal to mass times acceleration, is illustrated by Palestinians using slingshots against Israeli soldiers.Dalal al-Mughrabi, a much-admired figure in Palestinian society, was a Palestinian woman involved in the 1978 bus hijacking in which she and her accomplices murdered 38 Israelis, including 13 children. Textbooks repeatedly refer to her in the context of female empowerment.There are “no further portraits of significant female figures in Palestinian history,” the report said, implying that “the path of violence [is] the only option for women to demonstrate an outstanding commitment to their people and country.”In addition, most textbooks have maps that erase the State of Israel, portray the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine and refer to Israel with the term “Zionist occupation.”
