The European Parliament on Thursday passed a resolution condemning the Palestinian Authority for continuing to include hate speech and violent material in school textbooks.
The resolution said the European Parliament, the legislative branch of the European Union, “is concerned that problematic material in Palestinian school textbooks has still not been removed and is concerned about the continued failure to act effectively against hate speech and violence in school textbooks”.
It added an insistence that: “Salaries of teachers and education sector civil servants that are financed from [European] Union funds… be used for drafting and teaching curricula which reflects UNESCO standards of peace, tolerance, coexistence, and non-violence”.
In a separate clause, the resolution stressed the need to “guarantee that no Union funds… are used to finance textbooks and educational material which incite religious radicalisation, intolerance, ethnic violence and martyrdom among children”.
This parliamentary report, which was drafted in March, scrutinises EU spending for the financial year 2018 and was drafted by Monika Hohlmeier, a German European People’s Party lawmaker and member of the legislature’s budgetary control committee. The report could have implications for how the EU allocates its budget in the future.
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a watchdog that analyses Palestinian textbooks, said the European Parliament “is clearly exasperated by the continued payment of massive grants to the Palestinian educational sector, which is then promptly turned into one of the most hate-filled, violent and extreme curricula worldwide”.
In March, former school teacher and new MP Jonathan Gullis led his first Westminster Hall debate on the subject of radicalisation within the Palestinian school curriculum. 20 Conservative MPs were in attendance in the debate, which focused on concerns about the content of the Palestinian Authority’s school textbooks which contain incitement of hatred, martyrdom, and violence towards Israelis.
The debate followed an exposé in the Daily Mail at the start of the year, which laid bare the disturbing content of textbooks, and MPs have raised the issue on numerous occasions in the House of Commons in recent years.
