Jewish News
IMPACT-se, an Israel-based monitor group that studies education materials in the Arab world, has published a new report that shows that despite promises to change its textbooks, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has produced new teaching materials for the current school year that “contain a great deal of violent and hateful content”.
CFI Parliamentary Chairman Rt. Hon. Stephen Crabb MP has urged the Gov’t to reconsider its aid strategy to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) “to ensure that UK taxpayers’ money promotes peace” in Palestinian schools, following the publication of the report.
Marcus Sheff, the UK-born chief executive of IMPACT-se, said that the PA had “doubled down on teaching the hate that donor nations said they could no longer tolerate”.
Among the new teaching material, say IMPACT-se, is “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”. Throughout, Jews are 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”.
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.
Last year the EU made a commitment to oversee an improvement in the content of Palestinian textbooks. 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.
The Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohammed Shtayyeh, 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 has rejected calls to make changes to the school textbooks.
Speaking to the Jewish News, Mr Crabb underlined: “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”.
He added: “This material is extremely detrimental to the wellbeing of Palestinian children and makes peace harder to achieve…”
Mr Crabb called on the Government to rethink its aid strategy to UNRWA: “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”.
A spokesperson for the UK FCDO said that “the UK condemns hatred, violence and antisemitism and are clear it should have no place in education” and that they “continue to urge the removal of such content to the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority”.
