Schools being operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency are teaching Palestini­an children as young as 6 to hate, kill and martyr them­selves, according to a recently-completed study by the Institute for Mon­it­or­ing Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.

The study repro­duces fifteen examples taken directly from Palestini­an school textbooks currently used in UNRWA schools in which hatred and violence are extolled as virtues.

First graders learn grammar by reference to the concepts of martyrdom and physical conflict.

Third graders recite a poem calling for “sac­ri­fi­cing blood” to remove the enemy from the land by “elim­in­at­ing the usurper” and to “anni­hil­ate the remnants of the for­eign­ers.”

Fourth graders are taught arith­met­ic by counting the number of “martyrs” in Palestini­an uprisings.

Fifth graders studying Arabic are taught to glorify and emulate ter­ror­ists as role models, including Dalal Mughrabi, who par­ti­cip­ated in the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, which killed 38 Israelis including 13 children.  Terrorist attacks, such as the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games, are justified as a legit­im­ate tool of “Palestini­an res­ist­ance”.

‘Arabic Language’ text for fifth graders which extols convicted child-murderer Dalal al-Mughrabi: “Her struggle portrays challenge and heroism, making her memory immortal in our hearts and minds.” 

The cur­riculum is openly antisemitic, teaching children that the Jews control the world and are corrupt. In Islamic Studies in fifth grade, children are taught an antisemitic myth that “the Jews” attempted to kill the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. This is largely rejected in main­stream Islam and it doesn’t appear in the Quran. The textbook refers to Jews gen­er­ic­ally as “enemies of Islam.”

In a chapter for fifth-graders named “Hooray for the Heroes,” well-known anti­semites are held up as role models, including Khalil al-Sakakini who supported the Nazi regime and endorsed terrorist attacks against Jewish civilians.

In a social studies chapter teaching Grade 8 students about family life, gender roles, and pro­cre­ation, it is claimed that in the case of “families in which boys grow up without a mother or father, they [the boys] have edu­ca­tion­al problems and mental state problems”, sug­gest­ing that single par­ent­hood and LGBTIQ par­ent­hood lead to problems in children’s mental state and education.

The pos­sib­il­ity of peace with Israel is com­pre­hens­ively rejected. Legit­im­acy of any his­tor­ic­al Jewish presence in what is today Israel, or of the current Jewish presence in Israel, is entirely absent from the cur­riculum.

IMPACT-SE is an inter­na­tion­al group of educators, linguists and lawyers who research, translate and expose the incul­ca­tion of extremism and intol­er­ance in school textbooks in each of the countries of the Middle East and other parts of the world.

A recent draft study conducted by the German Georg Eckert Institute, which appeared to clear the Palestini­an textbooks, has been widely dismissed, with the head of the study admitting that the wrong books had been used for the study. The Institute mis­takenly analysed books used to teach Arab students in East Jerusalem, which are paid for and provided by the State of Israel.

All 223 textbooks used in the Palestini­an school cur­riculum are produced and published by the Palestini­an Authority (PA) Ministry of Education, and are under the respons­ib­il­ity of the PA Minister of Education, Marwan Awartani, and ulti­mately PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.

UNRWA pays the teachers who teach the PA cur­riculum in schools in the West Bank and Gaza, where 450,000 out of the 1.3 million Palestini­an students study. UNRWA also provides the school buildings, facil­it­ies and infra­struc­ture for the schools.

The study notes that the examples it analyses are in direct violation of edu­ca­tion­al standards pre­scribed in UNESCO’s Declar­a­tion of Prin­ciples on Tolerance and its Integ­rated Framework for Action on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Democracy.

It’s a case of one UN agency, UNRWA, spending tens of millions of dollars from donor States to undermine the work of another, namely UNESCO.

UNRWA could, if it wished, with-hold funding and services to the PA until it changes its cur­riculum and complies with UNESCO standards. However, as UNRWA is dominated by Palestini­an activists, this is unlikely.

The contents of the Palestini­an textbooks highlight the large areas of overlap between ostens­ible “criticism of Israel” and antisemitism. They also indicate that proposals for a one-State solution of the Israel-Palestini­an conflict, in which Jews and Arabs would sup­posedly share power peace­fully in one State, are out of touch with reality.

Since April 2018, the European par­lia­ment has passed legis­la­tion seeking to prevent aid to the Palestini­ans from their main donors in the EU from being used to inculcate extremism, hatred and violence in Palestini­an school children.

In May 2020, a 60% majority in the par­lia­ment condemned the PA’s “continued failure to act effect­ively against hate speech and violence in Palestini­an textbooks” insisting that “salaries of teachers and education sector civil servants that are financed from Union funds…be used for drafting and teaching curricula which reflects UNESCO standards of peace, tolerance, coex­ist­ence and non-violence.”

In its 2020 Budget figures the Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ment estimated Official Devel­op­ment Assist­ance to UNRWA for the 2020 – 2021 year would be reduced to $10 million, half of the previous year’s figure.

UNRWA is now doing far more to per­petu­ate conflict between Israel and the Palestini­ans than to prepare the Palestini­ans for peace and statehood.  It is time for Australia to look for new, more con­struct­ive partners through which to channel its assist­ance.

Peter Wertheim is co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.