TEL AVIV – The Palestinian Authority recently published a new school curriculum in which “radicalization” is more pervasive than ever before, with more pressure put on children to carry out acts of violence against Israelis, a watchdog group said.
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found that textbooks issued for the new academic year for grades 1-11 are more inflammatory than ever before, with zero “respect, tolerance and understanding toward the Israeli and Western ‘Other,’ his/her culture, achievements, values and way of life.”
“There is denial and demonization,” the report said.
“An attitude of hatred and scapegoating fosters an atmosphere of non-responsibility. The curriculum agitates against regional and local cooperation with Israel (the PA’s chief economic partner) while advocating boycott and violence of that partner,” it added.
The textbooks further endorse the idea that there will a “long war of attrition” after which there will be a return of the Palestinian masses to Israel, which even in its current state is presented as “Palestine.”
For example, a 10th grade geography textbook declares Israel’s Negev Desert to be territory constituting “about half of the area of Palestine.”
Even seemingly benign subjects, such as the sciences, are infused with references to jihad.
“A science textbook teaches Newtonian gravity through the image of a boy with a slingshot targeting soldiers to explain power, mass and tensile strength. An 11th-grade physics textbook teaches circular motion through the use of a slingshot in another clash with IDF soldiers,” the report said.
A mathematics textbook aimed at 4th graders instructs pupils to calculate the “number of martyrs” in the first and second Palestinian intifadas. “The number of martyrs of the First Intifada (the Intifada of Rocks) is 2,026 martyrs, and the number of martyrs of the Al-Aqsa Intifada is 5,050,” the textbook reads. “The number of martyrs in the two Intifadas is [FILL IN THE BLANK] martyrs.”
“Martyrdom” and “jihad” are routinely praised as “the most important meanings of life.”
As such, one textbook notes, “give their names to our children; we put their names on our streets and squares and the cultural places.”
Terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi, who was responsible for one of the deadliest attacks in Israel’s history, are hero-worshiped.
“These heroes are the crown of their nation,” the textbook declares.
A textbook for 8th graders says, “Islam is for the liberation of man from slavery,” yet in the very next sentence says if “slavery returns for some reason” than “the rule that a Muslim is allowed to enjoy the slave girls that he owns” will be reinstated.
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