Palestinian schools in Gaza and the West Bank are accused on indoctrinating children to hate Israel by using false, malicious textbooks in primary schools. A recent review curriculum produced by the Palestinian Authority shows that children as young as 6 have been exposed to the material.
On November 16, 2021, Sen. John Kennedy (R) introduced a bill addressing these concerns. School-aged children in the West Bank and Gaza are being exposed to textbooks that include graphics portraying violence against Israeli soldiers and misleading maps of the region.
The textbooks in question are used in U.N.-funded schools and, according to a 2018 report, include militaristic and adversarial imagery that serves to incite hatred. Children as young as 6 years old are assigned math word problems that uses the number of Palestinian casualties in the First and Second Intifadas.
The U.N. recognized that these textbooks contain content that is “not in line with [its] values,” and considered the textbook to be inherently “bias” and include false references to Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.
“The Middle East will never experience peace until Palestinians stop teaching their kids to hate Israel, and American dollars should not fund this anti-Jewish propaganda. The Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act would give us a closer look at what Palestinian schools are teaching and whether or not American money is supporting antisemitism,” said Kennedy.
President Biden’s recent restoration of $235 million in aid to Palestinian was met with opposition. Sen. Kennedy’s Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act would require reports reviewing the curriculum be submitting to Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
