Palestinian Authority textbooks issued for the new academic year are “significantly more radical” than their predecessors, routinely erasing Israel and glorifying “martyrdom,” a watchdog group has warned.
In its review of the grades 1-11 curriculum — which underwent a full reform starting last year — the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found that Palestinian textbooks “groom young Palestinians to sacrifice themselves to martyrdom,” promote the idea of a mass “return” to Israel, and “feature a radical Islamist, and occasionally, a Salafi worldview.”
Inflammatory language is found in textbooks across the curriculum, regardless of age or subject matter, with Israel frequently described as the “Zionist Occupation” and Israeli land often labeled Palestinian.
In one instance, a social studies textbook for sixth graders includes a map of Palestine encompassing the entirety of modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories, and claims that Palestine extends “From the Mediterranean sea in the west, to the Jordan River in the East.”
