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What Palestinian Textbooks Say about Israel

Feb. 16 2018

Having completed a study of 200 current and out-of-date textbooks used in Palestinian schools, Arnon Gross has come to the conclusion that these books “demonize the Jews and Israel and encourage the violent struggle to liberate Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.” Gross is convinced that, in light of his study, “there is no chance for peace and reconciliation between the state of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.” Yaakov Ahimeir writes:

Take, for example, a ninth-grade textbook’s description of Safed, a city in the north of Israel with over a millennium of Jewish history: “Safed is one of the most beautiful Palestinian cities in the Galilee. Its magnificence hails back to its Canaanite origin, despite the fog of occupation that will one day lift.” . . .

[Gross’s] research brings truly hair-raising, dehumanizing examples to demonstrate how Palestinian education incites [violence and even genocide against] Jews. One of the textbooks calls the 1978 Coastal Road massacre—in which Fatah terrorists crossed from Lebanon into Israel, hijacked a bus, and murdered 38 Israeli passengers—a “barbecue.” Why? Because the terrorist cell leader, Dalal Mughrabi, gave a command to firebomb the bus and burn the Jews alive.

Gross stresses that from year to year, Palestinian textbooks have not become more moderate—quite the opposite, in fact.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Education, Fatah, Israel & Zionism, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian public opinion, Terrorism

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic