Palestinian Textbooks Teach Children to be Martyrs

April 4, 2017

by: Ilse Posselt

Tuesday, 04 April 2017 | Parents send their children to school fully expecting their kids to learn a whole range of new things – from reading and writing to math and geography. Yet the prescribed textbooks for Palestinian first to fourth graders who attend school in east Jerusalem, Hebron and Bethlehem also teach little ones a whole different skills set which the Palestinian Authority (PA) deems crucial: the alleged glory and virtue of becoming a “martyr.”

According to a report published on Sunday by the Hebrew University’s Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), the PA’s 2016-2017 elementary school curriculum is significantly more radical than that of previous years, with a curriculum that “teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel, and focuses on a ‘return’ to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.”

The report is based on an analysis of the PA’s current educational curriculum for elementary schools (grades one through four) and high school (grades 11 and 12).

Entitled “Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016-17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program”, the report explains that young Palestinian children are “taught to be expendable.” The messages they receive from their educators include catchphrases like “the volcano of my revenge,” “the longing of my blood for my land,” and “I shall sacrifice my blood to saturate the land.”

The report found that the textbooks introduce Arabs as the original owners and inhabitants of the land and disregard Jewish ties. “The vision of an Arab Palestine includes the entirety of what is now Israel, defined as the “1948 Occupied Territories,” the report highlights.

Jerusalem, for example, is described as an “Arab city” built by “our Arab ancestors.” Israeli cities like Haifa and Jaffa are also hailed as “Palestinian cities overlooking the Mediterranean.”

According to The Times of Israel, the Jewish state is conspicuously absent from the maps used in the textbooks. “A political map in a third grade textbook shows Palestine in the entire territory of Israel. While neighboring Arab countries are shown, Israel is not.” The map does, however, show a number of Israeli cities with their names changed to Arabic.

The report also points out that the textbooks glorify the concept of martyrdom. “Children are expected to become martyrs,” the document explains, “in other words, to be killed in conflicts with security forces.”

An illustration in one of the textbooks shows a pristine classroom filled with Palestinian youngsters. Only one desk in the classroom is vacant. A sign on the vacant desk identifies the absent friend as “The Martyr.” A Palestinian flag is draped heroically across the empty chair. “Getting killed in clashes becomes part of the curriculum,” the report clarifies. “Students are aware that they should follow in the footsteps of those martyrs (shuhada) who died before them.”

The issue of martyrdom and dead martyrs is also a firm favorite when it comes to teaching elementary school Palestinians arithmetic.

The following question serves as an example of a math problem posed to fourth-graders: “The number of martyrs of the First Intifada during 1987–93 totaled 2026 martyrs, and the number of martyrs of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Intifada in the year 2000 totaled 5,050 martyrs while the number of the wounded reached 49,760. How many martyrs died in the two intifadas?”

According to the report, this year’s text books display a significant deterioration in terms of peace and tolerance when compared to the editions for previous curricula. “There is little doubt of significant—even alarming—deterioration of the curriculum’s message when compared with our review of previous texts for these age groups…. The strategy of violence and pressure [in place of negotiations] is advocated as the most effective action to achieve Palestinian goals… That does not bode well for future peace prospects,” the report warns.

“Despite assurances from the PA Education Ministry, these new books are actually more radical than we have previously seen,” The Jerusalem Post quoted IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff as saying.

“There is clear evidence of a strategy of radicalization of young Palestinians, devised and implemented by the ministry, which includes a commitment to an Arab Palestine encompassing the entirety of Israel,” he said.

Sheff also told The Times of Israel that the emphasis on martyrdom in this year’s textbooks “places the idea of a young person being a martyr in a public light.” The message, he explains, is that “these children are potentially expendable.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have long since pointed a finger at the PA curriculum as a source of incitement amongst Palestinian youth, spurring children on from an early age to view Israel as illegal and illegitimate in every sense and thus act out in violence and terror against the Jewish state.

Posted on April 4, 2017

Source: (Bridges for Peace, 04 April 2017)