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Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, has announced the publication of four new booklets for children in which notorious terrorists and their actions are glorified, according to a recent news report by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
One of the booklets is dedicated to Abu Jihad, Yasser Arafat’s deputy and PLO co-founder, who helped plan and execute the murder of 125 Israelis, and another to Dalal Al-Mughrabi, the female Fatah terrorist who led the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history, in which more than three dozen Israeli civilians, one-third of them children, were killed on a hijacked bus in 1978.
The publication of the series is overseen by Hussam Abu ‘Ajwa, who carries the Soviet-sounding title of “Ideological Indoctrination Commissioner for the West Gaza district.” “This initiative, the first of its kind, uses stories to document the history of the Palestinian people and of the Fatah movement, the largest faction in the PLO,” said Abu ‘Ajwa.
Unfortunately, the glorification of terrorists for the purpose of brainwashing children is all too common. The new school curriculum, currently taught in schools in the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, was found to be even more radical than the previous one of the Arafat era, according to a report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education:
The new textbooks examined in this report indoctrinate for death and martyrdom. Jews and Israelis are portrayed as quintessentially evil, amid calls for
jihad and martyrdom by Palestinian children. … The image of a girl with a long dagger is a disturbing reminder of the 2015-16 Knife Intifada, when children were encouraged to use knives and scissors to attack Israelis. … Anti-Semitism is more prevalent than before [in the new textbooks]. … Israel and the Jews are referred to as “enemies of Islam,” and are blamed for poisoning the Prophet Muhammad. … Encouraging girls and boys to sacrifice their lives in the name of religion appears to be a central goal of this curriculum.
Needless to say, there is no acknowledgment in the curriculum of any right of Israel to exist, and children are taught that their state will stretch “from the river to the sea.” Given the current attempts of Hamas to storm the Gaza border with Israel, the parts of those textbooks that speak of “a plan of resettling the Gazan population in territories currently in Israel proper” are of particular interest. Significantly, the report noted that “the difference in worldviews between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas appears to have narrowed substantially in the new curriculum.”
Since the EU finances the new school curriculum, the European Parliament’s budgetary committee voted to freeze more than 15 million euros in aid to the Palestinian Authority unless such incitement is removed from the textbooks. “The reserve will be released when the Palestinian Authority has committed to reform its school curriculum and textbooks to bring them in line with UNESCO standards for peace and tolerance in school education,” the committee resolved.
That, however, is highly unlikely to happen, as the recent Fatah decision to publish booklets glorifying terrorists clearly shows. While these booklets may or may not be used in schools, their publication shows that the EU’s threats are not being taken seriously.
The Trump administration has followed through on its promise to stop funding Palestinian Authority incitement. But when it comes to the current school year, the money has already been received.
“In the current fiscal year, funds still flow from the U.S. to the Palestinian Authority and UNWRA, making the U.S. taxpayer complicit in funding war indoctrination,” explained David Bedein, director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.
The question of incitement to the murder of Jews in the school curriculum in the PA and Gaza is not just a matter of changing a couple of textbook paragraphs here or a few sentences there. The curriculum reflects an ingrained culture of militant jihadism and extreme nationalism in which there is no room for the Jewish state to exist. Children play a fundamental role in this culture because they are the carriers of its continuation, assimilating its values from an early age. The recent publication of the booklet about Mughrabi, for example, is just one element in the worship of terrorism that children are taught. As late as August, a new school and kindergarten was named after Mughrabi. In April, 600 high school students belonging to Fatah’s Shabiba youth movement in Jenin participated in the Martyr Abu Jihad Camp. The camp was held at a facility of the PA National Security Forces.
Children in the Palestinian Authority and Gaza are literally being raised to kill Jews and martyr themselves in the process, if necessary. Prospects for peace don’t exist when the generation in waiting is being raised on hate.
Judith Bergman is a writer and political analyst based in Israel. She is a fellow with the news and public policy group of the Haym Salomon Center (@salomoncenter).
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