An online school curriculum, produced by the Palestinian Authority for Gaza pupils amid the Israeli war against Hamas, continues to glorify violence and martyrdom and is rife with antisemitic stereotypes that are being taught in Hamas-run classrooms which praise the Oct. 7, 2023 attackers, a British think tank said on Monday.
The findings, which come in the wake of the Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel and the nearly year-and-a-half-long war it triggered in Gaza, violate Palestinian commitments made to donor countries for educational reform. They come at a time when Western countries that fund the Ramallah-based P.A. continue to favor it taking control of Gaza from Hamas.
The London-based NGO Impact-se (the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education) study finds that the textbooks being used this year for nearly 300,000 Palestinian schoolchildren in grades 1-12 in Gaza erase the State of Israel from the map and are replete with “graphic depictions of violence,” and antisemitism.
The report also notes that at least four newly reopened Gaza schools under Hamas control openly celebrate the single worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust using textbooks and teaching materials rife with incitement.
“If the international community wants to support peace and stability in the Middle East it will recognize the importance of an education system in Gaza that promotes peace—not hate,” Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told JNS. “Whilst Hamas remains in civilian control in Gaza the indoctrination of children into radical Islam through the education system will continue, this will only perpetuate future conflict,” she said.
She added that the European Union must use its leverage to force the P.A. to use a standard curriculum that encourages peace, coexistence and tolerance.
“Right now, the European Union is funding a radical Islamic curriculum,” she said. “Any curriculum that glorifies extreme violence and the October 7 massacre is an absolute disgrace which must not be supported by the international community.”
Antisemitism
The P.A.’s abridged online textbooks continue to use antisemitic narratives and imagery, despite earlier commitments to adhere to UNESCO standards of education, the study finds. For example, an 11th-grade history textbook peddles the ancient stereotype that Jews control the world through an image of a hand bearing a Star of David gripping a globe; an Islamic education textbook further reinforces antisemitic tropes, portraying “the Jews” as “deceitful, immoral and manipulators who are hostile to Islam,” according to the report.
Incitement to violence
The concept of jihad is exalted in the educational system, depicted as “the peak of Islam” and a direct path to “achieving martyrdom.” Graphic descriptions in poetic imagery portray martyrs as “climbing mountains of their gushing blood.” Accompanying exercises ask students “How did the martyrs face death?” and describe how “death charged them with its pickaxe.”
Starting in 1st grade, martyrs are glorified as having divine status. Children are taught literacy exercises for the Arabic letter H (hā) using the term “shahīd” (martyr); while jihad is explicitly described as one of the “gates to paradise,” the study said.
The new P.A. materials also teach science and mathematics through a lens fueling violence and hatred of Israel. A 3rd-grade math exercise asks students to write the number of martyrs killed during the violent First Intifada against Israel; a 9th-grade statistics lesson asks students to calculate the number of “martyrs” killed by Israel.
Hate at school
While the P.A. launched its remote-learning initiative for Gaza, indoctrination of hate and violence continues in newly reopened schools run by Hamas, the study finds.
For example, last month at Al-Nasr Elementary School in Gaza City, students recited a poem glorifying the Oct. 7 Hamas-led massacre. A message on a classroom blackboard for pupils aged 7-8 read, “You are history, you are the toufan [flood],” exalting the Hamas onslaught and the name for the attacks (“Al-Aqsa Flood”).
At Muscat Girls’ High School in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, students learn from a textbook containing a violent poem by Egyptian poet Hashim Al-Rifa‘i, which explicitly says that “One day with the weapon in your hands” there will be a violent return to Israeli cities.
F in international educational standards
The study finds that the 2025 educational curriculum “fails to meet basic international educational standards” and flies in the face of commitments the P.A. made to the E.U. last year when it promised to reform its educational content in full adherence to UNESCO’s standards of peace and tolerance in education, in return for continued E.U. funding. A high-level E.U.–P.A. dialogue on “reform achievements” is scheduled to take place in Brussels next month.
The head of the organization that carried out the study said on Monday that the P.A. has failed the “acid test” after it signed an agreement with the E.U. committing to reform its curriculum.
“We see again that the P.A. continues to deeply embed hatred and violence in its curriculum and brazenly continues to teach antisemitism, the glorification of terrorism, and the dehumanization of Israelis, said IMPACT-se CEO, Marcus Sheff. “Palestinian classrooms remain a breeding ground for extremism, with new educational materials reinforcing the same old dangerous narratives.”
A previous study by the organization, released last year, found that Saudi Arabia has removed practically all antisemitic and anti-Israel material from its schoolbooks.