PMW says PA education mirrors the leadership’s hate ideology

A Palestinian student in fourth grade opens his math book and is asked to count the number ‎of martyrs in Palestinian uprisings based on an accompanying photograph of raised coffins ‎at a mass funeral. A reading exercise with the letter “h” (hāʾ, ‎ه‎) for first-graders includes ‎the word shahid (“martyr”), placed in a list of other words that include hujum (“attack”) and ‎harab (“run away”)…‎

While the Palestinians have agreed to change the curriculum, they have yet to deliver on ‎their promises. P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and Minister of Education ‎Marwan Awartani both went on record stating that positive changes to the textbooks would ‎be made… ‎

According to Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, a nonprofit Israeli ‎research institute that studies Palestinian society, “the Palestinian Authority leadership ‎sends the same hate and terror-supporting messages to its population through all the ‎structures it controls.”‎

He told JNS that PMW finds “the same glorifying of terrorists, the same maps in which ‎the state of ‘Palestine’ erases Israel, the same denial of Israel’s right to exist in P.A. ‎schoolbooks that the P.A. disseminates through its controlled media, social media, and ‎public events for adults and children.”‎

Marcus said P.A. schoolbooks “are not the problem, but one of the many symptoms of ‎the fundamental problem, which is the Palestinian Authority ideology itself.”‎

‎“Until the P.A. leadership is replaced by a peace-seeking leadership, the P.A. will just ‎keep juggling the hate and terror messages between the various mediums it controls, ‎while promising the donor countries to eliminate the hate,” he said. “The perplexing ‎question is why haven’t the donor countries recognized that by funding the terror-‎supporting Palestinian Authority, they are undermining peace to the detriment of both ‎Israel and the Palestinian population?”‎

While the Palestinians have refused to make any substantive changes, others have ‎decided to try and influence change thanks to efforts by IMPACT-se and PMW.‎

In June, Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide announced that more than ‎half of the 2020 planned funding to the P.A.’s education sector had been withheld until ‎‎“positive changes are seen,” also stating that changes were being made to the curriculum ‎by the P.A.’s quality-control committee.‎

[https://www.jns.org/palestinians-continue-to-incite-terrorism-and-violence-in-current-school-year-curriculum-says-watchdog-group/]