More than two years after the October 7 attack, Palestinian textbooks in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem continue to promote Jew hatred and glorify jihadism that led to the massacre of over 1,200 innocent Israeli men, women, and children.
“Dehumanization and hate are a defining feature of the curriculum portrayal of Israeli-Jewish [people],” a detailed study conducted by IMPACT-se, an Israeli NGO that monitors school education, reveals.
“Israelis are not depicted as human beings, as in the case of one example, demonic monsters,” the review of school books from grades 1 to 12 shows. “Text and poems liken them to serpents, vipers, and Satan’s aides.”
Despite repeated promises of reform by the Palestinian Authority (PA), the IMPACT-se study found hardly any change in the hate-filled messaging being fed to impressionable children. According to the 396-page document, “Antisemitism remains a central feature of the curriculum.” The 2020-21 IMPACT-se study, reviewed by Legal Insurrection, had also concluded that Palestinian textbooks across the board “remain openly antisemitic and continue to encourage violence, jihad and martyrdom.”
“Despite having committed to reform its education system multiple times in recent years, the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum remains unchanged,” the Jerusalem Post observed, citing the 2025 IMPACT-se study.
The report uncovered that “the materials [remained] substantively unchanged from prior editions and documents recurring patterns across subjects: promotion of jihad and martyrdom, glorification of terrorism, incitement of antisemitism, rejection of peacemaking and the two-state solution, and erasure of Israel from maps.”
The study found “themes across subjects, including science and math textbooks, in which violence is normalized.” The educational material, such as teacher guides, “includes narratives that idealize armed struggle” and presents terrorists, “who perpetrated deadly attacks on civilians as role models,” the reports said.
Besides hatred of Israel and the Jews, these school books portrayed the U.S. as an ‘evil empire,’ Ynetnews reported:
In Arabic language materials, the report cites a poem urging students to “return to the cities of Israel with weapons in hand,” which the researchers say echoes the violence of the October 7 attacks. Another Arabic textbook for eighth grade uses reading comprehension exercises that praise suicide bombers, describe attackers “wearing explosive belts,” and glorify Palestinians “cutting the throats of Israelis,” alongside illustrations of Palestinians shooting Israeli soldiers. Fifth-grade students study Dalal Mughrabi, who led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, as a heroic role model.
An Islamic education textbook includes a lesson portraying Jews collectively as immoral, dishonest and manipulative. A Palestinian civics book produced by the Palestinian Authority omits Israel entirely from its maps and teaching materials.
The report also found that core science subjects are used to normalize violence. Newton’s laws of motion are taught in a seventh-grade science book through an illustration of a child firing a slingshot. An eleventh-grade biology lesson on the bladder and nervous system is paired with an image of a Palestinian boy depicted as having been shot by Israeli soldiers. Chemistry lessons include references to “chemical solutions” used by Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.
A Palestinian history textbook portrays the United States as an “evil empire,” according to the report.
Beyond the educational content, the findings raise political concerns tied to promises the Palestinian Authority made to the European Union. In July 2024 the PA signed a reform agreement with the EU that included commitments to remove incitement from textbooks. The EU publicly pledged that textbooks for grades 1 through 4 and grade 12 would be fully cleared of problematic material by September, the start of the school year. Last month Dubravka Šuica, the EU commissioner responsible for funding to the PA, said that money had been released based on effective implementation of these reforms.
IMPACT-se came to these conclusions after a detailed and painstaking scrutiny of textbooks being used in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. To compile the study, the education watchdog undertook a “comprehensive review of the Palestinian Authority’s 2025–26 national school curriculum, [analyzed] 290 textbooks and 71 teacher guides used in West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem schools (including UNRWA).”
Western donors, such as the European Union, are among the biggest donors funding Palestinian schools and textbooks. Many of these schools are run by the United Nations’ Palestinian aid agency (UNRWA).
The indoctrination of children doesn’t merely reflect the nature of the Palestinian leadership; it is devised to raise the next generation of recruits for Hamas, Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and other terrorist groups. The school curricula are supplemented with terrorist training camps for kids during summer breaks. As Legal Insurrection reported in the summer of 2021, Hamas enlisted 50,000 Gaza children for its summer camps, offering terrorist training to boys as young as 9, including drills teaching them how to take hostages.
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