IMPACT-se November 2023
INTRODUCTION
The Palestinian Authority (PA) curriculum is the core curriculum taught in Palestinian schools throughout the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. The curriculum was published in 2016, and marked the first full restructuring of the Palestinian curriculum since 2000, following the Oslo Accords. Previously, schoolchildren in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were taught the Jordanian curriculum, while students in Gaza used Egyptian textbooks. There we're expectations that the new PA curriculum would be more moderate as compared to previous curricula taught between 2000 and 2016. IMPACT-se research into the new curriculum, which has examined the entire corpus of over 1000 textbooks published since September 2016, has demonstrated that the reformed curriculum has moved further away from meeting UNESCO standards on educating for peace and tolerance. The newly published textbooks were found to be more radical than those previously published. They incorporate a systematic insertion of violence, martyrdom, and jihad across all grades and subjects. Extreme nationalism and Islamist ideologies are widespread throughout the curriculum, including in science and math textbooks. The possibility of peace with Israel is rejected. Any historical Jewish presence in the modern-day territories of Israel and the PA is entirely omitted from the textbooks. The overall and unmistakable message which permeates the current PA curriculum is a future filled with hatred, conflict and violence. This stands in stark contrast with the hopes of the international community for a future of peace and coexistence. This report highlights the dissonance between these two visions. While the civilized world has reacted with horror to the atrocities committed by terrorists on 7 October, who massacred around 1,400 Israelis mainly civilians as documented in this report, at least 11 schools in the West Bank which are operated by the PA have openly and publicly celebrated the massacre. The aim of this report is to provide a cursory look into attitudes in Palestinian schools in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. As the war is ongoing and areas of the Palestinian Territories are in turmoil, the examination of social media accounts remains one of the most instructive methods to obtain an up-to-date picture of how Palestinian schools are responding, in the face of what is one of the worst atrocities in the hundred-year history of the conflict. For this purpose, official Facebook accounts of Palestinian schools have been monitored for inflammatory content posted during or after October 7, 2023. The following is a representative sample of the official Facebook accounts of 11 Palestinian schools. Schools were selected to cover as diverse a sample as possible, and include 8 schools run by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in six different governorates (districts) of the West Bank one private West Bank school, one UNRWA-run West Bank school, and one Hamas-run Gaza 2 Strip school. The report includes elementary, middle and high schools; it also incorporates schools for each gender, as well as mixed-gender schools. The sample is by no means exhaustive, although it should be noted that most Gaza Strip schools have halted their social media activity following the October 7 attack. For each school, at least one example of inflammatory or hateful content uploaded to social media is provided, as well as details of the school and a link to its official account. Some schools, which have exhibited unusually inflammatory activity prior to October 7, are also noted. The resulting picture is disturbing. It appears that many schools across the Palestinian Territories have seized the opportunity of the October 7 attacks to celebrate the massacre, glorifying Hamas terrorists and lauding their bravery and sacrifice. The imagery of gliders, used by Hamas militants to carry out the atrocity, is specifically invoked in some instances, including a social media post from one school showing second-grade students coloring in drawings which depicted Hamas terrorists on gliders, made by their art teacher, featuring the words Glorious Gaza. Many schools also took this opportunity to disseminate expressly antisemitic messages in the days after the Hamas attack, wishing for God to punish the Jews or calling the Jews prophet killers in the tradition of antisemitic deicide accusations, and asking fourth-graders to sing lyrics to the song Our al-Aqsa which included the words place a dagger on your waist, and water us with martyrdom. In addition, many schools chose to escalate and inflame the school environment in wartime, by having students express graphic imagery in speech, drawing or theatrical play, encouraging them to depict blood, gore and death, and generally exposing them to decidedly age-inappropriate material, all with no other purpose than to maximize hate for Jews and Israelis, and possibly incite Palestinian society to action. These findings indicate that the next generation of Palestinians are being desensitized to violence and death, to see Jews and Israelis as inhuman creatures, and to perceive their own death in battle as an utmost goal. In light of this, one cannot escape the conclusion that should the status quo of Palestinian education continue, the next atrocity is all but assured.
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Official Social Media Accounts of Palestinian Schoolssince October 7SELECTION OF TARGETS BY ISRAELI LAND AND AIRFORCE