Palestinian Authority school textbooks continue to teach hatred of Israel and Jews, despite promises of reforms
PA officials brag in Arabic that ‘not a single word has been deleted or altered in textbooks’
A report by the Israel- and UK-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE), found that the Palestinian Authority’s 2025-2026 national school curriculum has not been reformed to eliminate inciting and hateful elements, despite promises to do so.
The report, released last week by the educational watchdog organization, represents the first comprehensive review of the full corpus of educational materials used by the Palestinian Authority since its previous report in May 2021.
IMPACT-se’s report on the 2025–26 Palestinian Authority curriculum reveals a disturbing reality: Palestinian children are still being indoctrinated with the glorification of violence, antisemitism, promotion of martyrdom and the rejection of peace—embedded even in math and…
— IMPACT-SE (@IMPACT_SE) November 19, 2025
IMPACT-SE found that PA curricula “continues to systematically violate UNESCO principles and educational standards,” through material which “incites antisemitism and violence, promotes jihad and martyrdom, glorifies terrorism, rejects peacemaking and the two-state solution, and erases Israel from maps.”
IMPACT-SE found little change from the modest reforms first established during the 2016 reform cycle.
Specifically, the survey of PA curricula found that despite both the PA and the EU claiming that the materials for Grades 1-4 and Grade 12 would be reformed and “fully aligned with UNESCO standards of peace and tolerance,” in actuality, the materials were virtually unchanged since 2021. The differences between the newer materials and those from 2021 represent shortening of material through formatting adjustments, “and not an effort to expunge problematic content.”
The European Union and the Palestinian Authority signed a Letter of Intent in 2024, in which the EU agreed to restore funding to the PA, which had been suspended over the inciting curricula, based on the promise of significant reforms to the curricula. That letter of intent led to the transfer of over €400 million ($US462 million) from the European Union to the PA, on the commitment to initiate significant reforms in its curricula.
In a familiar phenomenon when dealing with the Palestinian Authority, the letter of intent, published in English, made clear statements regarding “substantial and comprehensive reforms of the Palestinian Authority.” However, PA officials, speaking in Arabic, told a different story to their public than the one told to the EU.
In September 2024, after receiving the transfer of funds from the EU, Abdul Hakim Abu Jamous, head of the Humanities Division in the Palestinian Ministry of Education, told the PA-affiliated Al-Quds news network, “The Ministry of Education has not approved any modifications to the Palestinian curriculum.”
He even stated that “not a single word has been deleted or altered in textbooks.”
It’s not even April 1, and the Palestinian Authority is demanding “reform” of Jewish textbooks — libelously claiming they incite to murder Gentiles.
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) November 17, 2025
They don’t.
Meanwhile, the PA’s own school system:
• glorifies terrorist murderers
• indoctrinates children to become “martyrs”… pic.twitter.com/tYIKNkY65P
IMPACT-SE stated that “Antisemitism remains a central feature of the curriculum. Hate and collective accusations specifically directed toward Jewish people appear across grades and subjects, depicting them as deceitful, manipulative, or inherently corrupt enemies of Islam, drawing on classical Islamic polemic, historical distortions, and modern antisemitic motifs used to describe the current conflict.”
The report found that in some materials, Israelis are depicted as “demonic monsters, laughing while committing atrocities, slaughtering children, and extinguishing life.” Other materials accuse the Israeli government of fabricating Jewish holy sites in order to steal Palestinian land.
IMPACT-SE found that jihad is always interpreted in a militant sense connected to the conflict with Israel, and presented as an obligation which leads to divine reward.
Such subjects are imposed upon the curriculum, even when no direct connection is necessary. For example, in a lesson on the elements of air in a science textbook, the accompanying illustration showed a masked Palestinian youth, wearing a keffiyeh and holding a slingshot, ready to throw a rock towards Israeli soldiers who had fired tear gas.
At the same time, the PA’s history textbooks contain no mention of any of the peace summits, such as the Annapolis peace summit, or the Camp David Accords, nor even Yasser Arafat's proclamation, in English, of a “new era of peace.” Similarly missing is any recognition of the prior, well documented historical Jewish presence in the land. Instead, Israel and the Jewish presence in the land, are deliberately omitted from all historical periods of study.
Textbooks routinely glorify and call 'heroic' acts of violence against Israeli citizens. The perpetrators of such attacks are described as national heroes, martyrs, and examples to be emulated.
For example, a fifth-grade language textbook contained a reading comprehension exercise about Dalal Al-Mughrabi, a member of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), who in 1978 led an attack which killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children.
Likewise, an eighth-grade Arabic textbook contains a reading comprehension text glorifying terror attacks through a story that describes suicide bombers wearing “explosive belts”, Palestinian daggers slashing Israeli throats, and telling the students not to forget the image of those killed.
IMPACT-SE consulted a selection of both digital and hardcopy textbooks released by the PA for use in schools across the Palestinian territories in Judea and Samaria, in Gaza, and in schools in east Jerusalem, which follow the PA curriculum instead of the Israeli government’s curriculum for Arab language schools.
A similar report by IMPACT-SE found that textbooks produced explicitly for the students of Gaza after the start of the Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza war, had still not addressed any of the promised curriculum reforms either. It found a similar phenomenon in textbooks for the Jordanian education system, as well.
According to IMPACT-SE CEO Marcus Sheff, the report demonstrates that “virulent antisemitism, the glorification of jihad and incitement to violence remain deeply embedded across all grades of Palestinian Authority textbooks.”
“The PA signed a formal agreement with the European Union – its largest funder – to remove this hate-filled content, a demand also made by the United States, which has consequently sanctioned PA officials,” Sheff continued. “The obvious conclusion of this report is that barring long-overdue, deep and sustained intervention by the international community, the systematic indoctrination of Palestinians via extremist education is here to stay.”
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The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel.
