The Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Education, Sabri Saidam, is worried these days. He is not worried, he says, because Palestinian schoolchildren are being taught to hate Israel. He is not worried because Palestinian schoolchildren are being goaded by their leaders to carry out terror attacks against Jews, from stone-throwing to stabbings to ramming cars.
The PA minister of Education is worried, he says, about a "crime" that is about to be committed against Arab children in Jerusalem schools. The "crime," in his view, is that the children will be taught according to an Israeli, and not a Palestinian, curriculum.
Saidam sees the decision to apply the Israeli curriculum to Arab schools in Jerusalem as an "ugly crime of counterfeit." These are the exact words he used to denounce the decision to introduce the Israeli curriculum into Arab schools.
Why are the minister and the Palestinian Authority so truculently opposed to Arab schoolchildren studying according to the Israeli curriculum? Is this curriculum really an "ugly crime of counterfeit," as the minister says?
The main reason the PA leadership is opposed to the Israeli curriculum is because it does not promote hatred. The curriculum also does not demonize Arabs in parallel to the way the Palestinian curriculum demonizes Jews.
A recent study of Palestinian textbooks found that Palestinian children are being taught to glorify and value terrorism and violence. The study, called "Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016-17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program," was conducted by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.
The Palestinian curriculum teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel, and focuses on a "'return' to an exclusively Palestinian homeland," according to the study.
Within the pages of the textbooks, children are being taught to be expendable. Messages such as: "The Volcano of My Revenge"; "The Longing of my Blood for my Land"; and "I Shall Sacrifice My Blood to Saturate the Land" suffuse the [Palestinian] curriculum. Math books use numbers of dead martyrs to teach arithmetic. The vision of an Arab Palestine includes the entirety of what is now Israel, defined as the "1948 Occupied Territories."
While Islam is not used as a radical political tool for this age group, negative messages linger regarding non-Muslims. And though Christian education is provided, Jewish roots are ignored. Arabs continue to be presented as original dwellers of the land. Palestinian identity, as conveyed to these children, is now more realistically based on Levantine-Palestinian folklore alongside Arabism, Islam, and the struggle against Israel.
The Palestinian minister of education, then, is worried that Arab children in Jerusalem will no longer be exposed to the poison and brainwashing of the Palestinian curriculum. He is even worried that the Arab children will not be taught about the 1974 PLO's Phased Plan to conquer Israel in stages. Phase one (Article 2) is to create a Palestinian state on any territory vacated by Israel. The next phase (Article 8) is to use that territory to "foment an allied Arab assault against a truncated Jewish state."
This PLO Phased Plan is still an integral part of the Palestinian curriculum.
Saidam and his Palestinian Authority want Arab schools in Jerusalem to teach the students why Muslims should be killing Jews. Take, for example, the religious textbooks for the upper grades in Palestinian Authority schools, which include genocidal messages such as the following hadith (a record of the traditions or sayings of Prophet Mohammed), from Hadiths, Bukhari, Book number 4 :
Fighting the Jews and victory over them: The Messenger [Mohammed] already announced [the good news] of the end of the Jews' oppression upon this Holy Land and the removal of their corruption and of their occupation thereof. [It is told] by Abu Hurayrah [one of Mohammed's Companions] that the Prophet said: "The End of Days will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims will kill them to a point that a Jew will hide behind a rock or a tree, and then the rock or the tree will say: 'O Muslim, O God's servant, there is a Jew behind me, so come and kill him, except the salt bush (Gharqad), for it is one of the Jews' trees." Faith, (Sharia Studies) Grade 11, 2003, p 94.
The Palestinian Authority and its Ministry of Education are angry because this hadith has been removed from the textbooks in the Arab schools of Jerusalem.
The removal of the hadith , they argue, is an "ugly crime." In other words, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah is fighting for the right of students to be taught that Jews are "corrupt" and "occupiers" and should be killed, even as they try to hide behind a rock or a tree.
Now has come a fatwa (Islamic religious decree) recently issued by Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, prohibiting schoolchildren from studying in accordance with the Israeli curriculum.
"Teaching the Israeli curriculum in Palestinian schools is dangerous and abusive," the fatwa determined . "The Israeli curriculum consists of matters that contravene the Islamic faith, the Arab identity, and Palestinian values and traditions."
Conspicuously missing from the fatwa was even a single example of how the Israeli curriculum was dangerous and abusive to schoolchildren. The reason: there is nothing there -- in the Israeli curriculum -- that can poison the hearts and minds of the Arab students.
What the Palestinian Authority is failing to tell its people and the rest of the world is that there are hundreds of thousands of Arabs who do study according to the Israeli curriculum. These are the Arab citizens of Israel, who for the past 70 years have been studying in accordance with a curriculum set by successive Israeli governments.
Why is it all right for those Arab children to be studying according to a curriculum that does not contain bigotry and racism, while it is wrong for Arabs living in Jerusalem? Why is it alright for tens of thousands of Arabs to attend Israeli schools, universities and colleges and study according to Israeli curricula, while it is banned for Arabs in Jerusalem to do so?
The Arab citizens of Israel who studied in Israeli educational institutions are probably the most peaceful, pragmatic and moderate Arabs living in the Middle East. They are among the country's leading professors, lawyers, businessmen and physicians; they have their own political parties, members of parliament and sit on Israel's Supreme Court. This is what happens when a student gets a good education, free of indoctrination, incitement and messages of hate.
If the Israeli curriculum is as bad and dangerous as the Palestinian Authority claims, why are thousands of Arabs continuing to enroll in Hebrew University, Haifa University, Tel Aviv University and even the "settler" Ariel University in the northern West Bank? How come the Arab citizens of Israel have never complained about the Israeli educational system?
The number of Israeli Arabs pursuing bachelor's degrees at Israeli universities and colleges, has, in fact, jumped 60% over the last seven years to 47,000 in 2017, according to the Council for Higher Education in Israel. In just the past seven years, the number of Arab students studying in Israeli universities and colleges has climbed 78.5%, the council said.
The answer is because they evidently like the education that Israel has been offering them for the past 70 years. It is an education that teaches them to value life, freedom of speech and democracy, and Arab Israelis admire it. They love the education Israel offers them because it does not demonize any race or group of people. They love it because it does not teach them to kill Jews, but to live with them in peace and security.
This is the truth that the Palestinian Authority does not want to hear. This is the truth that it does not want the rest of the world to hear. Instead, the PA leadership in Ramallah wants to continue to teach children to hate Israel and Jews and prepare to destroy Israel.
The Palestinian minister of education can continue to talk about resisting the Israeli curriculum, but the good news is that the Arabs residents of Jerusalem and the Arab citizens of Israel will continue to knock on the doors of Israeli educational institutions to seek a good education.
The true intention of the Palestinian Authority, namely to raze Israel to the ground and wage jihad against the Jews, has once again been exposed. If one is seeking "ugly crimes," one need look no further.
Bassam Tawil is a Muslim based in the Middle East.
Buzz, you know that the Palestinians plan onnever having peace with Israel, that's why they are teaching the coming generations to hate-it is their goal to fight until Israel ceases to exist. WOuld be nice if they were forced to teach truth, but no one seems to have the ability to force their hand.
BTW, if this is written by someone else, you should link a source......as we have someone running around here pretending to be the NT Thought Police.
If you mean my first comment, I thought it would be pretty obvious that it was a quotation from the main article itself, where the source and author are named.
I think that most people who read the article would recall reading that paragraph in it when they saw the quotation in my comment.
I think that most people who read the article
Ah, no.
Those who come to bash do not read the article. Their comments reflect having read the title, and the source. They then engage in an attempt to discredit the source, despite incontrovertible evidence provided by the author. Right now, we are in a period where most of the mindless detractors are commiserating about how much they hate Donald Trump, and how those who disagree with them on melting all the guns in America are monsters.
Cheers!
Jonathan, your comment certainly applies to a number of NT members who consider Gatestone Institute a discreditable source, but I hope you did not consider Spikegary to be included in that description, because he is not "of that ilk" (I will use that expression since the CoC revision referring to it is not yet published).
I don't feel that it's appropriate to answer queries about a particular poster, but you are correct in your hope.
I'm gonna have to agree with Johnathon P here. We often have a tendency to think that people approach things the way we do. So, for example, if you want to know the facts about any given situation, you might assume that others would as well.
My experience on the Internet over many years has led me to believe that with very rare examples, most people read the title, the source, and than take off on a tirade to push their political agenda. In fact, even if the point they are trying to make isn't really related to the topic of the seed....
A while back I had considered no longer posting videos in my seeds-- because it was rare that anyone clicked on them. And even stopping putting links in my comments-- as most people won't click on them either. (The only reason I still continue is there's always a possibility that someone might be interested in what they say-- but I'm not kidding myself into believing that they bolster my argument in most cases-- because almost no one ever loks at them!
I have become convinved that the nature of the Internet is such that it does not lend itself to intelligent conversation. It tends to encourage superficiality-- quick reactions and comments-- "knee-jerk responses". It tends to promote quick first impressions, as inaccurate as they may be.
IIRC, Gatestone's writers tend to be mostly right of center. Which means that in almost all cases, anyone who is left of center will automatically dismiss anything it says as being false. (Whether or not that's true). BTW my intention is not to criticize those on the left--many on the right do the same thing.
I'm glad you don't rely on videos any more, because I can't open most of them anyway. However, I do click on your links.
The ability-- or in some cases even the intention!
For example,,almost all Arab leaders claim they want peace, but in reality they need the conflict to continue. Because if there were to be peace between Israel and the Arabs, they wouldn't have Israel to use as a scapegoat.
Conditions in the countries (for the majority of the population) are miserable. If the leaders didn't have the evil "Zionist entity" to direct their subjects anger towards...the people might direct it to their own leaders! (And no one realizes that more than Arab rulers...).
I have heard some Israelis say this about that:
If Israel didn't exist...the Arabs would have invented us....
LOL
Hillary Clinton weighs in on the issue of Palestinian textbooks:
.....after I just said I can't open most videos posted on NT (most of which are youtube, which is blocked here), I have to guess what this one's all about.
In case anyone besides myself cannot open youtube comments with no text indication what they're about, here's the story in text: