Call for action over ‘jihadi textbooks’ in schools funded by British aid
AN EMERGENCY MPs’ debate is being held tomorrow after the Daily Mail revealed how ‘jihadi textbooks’ were taught in Palestinian schools funded by £120 million of taxpayers’ cash.
UK foreign aid helps pay for schools in Gaza and the West Bank, where reading exercises for six-year-olds include the words ‘martyr’ and ‘attack’.
Eight-year-olds recite poems vowing to ‘sacrifice my blood to eliminate the usurper from my country’.
Nine-year-olds study maths by adding the number of martyrs in Palestinian uprisings in textbooks illustrated with pictures of their funerals.
And ten-year-olds learn the most important thing is giving their life for ‘jihad and struggle’.
The Mail reported last month that physics is taught to 11-year-olds with the image of a boy with a slingshot targeting Israeli soldiers. Tory MP Jonathan Gullis has now scheduled a Westminster Hall debate on ‘radicalisation in the Palestinian school curriculum’.
He said: ‘As a former teacher, I was shocked by what I read in the Mail. We have an absolute duty to protect children and teach them to strive for peace – not extremism and hate.
‘I’m hopeful that MPs will support this attempt to stop radicalisation, extremism and the incitement of terrorism.’
Peers have also raised concerns with Tory Baroness Altmann warning that Palestinian children were being ‘fed hate’. The British aid money goes via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
Over the past five years, the UK has given £330 million and pledged another £65 million for this year. Some 5 per cent of the funding goes on education. Of that, about 62 per cent is for schools in the West Bank and Gaza where 325,000 under-16s attend UNRWA schools. It means about £120 million of UK funding has gone where the textbooks are used.
UNRWA said the schools had to follow a curriculum set by the Palestinian Authority, which produces and pays for the books. But it stressed it has ‘robust systems’ to ensure education in its schools reflects UN values. It also rejected the characterisation of the books as ‘jihadi’.
The Department for International Development has said the UK lobbied for an independent review of the material, which was now being led by the EU.