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EU parliamentarians are clear: Hate has no place in the Palestinian curriculum. So why can’t they get their reviews and criticisms right?
Is the European Commission serious about ending Palestinian hate education? Given the recent debacle on the matter within the European Union institutions over the last few months, some parliamentarians are beginning to suspect that it isn’t, particularly.
It has long been known within Brussels’s corridors of power that school textbooks issued by the Palestinian Authority and funded in large part by European taxpayers include incitement to violence and egregious antisemitism.
Children are taught that Israel is the enemy, that terrorists are martyrs, and that their actions are to be emulated. And not just in religious or history studies – first graders are taught the word “martyr” when learning their Arabic alphabet. Newtonian physics is taught via the example of the slingshot.
The issue has been raised in Brussels at least since January 2008 when Britain’s Taxpayers’ Alliance released its report Funding Hate Education. A follow up report in 2011 drew widespread support from across the political spectrum. President Barack Obama stated at the time: “[ The Palestinians] have to deal with incitement issues.”
Further reports, including two by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education ( IMPACT- SE), an Israeli NGO, and votes within the European Parliament for action placed mounting pressure on the commission to act, and so in May 2019 the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, announced that a full- scale review of the Palestinian curriculum was to take place. In September 2019 the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research ( GEI) embarked upon this review.
A leaked presentation on the initial findings suggested errors in the works: mistranslations and a lack of understanding of the culture among them. The initial report, when released in August, confirmed what the leaked presentation suggested: that the institute, having taken a preliminary look at the books, had found that although there were examples of incitement, overall the books were improving and showed a movement toward normalization of relations with Israel.
In one example taken from the books, Israeli and Palestinian firefighters are shown training alongside each other. “This example promotes tolerance toward Israeli individuals,” the researchers said in their presentation.
Only, there was a problem: the researchers weren’t comparing like for like. The example of the firefighters had actually come from an Arabic- language textbook produced by the Jerusalem Municipality for use by Arab- Israeli children living in Israel, not a textbook issued by the PA. In short, the researchers were using Israeli examples of tolerance to make a case that the PA was growing more tolerant.
How could such a basic error have occurred? Could it really be that difficult to hit upon the right books?
“IT’S SPECTACULARLY easy to get the right books,” Marcus Sheff, CEO of IMPACT- SE told The Jerusalem Post. “In this business of reviewing the core curricula, you really only have one job and that’s to get the right books.”
When initially questioned on the matter, GEI explained that the Israeli books had not been used in error. Rather, they were being used as a comparator, the researchers said.
This explanation was then given by EU officials and British government ministers alike. For example, on September 17, 2020, in response to a written question posed by an MP, Britain’s minister of state for the Middle East and North Africa,
James Cleverly, stated: “Our European partners have been clear that the study does not look at Israeli textbooks. We understand that the methodology of the study will include a separate section on a very limited sample of textbooks used in east Jerusalem and modified by Israel for the purpose of comparison.”
Yet the initial report strongly suggested that the researchers believed they were looking at PA- issued books when they conducted their review.
Two weeks ago the matter came to a head in the German press when, in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel, the director of the study, Dr. Riem Spielhaus, admitted that the team had simply made a mistake. It had indeed reviewed the wrong books. The following day, Lennart Phaler of Die Welt reported that when he had interviewed the EU’s spokeswoman a week previously, she had given the same line as before – that the books were being used as a comparator. In short, he
said, she had lied to him.
The Post reached out to Cleverly to ask how this could have happened. In response, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development official said: “The UK remains concerned about allegations of incitement to violence in the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum.
“We have repeatedly raised this issue at the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority and successfully lobbied our European partners to commission an independent review of Palestinian textbooks, which is ongoing.” The UK, the official added, is not funding the EU study.
The commission, for its part, told
the Post: “The study does not look at Israeli textbooks. The methodology of the study will include a separate section on a very limited sample of textbooks used in east Jerusalem and modified by Israel for the purpose of comparison. The section on modified textbooks will clearly put the material analyzed within its specific context. Taking these limitations into account, it is too early to draw conclusions.”
“The bigger picture is this,” Sheff said. “This institute was hired at great expense – € 220,000 – to conduct this review so that it would inform the European Commission about the money that it’s spent supporting the Palestinian ministry of education. If they had not been caught in these omissions, these falsehoods and these attempts to excuse and also to justify acts of terror, this report would have been on its way to EU, who, one would think, would then say ‘ That’s good to know, everything’s fine then with the Palestinian curriculum, let’s carry on funding it.’”
Now patience within the European Parliament is starting to run short.
Earlier this month, a cross- party group of 21 MEPs wrote to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, and Neighborhood Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi to call on the commission to partially withhold funding to the PA until it purges antisemitic and incitement content
from its school textbooks, and further called upon the commission to cut ties with GEI. They have yet to receive a reply.
“We will continue to tackle this problem no matter what the commission says or doesn’t say,” MEP Niclas Herbst, who serves as vice chairman of the Budget Committee in the European Parliament, told the Post.
He had already written to the commission regarding the GEI’s report back in June, and has yet to receive a reply to that letter either.
“This seems to be the thinking by the commission, especially by Borrell: if you don’t talk about the problem, there is no problem, and maybe that’s the real issue here.
“I’m quite angry about this. The commission, especially Borrell, is acting like a little child. That’s certainly not going to make the situation any better.”
Herbst, along with a number of his parliamentary colleagues, is looking for creative ways to stymie the flow of money to the PA for use in education. In May, the European Parliament passed three resolutions by a more than 60% majority condemning Palestinian hate education and opposing EU aid money being used for this purpose.
He also proposed an amendment to set aside, say, 5% of the budget for UNWRA, on the basis that it