When a class of Palestinian ninth graders in Gaza recently discussed the deadly 1929 riots over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, it was guided by a new textbook, introduced this fall by the Islamist Hamas movement.People are acting shocked. Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted "It seems as if Hamas's "anti-Zionism" is actually plain old anti-Semitism. Not that we didn't know that already." and "Children in Gaza are being taught that the Western Wall is Muslim and that the Torah is 'fabricated.'"
Asked the lesson of the uprising, one of the 40 boys in class promptly answered, “Al Buraq Wall is an Islamic property,” using the Muslim name for the site, one of the holiest in Judaism. Pleased, the teacher then inquired whether the students would boycott Israeli products, as Arabs had boycotted Jewish businesses in 1929. A resounding chorus of “Yes!” came back from the class.
For the first time since taking control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the Hamas movement is deviating from the approved Palestinian Authority curriculum, using the new texts as part of a broader push to infuse the next generation with its militant ideology.
Among other points, the books, used by 55,000 children in the eighth, ninth and 10th grades as part of a required “national education” course of study in government schools, do not recognize modern Israel, or even mention the Oslo Peace Accords the country signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s.
...What Gaza teenagers are reading in their 50-page hardcover texts this fall includes references to the Jewish Torah and Talmud as “fabricated,” and a description of Zionism as a racist movement whose goals include driving Arabs out of all of the area between the Nile in Africa and the Euphrates in Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
“Palestine,” in turn, is defined as a state for Muslims stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. A list of Palestinian cities includes Haifa, Beersheba and Acre — all within Israel’s 1948 borders. And the books rebut Jewish historical claims to the territory by saying, “The Jews and the Zionist movement are not related to Israel, because the sons of Israel are a nation which had been annihilated.”
Yet the moderate, peace-loving PA has officially stated that the Western Wall is Islamic and has no holiness to Jews as well.
Official PA media refers to Israeli cities as "Palestinian" all the time, as do PA textbooks.
And it isn't Hamas saying that the Torah is "fabricated" - it is a mainstream Islamic opinion. That is how, for example, Islam can celebrate Abraham's sacrifice of Ishmael instead of Isaac - they claim, as doctrine, that the Torah text was corrupted. If Goldberg is honest, he would notice that Islam is antisemitic, not just Hamas.
So what's the difference between what Hamas is saying in textbooks now and what the PA and indeed all Muslim countries tell their people all the time?
It's easy to marginalize Hamas for its opinions of Jews and Israel, but when the PA's viewpoints are virtually identical, isn't that a bigger story?
Finally, the question I asked in May when I first reported this story - since UNRWA policy is to use the textbooks of its host country, will it start using Hamas textbooks in its schools? UNWRA schools in Gazaalready teach jihad, so it is hardly a stretch.
