By Rachel Avraham
For years, Western diplomats, international donors and human-rights organizations have repeated the same hopeful mantra: “Education is the path to peace.” Yet a new comprehensive analysis by IMPACT-se, the leading research institute monitoring global curricula, confronts that optimism with a far darker truth. According to their latest report, antisemitism is not fading from Palestinian education — it remains a central ideological pillar of the curriculum.
Not a mistake. Not an outdated paragraph.
Not a neglected page. A systematic architecture of hate.
IMPACT-se’s findings dismantle one of the most persistent illusions in the international discourse: that Palestinian Authority (PA) schools promote coexistence or prepare children for compromise. Instead, the research shows that from early grades to high school, students are taught to view Jews not as neighbors, but as enemies; not as human beings, but as targets.
The report exposes a pattern that would be unthinkable in any educational system funded by Western states. Geography lessons erase Israel from maps entirely. History books depict Jews as foreign invaders with no cultural, historical or religious connection to the land. Religious studies recycle medieval antisemitic tropes. Literature lessons praise “martyrdom.” Mathematics exercises involve calculating the number of dead Israelis.
And at the emotional core of the curriculum lies a single message: Violence is not only acceptable — it is heroic. For a region desperate for stability, this is not merely troubling. It is dangerous.
Western taxpayers continue to finance much of the PA school system, often through UNRWA, despite repeated warnings from Israeli, European and American oversight committees. Donor governments routinely pledge reforms. UN officials promise revisions. Committees speak of “pilot programs,” “monitoring efforts” and “future adjustments.”
But when IMPACT-se’s researchers opened the new textbooks, they found the same content — sometimes softened in language, always unchanged in intention.
One of the report’s starkest revelations concerns the portrayal of Jews themselves. Descriptions go far beyond political disagreement. Children are taught that Jews are inherently treacherous, greedy, deceitful and violent — a theme the institute identified in multiple subjects, across multiple grade levels. In the Western world, such content would be grounds for shutting down an entire school district. In the Palestinian curriculum, however, it is state doctrine.
Even more alarming is the treatment of violence. Terror attacks against Israeli families are framed not as crimes but as “defensive acts.” Streets, squares and school buildings continue to be named after terrorists responsible for mass killings. Students are instructed to memorize biographies of “martyrs” who died while attacking Israeli civilians.
The message is unmistakable:
Peace is shameful. Violence is sacred.
The consequences of this indoctrination are not theoretical. Israeli security officials have long warned that many lone-wolf attacks — stabbings, car-rammings, shootings — are carried out by teenagers who have grown up within this educational ecosystem. Hatred taught in classrooms becomes action on the streets.
Yet even as IMPACT-se’s evidence mounts, many Western institutions prefer denial. Some argue that criticism of the curriculum “stigmatizes Palestinian identity.” Others claim that removing antisemitic content would create “political imbalance.” These statements reveal a troubling truth: international diplomacy is often willing to excuse incitement against Jews that would be unacceptable against any other group.
The result is a moral double standard — and children pay the price. There is a profound irony in this.
International donors insist they support Palestinian education to foster “critical thinking.” But what critical thinking can exist in a system where Jewish existence is erased, terrorism is glorified and peace is portrayed as betrayal? How can a generation raised on hatred be expected to build coexistence later in life?
The most honest answer — the one many diplomats avoid — is simple: They cannot.
And this is not merely a Palestinian issue. It is an international one. As long as Western governments fund a curriculum that glorifies extremism, they are participating — willingly or not — in the manufacturing of future instability. They are investing in the next generation of radicalization.
This makes IMPACT-se’s work not only important but indispensable. It provides what politics often fears: evidence. Hard data. Direct quotations. Page numbers. Scans of the curriculum. Proof that cannot be dismissed as “perception” or hidden behind diplomatic ambiguity.
The report does not claim that education alone determines the future of the conflict — but it shows that education can block any possibility of a peaceful future. Societies rarely rise above what they teach their children. And today, Palestinian classrooms teach a worldview where coexistence with Jews is unimaginable.
The path forward is not complicated. It requires courage from the international community:
Stop funding incitement.
Demand reform before financing.
Tie every future dollar to verifiable textbook changes.
Hold UNRWA accountable.
And above all, recognize that peace cannot begin with children taught to hate.
Education is supposed to be the bridge between peoples. In Palestinian classrooms, it has become the wall.
If the world truly seeks long-term stability, it must begin where every society begins: in the pages of its schoolbooks — where futures are written, and where hatred must no longer be allowed to grow.
