BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – MARCH 03: A general view of the European Parliament building in Leopold Espace on March 03, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium. The European Parliament has announced that it will limit access to visitors for three weeks, in an attempt to control the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Operating from Brussels for most of the year with a monthly plenary session in Strasbourg, the Parliament receives around 700,000 visitors a year so has decided to place a halt on all seminars and events for outside visitors for a temporary period. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images) The European Parliament, which is the legislative branch of the European Union (EU), passed a resolution on May 14 denouncing the anti-Semitic incitement permeating Palestinian textbooks.
According to the Times of Israel, the resolution states that “problematic material in Palestinian school textbooks has still not been removed and [Parliament] is concerned about the continued failure to act effectively against hate speech and violence in school textbooks.”
The resolution goes on to state that EU funding should never go toward “textbooks and educational material which incite[s] religious radicalization, intolerance, ethnic violence and martyrdom among children.”
Jewish groups praised the resolution.
“We applaud the @Europarl_EN for calling out #hate in Palestinian Authority textbooks, exposed by @IMPACT_SE’s research,” Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted. “In the US, ADL & IMPACT urge Members of Congress to support the bipartisan Peace & Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act.”
We applaud the @Europarl_EN for calling out #hate in Palestinian Authority textbooks, exposed by @IMPACT_SE's research. In the US, ADL & IMPACT urge Members of Congress to support the bipartisan Peace & Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act: https://t.co/HJyW6ChEmX
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) May 15, 2020
American Jewish Committee EU Office Director Daniel Schwammenthal similarly said in a statement, “The European Parliament deserves praise for calling out the Palestinian Authority’s systematic incitement in school textbooks. By putting both Ramallah and the EU Commission on notice, lawmakers took a clear stand against EU funds being misused to poison the minds of young Palestinians. Palestinian incitement remains one of the main obstacles to a negotiated two-solution with Israel.”
David Siegel, president of Friends of the European Leadership Network think tank, also said in a statement, “After having monitored the drafting of this report closely from the beginning, we are very happy to see this excellent result. It is a major achievement for Israel’s security, but also for preparing the ground for future coexistence.”
He added: “As this strong and unambiguous wording enables the Parliament to hold the European Commission accountable for their aid to the [Palestinian Authority] when it comes to Palestinian children’s textbooks and preventing EU funding from ending up in the hands of terrorists.”
In September, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) issued a report stating that Palestinian curricula in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has gotten worse since 2000.
“There is a systematic insertion of violence, martyrdom and jihad across all grades and subjects in a more extensive and sophisticated manner, embracing a full spectrum of extreme nationalist ideas and Islamist ideologies that extend even into the teaching of mathematics and science,” the report stated.
IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff told the Jewish Chronicle after the passage of the European Parliament’s resolution, “We are proud to have worked with members to pass these resolutions. There now must be a moment of truth for the European Union. Will it continue to ignore the parliament that oversees its spending? Will the [European] Commission now publicly release the freshly minted report on the Palestinian Authority’s textbooks?”
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