Palestinian School Textbooks: EU Review

Debate between Caroline Ansell and Alistair Carmichael

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the EU Review into Palestinian school textbooks.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. It is a privilege to speak in this place, and I do so today with a keen sense of responsibility. Very recently, yet more Palestinian and Israeli lives were lost to conflict and citizens left traumatised. The ceasefire has held, mercifully, but in the words of Mahatma Gandhi,

“If we wish to create a lasting peace, we must begin with the children.”

Children’s education is a long-term, strategic first frontline for all parties and all agendas. As far back as Aristotle, that has been understood. He said:

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”

In the context of this debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) first raised the alarm about radicalisation in the Palestinian curriculum in the European Parliament, 20 years ago. Last year, a debate in this House on the same subject highlighted shocking examples in the educational materials in use by British-funded teachers in Palestinian Authority schools. The answer to this, we were told then, would be found in the EU review—the long-awaited work of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research. Ministers publicly vowed to take action if the report found evidence of material that incites violence. The report on that review has just been published, and it does.

In opening the debate, I want to bring into the light examples of the troubling findings cited in the report, share wider analysis and critique of the review itself, which casts a yet longer shadow, and demonstrate that we are not alone in our challenge to the Palestinian Authority. On a personal level, I should note that I am a teacher by profession, and for many years before coming to this place I worked as a school inspector, scrutinising the curriculum and evaluating learning. I should also note that I visited the region a number of years ago with the Conservative Friends of Israel and had the opportunity to speak with both Israelis and Palestinians.

The EU review rests on an analysis of a sample of 156 textbooks and teacher guides published between 2017 and 2019 by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and, later, a further 18 that were released online in 2020. The review seeks to establish whether textbooks meet international UNESCO standards, UNESCO’s mission being

“to contribute to the building of a culture of peace”.

The EU report clearly identifies evidence of anti-Jewish racism within the curriculum. It says of a chapter in one textbook that it

“sends the message that the Jews as a collective are dangerous and deceptive, and demonises them. It generates feelings of hatred towards Jews and…must be characterised as anti-Semitic.”

Of that particular reference, the report’s authors note that a 2019 revision—the exchange of a photo—certainly does not de-escalate the messaging.

The report identifies examples of terrorists glorified as role models, most notably Dalal Mughrabi, who was responsible for the murder of 38 Israelis in one of the country’s worst ever terror attacks. The report highlights maps of a territorially whole Palestine as an imagined homeland that negates the existence of the state of Israel—a denial of reality. The report finds that one history textbook features a doctored copy of a landmark letter sent by Yasser Arafat to his Israeli counterpart during the Oslo peace process, with Arafat’s commitment to peaceful co-existence free from violence and all other acts that endanger peace and stability removed.

All subjects in the curriculum at all levels lend themselves and pivot to the conflict, whether it is around the environment and pollution, prepositions, illiteracy, or graphical visualisations or pie charts in maths. At first glance, there appears to be positive change and an increased focus on human rights coverage. There is a recognition that human rights are a universal notion, but there is no carry-through or discussion of the rights of Israelis. It is used only as a prism for understanding violations and where most examples are carried out by Israeli protagonists.

The report states that what is problematic is the phrasing,

“which implies systematic violations of children‘s rights reaching all the way to torture and murder, and this has the potential to dehumanise the (Israeli) ‘other’.”

It goes on:

“Above all, the textbooks fail to engage with the question of whether violence carried out by Palestinian actors might equally constitute a violation of human rights.”

Textbooks call for tolerance, mercy, forgiveness and justice, but they are not applied to Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The position of the international community is considered unfair because it sides with the “Zionist occupier” by keeping quiet about its crimes. At the end of a lesson on children’s rights, pupils are asked in an exercise to monitor and list Zionist violations against children in Palestine by following news pages or social media, and then read them to classmates.

Observations noted in the report indicate that the peace process has in fact gone backwards or been downgraded since 2014. The report states:

“In the entire body of textbooks examined for this Report…the depiction of peaceful attempts to resolve the conflict is limited to a few pages”.

The unilateral disengagement of the occupation of Gaza in 2015 is pitched as a positive development, but, critically, without mentioning Israel.

The report’s findings on material are deeply problematic, but there are also problems with the report itself. Glaring omissions, phantom changes, the scale of the review and the seeming mismatch between the review’s conclusions and the evidence on which it rests are all in the frame.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight the deficiencies of the material, which are outlined comprehensively and in a very balanced way in the Georg Eckert report, but does she accept that the overall conclusion of the report is that,

“the textbooks adhere to UNESCO standards and adopt criteria that are prominent in international education discourse, including a strong focus on human rights”?

If she is inviting the House to accept the material that she quotes, should she not also invite the House to accept the conclusions of the authors of the report?

[Caroline Ansell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, which strikes at the heart of the point I was making: although there is increased coverage and focus on human rights, that does not extend to the Israelis. Actually, the very point that I rested on was that the conclusion rests on a report that offers up, in its body, example after example that contradict those UNESCO values. We need to understand that and challenge it.