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Jordanian School Textbooks Still Promote Antisemitism Even as State Maintains Peace With Israel, Study Finds
King Abdullah II of Jordan attends an official welcoming ceremony at the Monument to the Unknown Soldier in Sofia, Bulgaria, on April 3, 2025. Photo: STR/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Jordan’s textbooks in schools continue to promote antisemitic ideas and justify violence against Israel, including the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, according to a new report.
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), an international research group which analyzes schoolbooks and curricula around the world, released a new study this week revealing the extent to which hateful beliefs against Jews and other groups have penetrated the Jordanian educational system.
Applying the analytic standards of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), IMPACT-se reviewed 294 textbooks used in Jordan during the 2023-2025 school years spanning such subjects as Islamic education, Arabic, social studies, civics, history, and geography.
“The Jordanian curriculum continues to fall short of UNESCO-derived standards of peace and tolerance in education,” the report states. “While some content promotes general concepts of tolerance and moderation often citing the Amman Message (a statement calling for tolerance and unity in the Muslim world) and highlighting Christian-Muslim harmony — the curriculum continues to proliferate anti-Jewish narratives and justify violence against Israel.”
The report’s findings are “disappointing” given Jordan’s role as a Western ally that has maintained a peace treaty with Israel since 1994, according to IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff.
“It is therefore particularly disappointing and concerning that Jordan’s curriculum includes some of the oldest antisemitic tropes, glorifies martyrdom, and portrays Israel with such hostility,” Sheff said in a statement to multiple news outlets. “Oct. 7 was the most brutal attack against Jews since the Holocaust, yet it is described in textbooks as legitimate resistance.”
The report describes one textbook for students as downplaying the Oct. 7 onslaught, in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their invasion of southern Israel, and labeling those taken captive as “settlers” living in “Israeli colonies which surround the Gaza Strip,” thus offering justification for their captivity, torture, and murders.
While the Jordanian curriculum emphasizes religious moderation, tolerance and peacemaking, “these values are generally not applied to Jews or Israel, either historically or in the present day,” according to Impact-se. Instead, the textbooks generally cast Jews in a negative light, “particularly in the context of early Islamic history, using antisemitic messages that depict lying, treachery, deceitfulness, and hostility as ‘natural qualities’ and inherent ‘traits of the Jews.’”
Antisemitic ideas about Jewish involvement in the economy also predominate. The report notes that textbooks accuse Jews of “exploitation” and usury, and the religious curriculum accuses Jews of acting on behalf of Satan and fomenting conflicts between Muslims. The books also deny Jewish connections to Israel and dispute the facts underlying Jewish religious beliefs.
The textbooks embrace silence when it comes to the Holocaust. A lesson on World War II reportedly “ignores the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities, and excuses actions of Nazi Germany.”
This animosity toward Jews juxtaposes with more positive depictions of Christians who are characterized as “an integral part of the Jordanian social fabric” while “other religious groups are rarely represented.”
Israel’s history comes in for demonization and distortion in Jordanian schools. The texts analyzed characterize the Jewish state as illegitimate, racist, colonialist, and expansionist while Arab peace deals with Israel are cast as begrudging concessions rather than genuine bridgebuilding. Poetry taught in the classroom celebrates violence and expelling Israelis. Interpretations of the Islamic doctrine of Jihad emphasize violent interpretations and martyrdom.
The curriculum also casts LGBTQ individuals as threats, according to Impact-se’s report. One book describes homosexuality and “homosexual propaganda” as a threat to humanity while another condemns those who “imitate” the other gender. Women generally receive respectful portrayals, though some religious textbooks contain stereotypes of wives submitting to their husbands and deferring to their decisions.
“The Jordanian curriculum persistently falls short of UNESCO-derived standards of peace and tolerance in education. While certain content promotes broad principles of tolerance and moderation, it continues to reinforce anti-Jewish narratives and legitimize violence against Israel,” the report states in its main findings. “Recent textbook revisions have not only failed to rectify these issues but, in some cases, have exacerbated them by incorporating even more extreme antisemitic tropes, homophobic rhetoric, and a heightened hostility toward the peace treaty with Israel.”
On April 23, Jordan banned the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood and confiscated its assets, a response to the arrest of 16 members after determining its involvement in a foiled terrorist plot linked to Iran. The banning makes it a criminal offense to promote the Brotherhood’s Islamist imperialist ideology or to publish its books. Political analyst Mohammed Khair Rawashdeh described the move as “a final divorce between the state and the Brotherhood after decades of fluctuating between co-opting them and merely tolerating their presence.”
In August 2024, a “high-ranking” Jordanian source told Israel’s Channel 12 that the Hashemite Kingdom had agreed to allow the Jewish state the use of its airspace to repel attacks from the Islamic regime in Iran.
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Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
The post Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
The post Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
The post Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.