RSS
New Gaza School Curriculum Promotes Antisemitism and Glorifies Hamas Attacks, Report Finds
A Palestinian school girl Fajr Hmaid, 13, teaches her neighbors’ children an Arabic language lesson as schools are shut due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions, at her family house in Gaza, May 19, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem.
A recently implemented curriculum in Gaza schools, sanctioned by the Palestinian Authority (PA), glorifies the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, praises terrorists who killed children, and promotes antisemitic stereotypes, according to a new report.
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a nonprofit organization that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula around the world, has released a new report analyzing the recently introduced Gaza curriculum produced by the PA, revealing it violates Palestinian commitments made to donor countries for educational reform.
Last year, the PA committed to the European Union that it would reform its educational content to fully align with UNESCO’s standards of peace and tolerance in education, in exchange for continued EU funding.
Despite international expectations for reform, the IMPACT-se study shows that the 2025 educational curriculum “fails to meet basic international educational standards,” with the new textbooks promoting antisemitic narratives, glorifying violence, and even celebrating the mass murders carried out during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel.
According to the new report, the 2024-2025 curriculum, which is being taught to nearly 300,000 Palestinian school children in grades 1-12 across Gaza, erases the State of Israel from the map and is filled with “graphic depictions of violence.”
For example, students are taught in geography and civics lessons that cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa are identified as Palestinian, promoting the belief that Israel’s existence is illegitimate.
Some of these textbooks openly glorify the Oct. 7 attacks, referring to the attackers as “heroes” and “symbols of pride,” celebrating the single deadliest assault on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
“We see again that the PA continues to deeply embed hatred and violence in its curriculum and brazenly continues to teach antisemitism, the glorification of terrorism, and the dehumanization of Israelis,” IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff said in a statement.
“Palestinian classrooms remain a breeding ground for extremism, with new educational materials reinforcing the same old dangerous narratives,” he added.
The study also reveals how PA-sanctioned educational materials promote antisemitic narratives and imagery. In an 11th-grade history textbook, the ancient stereotype of Jews controlling the world is perpetuated through an image of a hand with a Star of David gripping a globe.
In another example, an Islamic education textbook depicts “the Jews” as “deceitful, immoral manipulators who are hostile to Islam.”
According to the IMPACT-se watchdog group’s investigation, the concept of jihad as a religious obligation is a central theme in the new curriculum, teaching students from a young age that martyrdom is a path to divine reward. Starting in 1st grade, martyrs are glorified as having divine status.
The PA’s remote learning program for both Gaza and Hamas-run schools continues to promote hate and violence, with new materials even teaching science and math in ways that fuel hatred of Israel, the study finds.
For example, in a 3rd-grade math exercise, students are asked to write the number of martyrs killed during the violent First Intifada against Israel. In a 9th-grade statistics lesson, students are asked to calculate the number of “martyrs” killed by Israel.
The report finds that students are encouraged to view violence against Israel as a noble and necessary duty. In such textbooks, terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi, who led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre that killed 38 Israelis – including 13 children – are celebrated as role models.
In another example from earlier this year, a video shows young girls performing a nationalistic dance with throat-slitting gestures. The song playing in the background includes the lyrics, “We ignited the intifada, with a stone and a knife,” while the girls chant enthusiastically, “Challenge accepted, where are the Zionist and the soldier?”
The post New Gaza School Curriculum Promotes Antisemitism and Glorifies Hamas Attacks, Report Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.