Last week, a Palestinian boy named Thar Khalil Musalat-al-Yazuri was killed in a clash with IDF soldiers near Ramallah. After al-Yazuri's death, a will was published in the Palestinian media, in which he expressed his desire to become a martyr and wrote, among other things:
The obvious question - even before diving into the disturbing contents of the document - is why does a high school student write a will at all?
A study of the incitement materials to which al-Yazuri was exposed at the Palestinian school where he studied, and which correspond well with the chilling will, may provide at least part of the answer.
The will of Thar Khalil Musalat-al-Yazuri,
Al-Yazuri attended Hashimiya Boys' High School in the Ramallah District.
The textbooks in the school, from which he studied in the last months of his life, were written this year.
They contain severe incitement to violence, along with hatred and anti-Semitism against Jews.
Among other things, the boys learn that jihad "for the liberation of Palestine" is a "private duty for every Muslim," and that they must be "a piece of glass in Israel's throat."
Newton's laws of physics are taught using an example describing a young girl with a stone and a slingshot, where students are asked what the acceleration speed of the stone is "if the girl doubles the slingshot speed but the radius remains constant".
Jews are described in books as greedy and exploitative, skilled in malicious exploitation of the media and politics to their advantage.
Jerusalem "spat out the foreign scum" from it, it is written in one of the books, and elsewhere it is alleged that Israeli soldiers "giggle" while killing Palestinians.
Paradoxically, these materials often push students to develop solidarity with Hamas - the PA's great rival - and this was indeed the case with al-Yazuri, who in his will expressed support for the terrorist organization and adorned it with rocket illustrations.
Incitement materials in Palestinian textbooks,
The IMPACT-se Research Institute, which researches and analyzes textbook content in countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and the Palestinian Authority, recently published encouraging findings indicating a change in attitudes toward Israel and a significant decline in incitement and antisemitic material.
However, the Palestinian Authority is deviating from this trend.
The institute has found that in its textbooks, written in Ramallah by officials whose salaries are funded by aid funds from European taxpayers, there has been significant radicalization in recent years.
The institute's research has found that in all classrooms and in all subjects taught in the Palestinian education system, the new materials, recently written and intended for the current school year, contain more radical content than previous textbooks.
There are more classes that include descriptions of violence, teaching anti-Semitism, glorifying and legitimizing terrorism, encouraging jihad and death, rejecting the idea of peace, promoting blood libels against Israel, deleting the State of Israel from maps, and deleting all content that existed in the past and dealt with peace attempts. The people of Israel and in negotiations with it.
After al-Yazuri's death, Hamas issued a obituary in which he called the boy a "heroic martyr," and distributed a poster with his picture and the organization's logo, in which he was said to have been a member.
Despite Hamas' statement, the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education also issued a statement describing al-Yazuri as a martyr, emphasizing that he was shot near his school.
Fatah official Jibril Rajoub claimed that al-Yazuri was "executed in cold blood."
Hamas and PA condolences on al-Yazuri's death
"In this competition between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, to take as much credit as possible for terrorist acts, we seem to have a draw this time," said Marcus Chef, director of the IMPACT-se Institute.
"There is nothing more sad than the way Palestinian students are being subjected to pedagogical abuse and indoctrination at such a young age."
Arik Agassi, VP of IMPACT-se, added: "As a research institute that has been working for half a century with countries in the Middle East, including Israel, to introduce values of acceptance of the other, peace and tolerance in textbooks, it hurts to see the Palestinian Authority fuel its youth with hate materials. Of this kind, and the results are clear.
"Other countries we have studied in the region, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have understood the power of textbooks as a barrier to radicalization, and are moving in the completely opposite direction of publishing hate speech against Israel, Zionism and the Jews."
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