A religious instruction exercise in a Palestinian school textbook asking students to consider the role of women in “jihad against the Jewish Zionist occupation.” Image: Screenshot.

A European Union commissioner has said that funding from the 27-member bloc of nations for schools in the Palestinian Authority (PA) must be conditioned on respect in the curriculum for tolerance and non-violence alongside the outright rejection of antisemitism.

In a tweet on Monday, Oliver Varhelyi — the EU’s Enlargement Commissioner — urged the EU to adopt a “firm commitment to fight antisemitism and engage with Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to promote quality education for Palestinian children and ensure full adherence to UNESCO standards of peace, tolerance, co-existence, non-violence in Palestinian textbooks.”

Varhelyi emphasized that the “conditionality of our financial assistance in the educational sector needs to be duly considered” — implying that the PA may face a loss in funding should it fail to comply with EU demands to remove violent and antisemitic incitement from school textbooks.

Varhelyi’s statement followed the publication last Friday of a report produced by the Germany-based Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research that analyzed 156 textbooks and 16 teacher guides published between 2017 and 2019 by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, in a range of subjects.

The report was allegedly kept under “lock and key” after being commissioned in 2019, only seeing the light of day following protests from several members of the European Parliament.

The report found that PA textbooks trafficked in antisemitic tropes, removed previously-included references to to Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements, and “glorified” terrorists convicted of killing Israelis as heroes. The books also portrayed violence against civilians as part of a “narrative of resistance,” and conspicuously delegitimized Israel, erasing the Jewish state from maps and even avoiding mentioning its name.

The report’s executive summary observed that “Palestinian textbooks are produced and located within an environment saturated with ongoing occupation, conflict, and violence, which they in turn reflect.”

Last week, a cross-party group of 22 European Parliament members sent a letter to the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, demanding aid be withheld to the PA over “preach[ing] antisemitism, incitement, and the glorification of violence and terrorism… violating fundamental EU values and our declared goal to help advance peace and the Two State Solution.”

The signatories acknowledged that the request to suspend assistance was not “made lightly.”

“It is precisely because we strongly support the goal of a negotiated two-state solution that we have reached the difficult conclusion that the EU has no choice but to apply the principle of conditionality and to withhold some funding,” the letter stated. “It is impossible to imagine a future where Palestinians and Israelis will live in peace and security next to each other as long as Palestinian children are being taught to hate.”

Varhelyi’s adoption of a similar stance towards the PA was enthusiastically welcomed by an Israel-based research institute that has published several reports on the deficiencies of Palestinian schools.

“We are extremely grateful to Mr. Varhelyi for his integrity,” Marcus Sheff — director of IMPACT-se, which surveys school textbooks in the Middle East for bias, racism, antisemitism and other forms of hatred — said in a statement. “Ultimately, his department gives aid to the Palestinian Authority’s education system and it commissioned the report on Palestinian textbooks. We commend him for his leadership, for cutting through the noise around this report and clearly stating that the EU cannot be a party to the funding of hate-teaching.”