In Canada, newly arrived Gazan refugees offered Palestinian curriculum

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Canada’s Jewish community is condemning an offer from the Palestinian Authority to teach its curriculum to children who recently arrived in Canada from Gaza, calling it “unacceptable” and “blatantly inappropriate.”

An announcement on the website for the Palestinian General Delegation to Canada, which represents the interests of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the governing body in the West Bank, is currently inviting people to sign up for the program via a Google form.

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The message, originally posted in Arabic and translated using Google, urges Gazan students in Canada to “register their data as soon as possible” to facilitate distance learning.

Shimon Koffler Fogel, president and CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), criticized the curriculum for indoctrinating youth into hating Israel, Jews and the West.

“This curriculum has been widely condemned for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and hate, rejecting a two-state solution, and inserting examples of violence into subjects like science and math,” Fogel told National Post in a statement.

“Supporting newcomers and refugees is an integral part of Canadian values — but allowing hateful curriculum to be taught on Canadian soil is blatantly inappropriate.”

Allowing hateful curriculum to be taught on Canadian soil is blatantly inappropriate

Mona Abuamara, the Palestinian ambassador to Canada, said that the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education is offering the online curriculum for all Gazan students worldwide who are unable to attend school, including in countries where education may not be free.

“This is one network for all the Gazan kids who have been dismissed from their home and are unable to continue taking their courses. So, we are starting with gathering the information,” the ambassador told National Post in a phone interview. “Basically, the ministry then would be able to know how to provide help for them, so they won’t lose any more time or years of education.”

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Under a special temporary residency program launched in early 2024, over 200 Gazans had arrived in Canada by late August, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The program, initially offering 1,000 visas, has since expanded to 5,000, but Gazans have had difficulty leaving the country.

In Canada, children generally face fewer obstacles when enrolling in a local school. According to Abuamara, many may simply enter the Canadian education system without needing the PA curriculum.

“We did not receive any responses, still, and we doubt that in Canada there would be a big number, because we don’t think that there is a number from Gaza that have kids arrive here, and would fit in this situation, to take online courses, to continue education,” she said.

Since the war began in Gaza, the embassy in Ottawa has helped some students who have come to Canada to complete their exams for the last academic year, which was interrupted, she said.

The registration form lists subjects such as science, Arabic literature, entrepreneurship, business and “Sharia” for grades 10, 11 and 12, according to a Google translation. The PA ambassador did not respond to National Post’s query about what the curriculum teaches on Sharia, which is Islam’s legal system. For grades one to nine, students can learn “core subjects,” which are not listed.

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Einat Wilf, an author and former member of the Israeli parliament, said that those coming to Canada, even if they are midway through their school year, should be educated according to the Canadian curriculum and values, not according to the PA’s curriculum.

“It is a curriculum that is, in almost every subject, tends to emphasize concepts that are all about negating the right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state of the land. It’s about negating the history of the Jewish people in the land,” she said of the Palestinian curriculum. “It’s about indoctrinating students to this idea of return, which is basically another Palestinian code word for no space for the Jewish people anywhere between the river to the sea.”

In April, the European Union condemned the PA curriculum for promoting hatred against Israel. The EU Parliament’s document “condemns the problematic and hateful contents encouraging violence, spreading antisemitism and inciting hatred in Palestinian school textbooks, drafted by (European) Union-funded civil servants as well as in supplementary educational materials developed by UNRWA staff and taught in its schools.”

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Palestinian textbooks have faced widespread criticism for fostering radicalization, antisemitism, glorifying terrorism and erasing Israel’s existence among generations of students in Gaza and the West Bank.

“When there is no idea of peacemaking in these textbooks, when they talk about jihad and martyrdom as the most important meanings of life, that is what we saw, that kind of incitement, day after day in school, and an official school surrounding is obviously going to be disastrous in relation to the education of people and the incitement of them to commit these terrible acts,” said Marcus Sheff, CEO of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a London-based research centre that analyzes educational content.

“That is a curriculum which cannot possibly be continued to be taught, particularly to people who are from Gaza, a place that, as a result of this education, were the people who started this terrible situation by the October 7 massacre.”

According to IMPACT-se, students in the West Bank and East Jerusalem used Jordanian textbooks until 2000, while Gazans were taught from the Egyptian curriculum. In 2016, the Palestinian Authority revised the curriculum, which was expected to be more moderate compared to what was taught between 2000 and 2016.

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“The curriculum which emerged was more radical than the previous curriculum. It wasn’t a reform, it was a radicalization of textbooks, so that any ideas of peacemaking were entirely removed, any possibility of living peacefully with Israel or with Jews was removed,” said Sheff, who has monitored Palestinian textbooks for more than two decades.

“What was left was a very clear vision of one state from the river to the sea, which will be gained through martyrdom, through jihad.”

According to a May 2021 report on the curriculum by IMPACT-se, textbooks prominently feature the glorification of terrorism, antisemitism and violence.

Jihad “for the liberation of Palestine” is presented as a “private obligation for every Muslim,” according to the report on educational materials used in grades one through 12.

An Islamic education chapter teaches that Jews are corrupt and are doomed to destruction as their “corruption of the land was and will be the cause of their annihilation.”

On more than two hundred maps used in the textbooks, Israel’s existence is denied and modern Jewish Israeli cities that exist within state borders are erased, while Arab cities, regions and topography in Israel are presented as Palestinian, and under Palestinian sovereignty.

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A fourth grade math exercise asks students to calculate the number of “martyrs” (including those who have led suicide bombings on buses and shopping centres) in Palestinian uprisings and it is accompanied by a photograph of raised coffins at a mass funeral.

“It is a terrible curriculum,” Sheff said.

Abuamara dismissed the criticisms against the Palestinian curriculum, saying there’s a lot of misconceptions and propaganda about her government’s educational materials.

“The curriculum is not what it’s portrayed to be,” said the PA ambassador. “I’ve seen the tests and I studied the curriculum in Palestine. I can assure you that the myth that is provided on that is wrong. Our kids are just resisting, in their own way, not being provided what any child has the right to get — which is education.”

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