Having completed a study of 200 current and out-of-date textbooks used in Palestinian schools, Arnon Gross has come to the conclusion that these books “demonize the Jews and Israel and encourage the violent struggle to liberate Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.” Gross is convinced that, in light of his study, “there is no chance for peace and reconciliation between the state of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.” Yaakov Ahimeir writes:

Take, for example, a ninth-grade textbook’s description of Safed, a city in the north of Israel with over a millennium of Jewish history: “Safed is one of the most beautiful Palestinian cities in the Galilee. Its magnificence hails back to its Canaanite origin, despite the fog of occupation that will one day lift.” . . .

[Gross’s] research brings truly hair-raising, dehumanizing examples to demonstrate how Palestinian education incites [violence and even genocide against] Jews. One of the textbooks calls the 1978 Coastal Road massacre—in which Fatah terrorists crossed from Lebanon into Israel, hijacked a bus, and murdered 38 Israeli passengers—a “barbecue.” Why? Because the terrorist cell leader, Dalal Mughrabi, gave a command to firebomb the bus and burn the Jews alive.

Gross stresses that from year to year, Palestinian textbooks have not become more moderate—quite the opposite, in fact.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.