Time and again, Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, as well as administrators for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), have promised their Western backers that they will do away with textbooks that encourage violence and anti-Semitism. Yet a study released last fall by IMPACT-se, an organization that monitors the Palestinian curriculum, shows that there has been no progress to speak of. Marcus Sheff, the organization’s director, describes some of these textbooks and explains how schools that use them continue to get funding from America and Europe:

Newton’s Second Law is taught by way of a slingshot and the image of a violent confrontation. Nine-year-old children in the third grade recite a poem calling for “sacrificing blood” to remove the enemy from the land by “eliminating the usurper” and “annihilat[ing] the remnants of the foreigners.” Young Palestinians are even exhorted to sacrifice themselves. They are taught that jihad is the pinnacle of ambition, that martyrdom for boys and girls is a life goal. In perhaps the ultimate betrayal of young people, they are told that choosing death is better than choosing life. . . .

A long-classified report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the Palestinian curriculum taught in UNRWA schools was obtained by the congressional offices of Lee Zeldin and Scott Perry, and . . . a double deception was uncovered. The report shows that when UNRWA officials responsible for the PA curriculum were presented with irrefutable evidence that American funds had been abused to inculcate intolerance, they pledged to create supplementary materials to rectify the issue. However, the findings further show that UNRWA took no such actions, but instead lied to Washington about having done so. In other words, UNRWA officials were caught red-handed not only deceiving the U.S. government, but having gone to great lengths to avoid teaching the most basic principles of tolerance and respect.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.