What do children and teenagers in the Islamic world learn about Jews and Israel in school? Yonatan Negev and Eldad Pardo examined textbooks from over ten countries to answer that question, and found everything from the vilest anti-Semitism to, occasionally, positive attitudes. They distill three separate patterns from their findings. The first, they write,

is followed by countries promoting a religiously moderate, inclusive vision sensitive to international norms of peace and tolerance, such as the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Morocco, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. The [second] is followed by countries espousing Islamic fundamentalism . . . and includes Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the Yemeni Houthis. In addition, there is a sub-category of countries—namely Qatar, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority (PA)—that espouse some of the worst views against Jews and Israel in their textbooks, despite having long-standing engagements with them.

The textbooks in Morocco and Azerbaijan have the most favorable portrayals of Jews, with the UAE not far behind. In the less tolerant countries, by contrast,

Jews are continuously maligned as the enemies of Islam in the various textbooks. The Palestinian curriculum, for instance, implies that Jews are the “enemies of Islam in all times and places.” The Syrian textbooks teach a pan-Arab revolutionary worldview that suggests its universalism is incompatible with the “prejudiced” exclusionist nature of Judaism. Furthermore, anti-Semitic motifs such as stereotypical references to the character of Shylock from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice are found.

For example, a Qatari textbook from 2017 contained apologetic messages explaining Nazi hatred toward Jews, such as Nazi Germany’s “canceling the rights of the Jews because they had a great impact on the defeat of Germany in the First World War.” This content has been removed, and the Holocaust is no longer mentioned at all.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.