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.

Today, Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to meet with President Trump in the White House. High on their agenda will be Iran, and the next steps following the joint assault on its nuclear facilities, as well as the latest proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza. But there are other equally weighty matters that the two leaders are apt to discuss. Eran Lerman, calling this a White House visit “unlike any before it,” surveys some of those matters, beginning with efforts to improve relations between Israel and the Arab states—above all Saudi Arabia:

[I]t is a safe bet that no White House signing ceremony is in the offing. A much more likely scenario would involve—if the language from Israel on the Palestinian future is sufficiently vague and does not preclude the option of (limited) statehood—a return to the pre-7 October 2023 pattern of economic ventures, open visits at the ministerial level, and a growing degree of discussion and mutual cooperation on regional issues such as Lebanon and Syria.

In fact, writes Lerman, those two countries will also be major conversation topics. The president and the prime minister are likely to broach as well the possible opening of relations between Jerusalem and Damascus, a goal that is

realistic in light of reconstruction needs of this devastated country, all the more destitute once the Assad clan’s main source of income, the massive production and export of [the drug] Captagon, has been cut off. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia want to see Syria focused on its domestic needs—and as much as possible, free from the powerful grip of Turkey. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration, with its soft spot for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will do its part.