After the September 11 attacks, the Kuwaiti minister of education promised to revise the textbooks used in his country’s schools so that they would promote “brotherhood, equality, love, caring, mercifulness, and coexistence.” Two decades later, the textbooks indeed contain such statements as “people are equal in dignity and enjoy equal right to protection under the law without discrimination.” They also contain much invective aimed at Jews, as David Andrew Weinberg writes:

Kuwait’s new ruler, Amir Nawaf al-Sabah, took office in September 2020, and during his biggest speech this year he called on the Kuwaiti nation to practice “adherence to the teachings of our tolerant religion, which urges us to unify ranks and spread kindness and compassion.”

However, according to the Kuwaiti government’s official list of textbooks in use for the new 2021-22 academic year, its Ministry of Education is continuing to reuse state-published textbooks from past years that teach horrific anti-Semitism. In addition, some lessons include ideas that are intolerant or confrontational toward Ahmadi Muslims, Baha’is, and Christians.

The ADL found particularly disturbing examples of anti-Semitic materials in Kuwait’s second-semester textbook in use for eighth-grade public-school courses on Islamic education. Even among the textbook’s stated learning objectives, it declares one objective is for students to learn that “the enmity of the Jews toward Islam and the Muslims is old and deeply rooted” and that “stirring up strife, breaking pacts, and malice are among the inherent characteristics of the Jews.” . . . And it advocates a range of actions to “challenge the conspiracies of the Jews,” including “boycotting their products.”

Looking . . . toward the future, this textbook. . . calls for confronting the Jews by “Muslims’ shouldering the obligation to liberate their lands and holy sites, and to cleanse them from the enemies of God.”

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”