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.”

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.