Saudi Textbooks Move Further Away from Prejudice and Bigotry

Bad as the news is from Lebanon, there is at least some good news from Saudi Arabia. Less then a decade ago, Islamic State was using the kingdom’s textbooks in its schools in Iraq. Saudi Arabia has since then taken gradual steps to purge radical content from its curricula, including anti-Semitism and bigotry toward Israel. In the long term, such changes may do more to foster peace between Jerusalem and Riyadh than any of the latest White House efforts to broker a normalization agreement. IMPACT-se, an organization devoted to analyzing educational materials around the world, reports:

Importantly, an entire high-school social-studies textbook, once a breeding ground for anti-Israel hatred, has been removed for the 2023-24 academic year. Students no longer learn content which defined Zionism as a “racist” European movement that aims to expel Palestinians, or that Zionism’s “fundamental goal” is to expand its borders and take over Arab lands, oil wells, and Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. A different version of the textbook is now taught, in which references to Israel as “the Israeli enemy” and “the Zionist enemy” have been replaced.

Examples falsely accusing Israel of the 1969 arson at al-Aqsa Mosque and the “occupation forces” of “destroy[ing] the region” were also removed from social-studies textbooks, alongside a lesson teaching that “the occupying Zionist enemy” builds “settlements” in the Negev to sever the connection between Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula. . . . Notable passages omitted from the 2023-24 textbooks include teachings that labeled Jews and Christians as liars, arrogant, and accused them of falsifying their scriptures.

Nonetheless, . . . the Holocaust is absent from a chapter about World War II, and Israel is still referred to as “the Israeli occupation” and “Israeli occupiers” in the context of the 1948 war.

And while the entire territory from the Jordan to the Mediterranean is no longer labeled Palestine on maps, the textbook authors still can’t bring themselves to call it Israel.

Read more at IMPACT-se

More about: Anti-Semitism, Israel-Arab relations, Saudi Arabia

Western Europe’s Failures Led to the Pogrom in Amsterdam

Nov. 11 2024

In 2013, Mosaic—then a brand-new publication—published an essay by the French intellectual Michel Gurfinkiel outlining the dark future that awaited European Jewry. It began with a quote from the leader of the Jewish community of Versailles: “My feeling is that our congregation will be gone within twenty or thirty years.” The reasons he, and Gurfinkiel, felt this way were on display in Amsterdam Thursday night. Michael Murphy writes:

For years, Holland and other European countries have invited vast numbers of people whose values and culture are often at odds with their own. This was a bold experiment made to appear less hazardous through rose-tinted spectacles. Europeans thought vainly that because we had largely set aside ethno-sectarian politics after the atrocities of the 20th century that others would do the same once they arrived. But they have not.

Perhaps the most unsettling part of this self-described “Jew hunt,” which left five people hospitalized, was the paltry response of the Dutch police. Reports suggest officers failed to act swiftly and, in some cases, to act at all. “I and two others ran to the nearest police station, but they didn’t open the door,” one of the victims claimed.

One hopes there is a reasonable explanation for this. Yet Amsterdam’s police force—with its increasingly diverse make-up—may have had other reasons for their reluctance to intervene. Last month, the Dutch Jewish Police Network warned that some officers “no longer want to protect Jewish targets or events,” vaguely citing “moral dilemmas.”

Read more at National Post

More about: Amsterdam, Anti-Semitism, European Islam, European Jewry