Herb Keinon’s Jerusalem Post news report of November 2, 2001, indicating that “E.U. money has been used for Palestinian textbooks”, was refuted by Ambassador Giancarlo Chevallard (Head of the Delegation of the European Commission) in his letter of November 9) Although this is technically correct, (the money for the textbooks per se deriving from a group of individual “donor nations” of Europe and not from the EU Commission), it is equally true that EU funding is supporting didactic methods to disseminate anti- Israel messages which incite to violence and negate the existence of the State of Israel.

It is clear that there has been a lack of supervision of the Palestinian curricula on the part of the EU, and until recently, on the part of the donor nations. Efforts to bring this to the attention of the Commissioner for External Affairs of the European Union, Christopher Patten, were a failure.

During an interview conducted with Jean Breteche the Representative of the European Union for the West Bank and Gaza Strip areas, by myself in conjunction with the Center for Near East Policy Research, we specifically asked about textbook funding. Breteche told us that the European Union does not fund Palestinian Authority textbooks.

He went on to emphasize, however, that funding of Palestinian education is a major mandate for the EU, the large sums of money provided to the P.A. to be used for “infrastructure”, such as building schools, training teachers, etc.

It is known that PA teacher training incorporates the use of teachers’ guidebooks as translated by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (for Palestinian Media Watch), and shown to be filled with specific instruction as to how to teach the same incitement laden material which appears in the Palestinian textbooks.

I had previously corresponded directly (July 2000) with Commissioner Patten, providing ample documentation both of textbook incitement, and also of European policy of total autonomy for a developing nation receiving aid, as laid out in “Education: a basic human right: development cooperation and basic education: policy, practice and implementation”, a program created by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Dutch Government for the EU.

Commissioner Patten’s response to me stated that the European Commission does not run the development programs of the EU Members States, and that in view of our concern regarding the textbooks, we should address ourselves directly to these European member states.

This we had already done, as I had indicated to him. Consequent to our inputs with the individual donor nations funding the textbooks, the Italian Consulate representatives agreed to monitor the books, and thereafter canceled the 5 million dollar grant to the PA for the textbooks, as has the Vatican, while there are indications that the World Bank has also cut funding.

It is to be noted that the new PA textbooks introduced September 2000, while lacking specific exhortations to violence, still negate the existence of the state of Israel, claim all areas of Israel to be Palestine, praise Izzadim-al-Khassam, the hero of Hamas, as a Palestinian hero, and in population statistics omit Jews but include Israeli Arabs, West Bank and Gaza Palestinians and “Diaspora” Palestinians for a total figure of more than 8 million Palestinians in “Palestine” by which they mean the combined geographic areas of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Additionally most of the prior textbooks with overt incitement are yet to be replaced, and are in continuing use.

In answer to a further urgent letter to Patten in October 2000 after the start of the current Intifada, requesting names of those within the European Commission or the European Parliament who might have a brief regarding Palestinian education, I received a further similar response to the effect that…. “the European Commission is not itself competent to modify the Palestinian curricula, nor is it responsible for development programs of EU Member States.”….. Patten gave me no names of others I might contact, in this regard.

Of importance to note is that currently, the official Palestinian television media have stepped up an emotionally laden drive directed at Palestinian children exhorting them to Martyrdom for the Palestinian cause against Israel.

While Chevallard states that the EU regularly supports “projects supporting peace, understanding, reconciliation…..”, these projects (as outlined to me by Patten) consist of support of People to People projects including Palestinian-Israeli youth dialogues, (which according to moderate Palestinians have been a no-go for some time), and referral to the Trilateral Commission against Incitement to Violence, (which has not met for more than two years).

The hope for the success of any upcoming peace treaty with the Palestinians lies with terminating the incessant brainwashing of Palestinians and its youth. It is a duty incumbent upon the European Union to seriously address this matter instead of indulging in euphemistic exercises which obfuscate its current policies.

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