To secure long-term peace, fix Gaza’s schools

Gaza’s children are the victims of this violent ideology. Few parents in London, Paris or Washington would tolerate their child being taught that violence is noble or that neighbors are subhuman. Yet the international community has subsidized precisely that curriculum for Palestinian children — and then has acted shocked when violence perpetuates itself. It’s time for that to end.

Academic critics have long alleged that Western funding for education is just a thinly veiled cover for cultural imperialism. Such arguments badly overreach. After World War II, Germany’s education system was overhauled to remove Nazi propaganda while preserving German culture. Postapartheid South Africa reformed its curriculum to promote reconciliation. Postwar Japan replaced militarism with civic education. Defanging destructive ideologies is not imperialism, cultural or otherwise.

The scale of the problem today is well documented. A 2021 report by IMPACT-se, an education nongovernmental organization, found ample evidence of textbooks produced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency containing militaristic themes alongside maps that erase Israel from the region. A 2019 UN Watch analysis identified over 100 UNRWA social media posts supporting militant groups. Another 2025 UN Watch report documents that more than 15 percent of UNRWA’s senior educators in Gaza are affiliated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Other investigations have found that curriculum materials violate UNESCO standards and that schools have been used to store weapons. This is clearly a systemic problem.

UNRWA has operated for decades with minimal oversight. But each revelation produces the same response from the organization: acknowledgment of concern, promises of reform — and then business as usual once the cameras leave. The massacres of Oct. 7, 2023 were the gruesome cost of inaction. Several UNRWA employees may have participated in the violence. The agency responded by treating it as an isolated personnel issue rather than the logical endpoint of decades of hateful indoctrination.

The Trump administration is right to insist in its 20-point peace plan that “the values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence” are critical for long-term success. To ensure that hate does not take root again, reconstruction aid must come with nonnegotiable conditions: independent curriculum oversight by external auditors with direct access to materials and classrooms, teacher vetting for extremist affiliations and full donor transparency. When Western taxpayers fund schools, they have every right to insist those schools don’t teach children to become terrorists. Indeed, they have every obligation to do so. We now know what failure looks like.

The proper test of sincerity in rebuilding a decent society for Palestinians isn’t how much money we pledge. It’s whether we enforce the standards we would insist upon for our own children. Gaza’s children deserve schools that prepare them for life, not death. They deserve textbooks that teach them to build, not destroy. They deserve a brighter future.

Todd L. Pittinsky is a professor at Stony Brook University.