The European Parliament gave preliminary approval on Wednesday to the freezing of 20 million euros ($22 million) allocated to the Palestinian Authority over antisemitic textbooks in its educational curriculum.
The move in the parliament’s prestigious Foreign Affairs Committee, which requires two additional parliamentary votes in order to become law, is seen as a bellwether of change in the European Parliament following the summer elections, after years of merely declarative moves on the issue.
“Erasing all antisemitic content from education materials is among the first of many steps needed to establish civil society, professional education and proper economic structures in the Palestinian territories,” said Austrian MEP Lukas Mandl, who tabled the amendment, in a statement sent to JNS. “These steps, accompanied by disarmament and demilitarization of the Palestinian territories, will help to establish structures that will lead to zero tolerance for terrorism and proper conditions for sustaining peace, democracy, rule of law and ultimately a security guarantee for the State of Israel.”
Following the 36-30 parliamentary committee vote, the proposal will now head to the budget committee next month for what is expected to be another close vote, and then, if approved, voted on in the plenary later in October.
“Finally, the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has voted by a majority to put money in the reserves to pressure the Palestinian Authority to clean up antisemitic schoolbooks,” Dutch MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen told JNS. “This is a good first step, which failed in the past, and hopefully will be included in the 2025 E.U. budget that will be adopted later this autumn.”
Leo van Doesburg, Europe director of the Israel Allies Foundation called the committee vote “a commendable first step.” He added: “Achieving peace is impossible in the presence of radicalization.”
Marcus Sheff, CEO of IMPACT-se, an international research organization that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula for compliance with UNESCO standards, expressed frustration at the E.U.'s failure to date to deal with the issue.
“Despite years of promises made by the P.A. to its single biggest funding partner, the European Union, we see that essentially zero changes have been made to the Palestinian textbooks, which are rife with antisemitic incitement to violence,” he said. “Given what happened on Oct. 7—where an educational curriculum was used to incite to hate and murder—this is a disgrace.”
However, Sheff told JNS that the fact the new parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee was now throwing its weight behind the issue of Palestinian incitement, after years of reports on the topic, was an “encouraging step” that bodes well for the future.
In sharp contrast to Palestinian textbooks, a study by the organization this spring found that Saudi Arabia has removed practically all antisemitic and anti-Israel material from its schoolbooks.
