School textbooks used in Hezbollah-affiliated schools in Lebanon to teach history and other core subjects are filled with systematic and egregious incitement to anti-Semitism and support for terrorism, according to an Anti-Defamation League report released on Wednesday.
The report, “Teaching Antisemitism and Terrorism in Hezbollah Schools,” shows the extent to which the teaching of anti-Jewish violence is entrenched in certain private schools, scouting groups and other educational institutions linked to Hezbollah.
The ADL obtained and closely examined two elementary-school textbooks published by Mustafa Generation Publishing House, the publishing arm of a national network of schools linked to the terrorist group. The sixth-grade textbooks, Islam Is Our Message and Us and History, provide a consistently hateful depiction of the Jewish people stretching from ancient times to the present.
“It is shocking that children from kindergarten on up are being spoon-fed a diet of anti-Semitism, drawing on pernicious canards such as Jews are satanic, the Jews killed Christ and the Jews are trying to undermine other religions to control the world,” said ADL national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “These hate-filled ‘lessons’ have no place in any school, but are especially dangerous in Lebanon, where Hezbollah grooms young people to become terrorist ‘martyrs.’ ”
The report’s policy recommendations call on the United States and other nations to consider implementing new counter-terrorism sanctions against the terrorist group and its complementary network of educational institutions inside Lebanon.
