Palestinian Schools Teach Sexism, Gender Discrimination, New Report Says

Palestinian curricula teaches girls that women are inferior to men and demands that they sacrifice their bodies and families for “jihad,” according to a new report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), an Israeli watchdog group.

Timed to coincide with Women’s History Month, the group on Friday released “Gender Inequality in Palestinian Authority Textbooks,” an assessment of what Palestinian textbooks — distributed by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — teach young girls about women and their place in society. It revealed that they describe women as a problem to be managed by the authority of religion and patriarchy, as valuable only insofar as they contribute to the community’s population of terrorists and capacity to wage holy war.

“Temptation mostly comes from women,” says a grade 11 Islamic Education textbook cited in the report which avers that women, acting as temptresses, initiate adultery — a category that includes sex outside of marriage between two single partners — and deserve disproportionate blame for its taking place. A woman’s adultery is “more horrible and obscene, and adultery affects the woman more than the man,” another textbook, for tenth graders, says.

Such ideas are ancillary to larger political goals, Impact-se explains. In denouncing women as transgressors of sexual morality and inherent sources of corruption, the Palestinian textbooks aim to rationalize subordinating women to men and limiting their role in public life. They also advocate dress in accordance with Islamic law, women accepting fault for being sexually harassed and assaulted, and the notion that gender equality is a fiction. Palestinian schools also teach the Islamic prophet Muhammad saying, “Never will succeed such a nation that makes a woman” a head of state.

With all avenues for personal growth and achievement sealed off, what is left to Palestinian women is the option to commit violence, to become martyrs and the mothers of terrorists of the future, the report states.

“In a chapter discussing the role of women in combat at the time of the inception of Islam, Palestinians girls are encouraged to kill, be killed, and send their children to die,” it says. “These include the first woman who was martyred in the name of Islam; a woman who stabbed a Jews to death, described as ‘justly an example of a brave Muslim woman in defense of the Muslims’; and a woman who praises Allah after her four children died on the battlefield while performing jihad.”

In a statement, Impact-se CEO Marcus Sheff said the group’s findings add to mounting concerns that Palestinian education officials intentionally foster extremism and flagrantly contravene standards set by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which implores governments to use education as a means of eradicating sexism and gendered discrimination.

“The characterization of women as inferior in Palestinian Authority textbooks reflects a broader and worrying narrative of bigotry in the curriculum, which is continuing to shape the outlook millions of Palestinian children,” Sheff said. “Furthermore, it contradicts international treaties on gender equality that the PA itself has ratified. In particular, the emphasis on women’s participation in resistance activities as a warped form of gender equality sets a disturbing precedent.”

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Palestinian textbooks have elicited criticism from experts and lawmakers across the world for fostering antisemitism, as well as extremism. No discipline is untouched by the problem. From math and theology to literature and science, their content has been found to promote blistering hatred for Jews and Israel, indoctrinating students as young as six to commit their lives to “martyrdom” and inter-generational war. Compromise with Israelis is described as betraying Palestinian identity, while suicide-bombings are portrayed as intrinsic to it and a prerequisite for entry into heaven.

Teachers and staff employed by UNRWA as educators in Gaza practice what they teach, Impact-se noted in a report issued earlier this month. The report unveiled transcriptions of recordings confirming the roles of Yusef Zidan Sliman Al-Hawajri and Mamdouh Hussein Ahmad Al-Qek — both of whom were hired as educators by the organization — in Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. Additionally, the group has argued that UNRWA schools have played a direct role in encouraging its students to pick up terror as a full time occupation.

“At least” 100 members of Hamas graduated from its schools, Impact-se has said, as well as a majority of the Hamas terrorists who participated in the atrocities of Oct. 7.

The recent findings came after Impact-se released a separate report in November revealing that at least 14 teachers at UNRWA-run schools had praised the pogrom carried out in southern Israel.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.