How to Raise a Martyr: Palestinian Textbooks and “Occupied” UN Workers

Remember your childhood textbooks? The ones you scribbled doodles in. Do you recall if they taught facts, or fed you propaganda? My first textbook was titled “From Sea to Shining Sea,” and it sold me a false history—one that sanitized America’s past, depicted our founders as saints, and encouraged nationalism. We would pledge allegiance to the Republic, hand over heart, while staring at Old Glory, reciting verses we didn’t fully grasp. And while this imagery may remind you of a scene from Nuremberg, or an Italian classroom in the 1920’s, our indoctrination was rather mild compared to what some governments inculcate in their youth.

Before 2023, I remember seeing pictures of Palestinian teachers smiling with innocent children merrily enjoying instruction. Apart from knowing the corruption of their leaders—such as, the vast wealth* they accumulate, their recruitment and use of children as human shields, informants, and soldiers, along with incentivizing terrorism through the Palestinian Authority’s notorious “pay for slay” martyrs fund—I never realized the circumstances these teachers can be involved in on the ground floor. I assumed the best of these pictures: just kids enjoying their education in an environment that was less than ideal. This article is a look into some of the material they learn, the risks staff may pose, and how both can impact Palestinian children.

The Textbooks

Palestinian educational materials have been problematic for some time now. They have been criticized by the European Parliament, the United States, and the The United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), for not meeting UNESCO standards for peace and tolerance. That’s because they’re unabashedly antisemitic, incite violence, promote gender inequality, glorify martyrdom, and spread propaganda. These textbooks are used throughout the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, in classrooms run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). As of the publishing of this article, the six UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem are still closed due to Knesset legislation, which took effect on January 30, 2025. 

Each year, these texts are taught to around 300,000 students in Gaza and 50,000 in the West Bank. As of December 2025, 25,000 students in Gaza and 47,000 in the West Bank have returned to in-person schooling. The rest of the students in Gaza (275,000), and the West Bank (5,000-6,000), are learning remotely.

I’ve been studying the “updated” textbooks and teacher guides for the 2025-2026 school year. Having read earlier versions, I wanted to see if the tragedies of October 7th were added. How might books that are already antisemitic depict that horrible day? The timing was curious as well, given that the European Parliament has been expecting reforms to be made in order for these textbooks to meet UNESCO standards. So would the Palestinian Authority (PA) placate the UN and temper their curriculum to secure funding? Or would they double down and lean into the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? A massacre that, by numbers alone, was the third-deadliest terrorist attack since 1970. I honestly didn’t know. On one hand, the PA refused to condemn October 7th for almost two years. On the other hand, it’s unwise to ignore the original provocation of a war you’re on the losing side of.

I found that while October 7th is not explicitly referred to in the updated textbooks, that day has made its way into their education. Images of blackboards, graffiti, posters, and classrooms memorialize members of Hamas who have been killed up to today.

At Al-Nasr Elementary School in Gaza City, students were seen reciting a poem glorifying the tragedy by saying: “You are history, you are the toufan [flood],”—referring to Hamas’ name for the attacks, the “Al-Aqsa Flood.” Interestingly enough, October 7th was recently added to a Jordanian textbook that blames Israel for Hamas’ decision to “infiltrate” the “settlers” and take them hostage.

This unfortunate interpretation of events omits that over 1,200 Israelis were killed, the majority of them being civilians, nor does it discuss the overwhelming amount of hostages taken (251), and the vast amount of sexual violence that was committed. I assume this kind of interpretation is common within the Arab World’s media and dialogue; especially when it comes to Israel. We can address their textbooks later, but spoiler alert: they’re not very different regarding Jews.

One of the ways students praise this fateful day, is by honoring the “martyrs” that have been killed over the last two years. Students have glorified them at assemblies, spoken of the al-Aqsa Flood as a victory against occupiers, and publicly displayed their hatred for “Zionists.” Mohammad Sinwar, his brother Yahya, along with Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif, and Khaled Mashal, form the glorious departed being uplifted at these schools. In the minds of many Palestinians, they are the embodiment of sacrifice, and the example to follow.

Occupied UN Staff

In January 2024, UNRWA terminated ten employees after an independent investigation implicated them in the October 7th attacks. Twelve staff were initially accused by Israel, but they found two had died. UNRWA facilities were used by Hamas for military purposes, including storing weapons, being a base of operations, and having tunnels underneath for a data center. Numerous sources reported on Israel’s intelligence, which showed that 12% of UNRWA staff (1,468) in Gaza had ties with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A Canadian official investigated the claim and was told by the head of UN Relief: “I am sure there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll.” Eighteen UN Countries pulled their funding while an investigation took place.

An overt example of these ties is Waseem Ula, a Palestinian teacher who helped run a group chat of 3,000 UNRWA workers. He posted a video on X that celebrated October 7th, and a picture of a suicide bomb vest with the caption “Wait, sons of Judaism.” In another post, only 6 hours after Black Saturday began, he praises Akran Abu Hasanen, a terrorist who died during the incursion. Waseem affectionately refers to Akran as a “Qassami martyr,” “brother” and  “friend.” Hillel C. Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, downloaded and documented this chat. It shows 30 members of the Telegram group endorsing Hamas’ pogrom. He also found 150 UNRWA staff sharing antisemitic content that glorified Hamas, Hitler, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

This was not some harmless space for teachers and staff to vent and make jokes. It was a work-related group chat consisting of thousands of UN employees. Some of them thanked God after hearing about the al-Aqsa Flood. Calling hostage-takers “heroes” and wishing them a “safe return,” with their “booty” was one women’s response; “dying in the name of God is our most divine aspiration,” was another. I tend to think most people would be appalled witnessing a chat like this, especially from those who work for a humanitarian organization or instruct children. Hamas had just raped, mutilated, and decapitated women’s bodies, and yet, this is how people working for the UN reacted.

As disgusting as the chat was, it wasn’t the closest UNRWA employees had been to Hamas. Some weren’t just cheer-leading on the sidelines. Three released Israeli hostages (Emily Damari, Romi Gonen, and Doron Steinbrecher) said they were held captive by Hamas and UNRWA employees. They report being taken to an UNRWA refugee shelter. Damari told British PM Starmer she was shot twice, lost two fingers, was denied medical treatment, and housed at an UNRWA facility. She was moved around to various apartments, houses, garages, Al-Shifa hospital (where Gonen was as well), underground tunnels, and most disturbingly, to the home of a civilian family with children. She said this family mocked her, withheld food from her, and told her she was forgotten about. She was held hostage for 471 days.

In spite of incontrovertible proof that Hamas deliberately targeted civilians on October 7th, they still maintain that “killing civilians is not part of our religion.” They film themselves murdering innocent people, along with numerous acts of sexual violence, and then call it a “legitimate military operation.” Hamas tries hard to sound like an official military that abides by international law, but the more you look, the more you see blatant hypocrisy.

Hamas has repeated over and over that they don’t place themselves in hospitals, schools, or civilian-laden facilities, and here we have two released hostages saying they were at a hospital. There is ample evidence showing how they use UNRWA schools, equipment, and infrastructure for tactical operations. There’s also clear evidence they utilize hospitals, ambulances, and other medical buildings to launch rockets from. They embed themselves among civilians, and use subterranean tunnels attached to hospitals and schools. If Hamas know anything, it’s propaganda: and interestingly enough, they were educated with the same textbooks I’ve been examining. I don’t mean to imply a direct causal link between childhood education and actions, but it would be foolish to ignore it. Innumerable UNRWA students have gone on to join Hamas and promote their ideas. We regularly witness the ideas these textbooks voice, implemented by extremists throughout Israel.

Select Passages

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), an NGO that examines curriculum all around the world, reviewed 270 Palestinian textbooks and 71 teacher guides. IMPACT concluded that the curriculum “continues to systematically violate UNESCO principles and educational standards.” During the wartime switch to hybrid curriculum in January 2025, IMPACT notes how the PA Ministry of Education could have updated their curriculum to meet the standards required by the EU for continued funding. Instead, the “PA deliberately chose to retain and promote extremist narratives rather than implement meaningful changes.”

The IMPACT report describes the problems within the textbooks and teacher guides vividly:

“Hate and collective accusations specifically directed toward Jewish people appear across grades and subjects, depicting them as deceitful, manipulative or inherently corrupt enemies of Islam, drawing on classical Islamic polemic, historical distortions, and modern antisemitic motifs used to describe the present-day conflict…Antisemitic stereotypes including imagery and terminology, are repurposed for classroom use, ensuring that prejudice against Jews is pedagogically transmitted. Dehumanization and hate are a defining feature of the curriculum’s portrayal.”

“Jewish historical presence and heritage in the land—and the name Israel appearing on maps—remain excluded” (see above).

For example, some of these portrayals include:

• A student activity on colonialism depicting Israel and the US holding the earth. The imagery hearkens to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic book of Russian propaganda. Its cover often depicts a Jewish man (as a human, snake, or spider) holding the earth. It conveys a classic antisemitic trope that Jewish people secretly run the world.
• A 2nd grade Arabic lesson urging boys and girls to give their lives for the revolution. A boy and girl are headed to Jaffa and Haifa to become martyrs. This image depicts kids faithfully heading to their death.

• A lesson praising Sumayyah bint Khayyat (the First Female Martyr in Islam); then a story of another female martyr who kills a Jewish man; lastly a mother taking her 4 children to perform jihad and die together as a family of martyrs.
• A 7th grade Arabic grammar lesson praising jihad against the “colonizers.” Then a story referring to Israelis as having hearts of stone.
• A depiction of Jews as child killers, with a 4-month-old infant said to have been assassinated during the Second Intifada. Another ancient antisemitic motif, commonly known as the “blood libel.”
• An 11th grade Methods of Oration lesson implies Judaism, and non-Muslim thinking is racist, sectarian, and anti-Islam.
• An 8th grade Arabic class depicting Jews as dishonest, deceitful, and greedy (another ancient libel).
• A 10th grade teacher’s guide promoting gender inequality: “Because he differs in his thinking from women; He thinks with his mind, and the woman with her emotions, so the family will be destroyed if the woman takes the right to divorce. A man marries four women, and travels without a companion; The man’s body is different from that.”
• An 11th grade Islamic Education course, teaching that a woman is guiltier than a man for committing adultery.
• An 11th grade lesson on Hadith, showing martyrs a reward of 72 women in paradise.
• An 11th grade History example of the 1972 Munich Massacre, where Palestinian militants took eleven Israeli Olympic team members hostage, then executed them and a German police officer. Much like what Hamas said about October 7th, this textbook justifies the Munich attack as a “military operation.”

All of the lessons listed above are here.

Becoming Martyrs

With these examples in mind, don’t forget who the audience is. Hamas recruits and trains kids at a young age, and the connection between having the ideas in these textbooks permeate your environment, and being able to justify killing Israelis at ages 13 and 14, is quite obvious. Turns out when Hamas acts on their ideas, they are taking the concepts taught to Palestinian children seriously. Killing innocent people in a suicidal blast of glory, finds a germ within the pages of these texts. They make my childhood textbook look innocent. Now, how to get the PA to change them, especially since October 7th, along with finding a way for aid to get to Palestinians without Hamas swindling and defrauding them, is a difficult task indeed.

Similarly, while childhood indoctrination certainly plays a role here, their information doesn’t just come through textbooks. The media Palestinians consume is usually connected to the PA or Hamas—companies like the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PA), and Al-Aqsa Media Network (Hamas)—only present information that confirms their messaging. Similarly, international media like Al-Jazeera, popular in Palestinian society, is funded by the same Qatari sources funding Hamas. Al-Jazeera has been shown to be connected to Hamas and to promote their rhetoric. The IDF provided documentation which showed six of their journalists were members of Hamas. Countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, have banned Al-Jazeera for similar reasons.

Having an environment that tells you, from textbooks to evening news, that Israel is an all-evil Empire and shows only positive depictions of Hamas, explains why there is not more outrage against these “martyrs” and their glorious Flood. It shows why 90 percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas did not commit “the atrocities in the videos”—referring to the videos of civilian deaths. The Palestinian population believe the al-Aqsa Flood was a “military operation” aimed at the IDF, and that Israeli civilians were generally not targeted or harmed.

On Hamas

Hamas fancy themselves liberators and breakers of chains, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. As much as someone may want to cloak their actions in revolutionary garb and postcolonial elan, the truth is, they murdered 815 innocent people with glee, raping and kidnapping from one place to another. Unlike how their two-year celebratory rag frames it, there was no revolutionary progress when they raped Israeli women. No glorious advent when they shot people dancing at a festival. No end of history, no vanguard, no trumpets playing. No romantic liberation happened that day.

When thinking about those listed above, the “martyrs” of October 7th, a different song and tone comes to mind, and I am compelled to highlight the following: The leaders of Hamas are extremely wealthy, yet withhold funds from their impoverished kin; they divert aid and then offer it back with a hefty tax; they live in Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, and leave Palestinians in Gaza; they say killing civilians is against their faith, and slaughter those at kibbutzim; they teach modesty for women, and treat them immodestly; they use human shields, but tell you to run forward unprotected; they are dishonest, and expect you to be truthful. They exploit, intimidate, and control the people they claim to love. And while they go home to their castles in Qatar, they don’t mind you dying homeless. By “any means necessary,” as they say.

Now, I’m not saying these textbooks determine behavior—there are plenty of Palestinian adults who were raised on these ideas that didn’t join Hamas or kill for the cause. But to ignore how they can inspire atrocities and justify killing others—is to blink at reality. Killing Jewish people by “any means necessary,” even if it takes using your own people as human shields, is not a far cry from what these they glorify. For these reasons, the pool of guilt is not only on the PA and Hamas, but UNRWA staff who celebrated October 7th. They cheered for death then, and will again, when a new class of children become martyrs.

—Dedicated to the victims and hostages of October 7th.

*The Wealth of Hamas/PA addendum

• Khaled Mashal, the current acting leader of Hamas, is worth between 2.5-5 billion dollars.

• Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of Hamas’ political bureau until his assassination in July 2024, was considered to be worth between 2.5 and 4 billion dollars.
• Mousa Abu Marzouk, a founding member of Hamas and current deputy chairman, is estimated to be worth 2-3 billion dollars.
• Mohammed Deif, sixth commander of the al-Qassam Brigades until his assassination in July 2024, was thought to be worth 5 million dollars.
• Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ wealth is estimated at over $100 million dollars.
• Muhammad Dahlan, former leader of Fatah, is claimed to be worth 150 million dollars.

• The pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, reported they found at least 600 millionaires living in the Gaza Strip. In August 2012, The Economist quoted President Abbas talking about the “800 millionaires and 1,600 near-millionaires” in Gaza.
• 60 Minutes reported on Yasser Arafat having 1 billion dollars diverted from public funds.
• How Palestinian leaders acquire such wealth from the sponsorship of countries like Iran and Qatar, diverting funds for aid, money laundering, high taxing of goods, extortion, high domestic taxes and tariffs, global investments, and even cryptocurrency.