Hamas's Web School for Suicide Bombers

Yohanan Manor and Ido Mizrahi
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2010, pp. 31-40

All states use education as a medium to encourage responsible behavior in their children, at least in part to develop a law-abiding, civic-minded citizenry. Authoritarian regimes have a history of distorting this trust, often turning schools into places of indoctrination for a state or religious ideology. The Palestinians have, for some time now, created an educational system exemplifying this indoctrinational approach: Their textbooks deny Jewish and Israeli legitimacy within historic Palestine, demonize Jews and Israelis, discourage compromise or negotiated peace, and glorify violent struggle to achieve what are often termed "Palestinian aspirations." Since coming to power through elections in early 2006 and following its military coup in Gaza in June 2007, Hamas has continued this path of indoctrination, utilizing its popular children's website, Al-Fateh.

Related: FreeMiddleEast — June 22, 2010 — Imagine if the Hamas Charter, instead of preaching the destruction of Israel, stood for dignity, respect and tolerance.

For more information visit: www.FreeMiddleEast.com

Formal Education in Gaza

After a series of clashes, predating Hamas's parliamentary win in 2006 but intensifying thereafter, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in a swift but brutal campaign, which lasted little more than a week (June 7-15, 2007).[1] Hamas now controls the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) retains almost no standing, except perhaps in the field of education: All the schools in the strip—the very small number of private schools, the public schools, and those run by the United Nations Works and Refugee Agency (UNRWA)—follow the official PA school curriculum and use the corresponding textbooks.

This may be surprising in view of the cardinal importance Hamas attributes to the education of children and youth as a means of achieving its ideological and political goals. Article 15 of the Hamas charter states:

It is necessary that scientists, educators, and teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements, should take part in the operation of awakening. It is important that basic changes be made in school curriculum to cleanse it of the traces of ideological invasion that affected it as a result of the Orientalists and missionaries who infiltrated the region following the defeat of the Crusaders at the hands of Salah al Din (Saladin).[2]

Despite this, Hamas has yet to introduce its own school curriculum. Perhaps this is due in part to a concern for Palestinian unity; perhaps it is merely a desire to avoid the heavy expense such revisions would necessitate. Most likely this results from Hamas's recognition that continued implementation of the official PA curriculum is the only way currently that allows internationally recognized matriculation examinations to proceed and for diplomas to be awarded. In 2009 for example, practical steps were taken by Hamas to ensure that the examinations would take place at exactly the same time in both Gaza and the West Bank.[3]

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