On Wednesday, September 4, the European Parliament gave preliminary approval to the freezing of 20 million euros ($22 million) allocated to the Palestinian Authority over antisemitic textbooks in its educational curriculum.
The move happened in the parliament’s prestigious Foreign Affairs Committee, and requires two additional parliamentary votes in order to become law. 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.
“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 the Jewish News Syndicate.
“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.”
“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.”
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 deal with the issue so far, pointing out that despite years of promises, there has been no change in the PA textbooks. Nevertheless, he said that the new vote by the Foreign Affairs Committee is an “encouraging step.”
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