What the Guardian won’t report: Palestinian schools teach Protocols of Elders of Zion as fact

If you were a 10th-grade student in the Palestinian Authority (PA), you would learn that the Jewish Elders of Zion are conspiring to subjugate the entire world under a Jewish world government.

A high school textbook book, published by the Palestinian education ministry, teaches that among the foundations of Zionism, agreed upon at the First Zionist Congress in 1897:

“There is a group of confidential resolutions  adopted by the Congress and known by the name ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ the goal of which was world domination.”

As the report by Palestinian Media Watch noted.

The striking truth is that this depiction of Jews as conspiring against the world as a kind of conspiracy theory never went out of favor and has been actively espoused in PA society, whose political, religious and educational leaders have incorporated the Protocols – and the hate ideology it represents – as basic components of their world view.

The Protocols libel is critical for Palestinian society, especially while teaching children that it represents the First Zionist Congress, because it backs up the global ideology of delegitimization of Jews, Israel and especially of Zionism, which is the foundation of Palestinian Authority propaganda.

Defining the Zionist movement as one aspect of a global Jewish plot towards world domination leads to three important conclusions:

1- Zionism is inherently an illegitimate and sinister movement

2- Zionism is dangerous and threatening not merely to Arabs, but to the entire world.

3- Fighting Zionism is for Arabs and the world an act of self-defense and a service to all
humanity.

As such, references to the Protocols appear regularly in the PA media, presented as authentic by academics, educators, political leaders and journalists.

A dominant preoccupation of PA academia is the repeated and varied denials of Israel’s historical right to exist.

These denials entail the erasure of Jewish history in the land, the creation of a Palestinian Islamic history in the land, and finally a motivation for Zionism to be established – other than its being an authentic national renaissance movement. Thus, a history is invented in which the Land of Israel has always been Arab Islamic “Palestine” with no Jewish roots, and Palestinian historians created reasons to explain Zionism’s occurrence.

The report continues:

Can there be co-existence on Palestinian land between ourselves and the Jews, in light of their mentality which stems from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?”

The Protocols is being used as an excuse for fighting Israel, as there can be no peace with a movement which is evil in essence.

Official newspaper of the PA, Al Hayat Al Jadida, May 14, 2005

The PMW report concludes:

In spite of universal acceptance of the Protocols as an anti-Semitic forgery, the representation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authentic book representing a true Jewish conspiracy is part of Palestinian Authority ideology. The PA is using this libel the same way it was used by anti-Semites in the last century: Once it was documented by an “authentic” book that the Jews were part of an international conspiracy to dominate, control and conquer the world, then fighting them, persecuting them or even killing them could be
presented as legitimate self-defense.

The Protocols for the Palestinians serve the same purpose as the blood libels and the myths of the poisoned wells: If the Jews are scheming to kill others, then fighting them is legitimate self-defense and even admirable.

As such facts regarding endemic antisemitism in the PA are inconsistent with tales of Israeli villainy, and Palestinian victimhood, don’t expect to ever read about them on the Israel or Palestinian Territories pages of the Guardian. 

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