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Britain Gives 20 Million Pounds for Schools Glorifying Martyrs and Jihad
(The Sunday Times-UK) Tim Shipman - More than 20 million pounds of British aid money has been spent on Palestinian schools in the past year, despite ministers knowing the official curriculum could incite pupils to become martyrs and jihadists. In a series of parliamentary answers, the aid minister, Alistair Burt, has admitted that British taxpayers are funding the salaries of 33,000 teachers implementing a school curriculum that has been criticized for promoting violence against Israel. A report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-SE) on the revised 2017 PA curriculum for schools in the West Bank said it "exerts pressure over young Palestinians to acts of violence." The lessons being taught by British-funded teachers include a science textbook that teaches physics using an image of a boy firing a slingshot at soldiers. A math textbook asks students to calculate the number of martyrs in Palestinian uprisings. The report concludes that "radicalization is more pervasive across this new curriculum" than the one that it has replaced, and that "the curriculum's focus appears to have expanded from demonization of Israel to providing a rationale for war." One poem taught to nine-year-olds calls for "sacrificing blood," "eliminating the usurper," and "annihilat[ing] the remnants of the foreigners." By contrast, references to peace agreements between the Palestinians and Israel have been removed.