An entire high school social sciences textbook that contained anti-Israel material has been pulled from Saudi classrooms, according to a new study of the kingdom’s school curriculum. The London-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, known as IMPACT-se, found that the book was removed in the current school year.
IMPACT-se analyzes textbooks around the world against UNESCO standards for peace and tolerance. It has put out several studies in recent years showing Saudi books shedding violent and anti-Jewish content, though not all of it.
What changed
Four problematic examples flagged in the institute’s previous report are now gone, on top of 21 removed the year before. Students no longer read passages that defined Zionism as a “racist” European movement aimed at expelling Palestinians, or that called its “fundamental goal” the expansion of its borders and the seizure of Arab lands, oil wells and Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, the report says.
One grade 12 social studies book, withdrawn in 2023, had taught that “Zionists” deliberately tried to burn down the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969. IMPACT-se noted that an Australian Christian fundamentalist tourist, Denis Rohan, was responsible for that attack. The parallel textbook in the Pathways System, which is still taught, dropped the false accusation in 2022.
The 2023 edition of another textbook removed multiple accusations that Christians and Jews deliberately distorted their scriptures. Earlier editions told students that Jews and Christians had “altered, changed, detracted and added lies and falsehood” to the Bible and the Gospel. The institute said its assessment of how the books depict Judaism and Christianity improved.
What remains
The report is not a clean bill of health. Israel is still not recognized on maps, though some maps no longer show Palestine across all of Israeli territory. The Holocaust is absent from the curriculum. In the context of the 1948 war, Israel is still called “the Israeli occupation” or “Israeli occupiers,” and several problematic examples remain in some books.
IMPACT-se chief executive Marcus Sheff called the 2023/24 textbooks “another step toward turning the curriculum into an educational framework that encourages tolerance, peace, and greater equality.” Antisemitism had already been removed, he said, so it was “particularly encouraging” that Saudi curriculum designers went further and presented Israel in a more positive light. “These changes are good news for the future of the entire region,” he said.
