Images featured in Palestinian Authority textbooks reviewed by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se). Photo: IMPACT-se.

i24 News – The European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee (CONT) passed a motion earlier this week condemning the Palestinian Authority (PA) for issuing textbooks that contain violent and hateful materials using EU funding.

CONT’s motion was part of the European Union’s annual budgetary procedure examining how European taxpayer funds are spent on international projects, The Jerusalem Post reported.

EU funding to the PA was subsequently frozen while the committee deliberate further action.

The motion – proposed by the left-leaning Renew Europe Party – demanded that the PA be “closely scrutinized” and that the school curriculum be modified “expeditiously.”

“Problematic and hateful material in Palestinian school textbooks has still not been removed” and the EU “is concerned about the continued failure to act effectively against hate speech and violence,” the motion stated.

The proposal stemmed from a January 2022 report by IMPACT-se, an Israeli NGO that monitors the content of school textbooks, The Post reported.

Examining new teaching material by the PA, IMPACT-se suggested that the textbooks were worse than previous Palestinian curriculum, directly calling for violence against Jews and Israel as well as promoting antisemitism.

The organization pointed out that the school material was produced by PA civil servants whose salaries are funded by the EU.

We are “concerned about the Palestinian authority teaching hate,” said IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff.

“A funding freeze worth hundreds of millions of Euros is in place because of… textbooks,” he added, The Post reported.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the College of Commissioner will deliberate next on continued funding suspensions and the conditions of EU funding to the PA.