An investigation into Jordan’s school curriculum has uncovered textbooks for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years that legitimize Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, celebrate jihad, demonize Jews, and advocate the ethnic cleansing of Israelis, all while omitting any mention of the Holocaust.
A review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found that Jordan’s National Center for Curriculum Development introduced a new Grade 10 National and Civic Education textbook that frames Hamas’s October 7 attack as a response to Israeli oppression.
The textbook ... blames Israel for ignoring United Nations resolutions and “committing massacres.”
The textbook, introduced three months after Hamas’s attack, blames Israel for ignoring United Nations resolutions and “committing massacres.” It omits Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,100 Israelis and undermines Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel by calling Isarel “the Enemy.”
According to the textbook:
“Israel ignored the repeated UN Security Council resolutions, refused to withdraw from the occupied Arab lands, and continued to oppress the Arab Palestinian people, commit massacres against them day after day, and attack Al-Aqsa Mosque. This led the Palestinian resistance movement in Gaza to invade the Israeli colonies which surround the Gaza Strip on October 7th, 2023, and to take captive numerous Israeli settlers and soldiers.”
The textbook presents Israel as responding with “mass destruction on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded, and the destruction of infrastructure, including schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, and civilian homes.”
Hostages taken captive from inside internationally recognized Israeli territory are referred to as “settlers” living in “Israeli colonies which surround the Gaza Strip.” This implies they are legitimate targets for kidnapping and murder.
IMPACT-se researchers discovered that the National Center for Curriculum Development retained the passage on its website, despite claims by Jordanian and Arab media that the National Center for Curriculum Development had deleted the passage.
Material in many of these books portrays Israel “as an illegitimate, expansionist enemy,” justifying its erasure from maps.
IMPACT-se examined eighty-eight new textbooks for Grades 1-12, fifty-one textbooks from previous years still on the Jordanian Ministry of Education list of textbooks, as well as 150 older textbooks no longer in use. Material in many of these books portrays Israel “as an illegitimate, expansionist enemy,” justifying its erasure from maps.
The textbooks that cover Islamic Education, Arabic Language, Social Studies, National and Civic Education, History, and Geography demonstrate respect for Christians and present factual information about Christianity, while calling for Christian-Muslim harmony, but continue to disseminate anti-Jewish narratives.
A second textbook on the History of Jordan for Grade 11 describes Israel’s war against Hamas as an “oppressive Israeli aggression and siege on the Gaza Strip.” It omits Hamas’s slaughter of civilians and capture of hundreds of hostages. It also claims that Jordan “broke this siege” on Gaza through airdrop operations, creating the impression that Jordan acted in defiance of it.
The textbook omits similar Palestinian attacks against Israel, including fedayeen attacks on Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, and focuses solely on Israel’s military response, claiming that Israel attacked innocent villages in the Jordan-controlled West Bank. Until recently, only the History of Jordan Grade 12 textbook mentioned Jordan’s peace agreement with Israel, while still labeling Israel as the “Israeli Occupation State.”
The textbooks abound in antisemitic tropes. The Islamic Education textbook for Grade 11 states that Islam’s Prophet Muhammad established the Medina market because “he realized the importance of the economy for building a society and saving Muslim society from the Jews’ control over the economy, which was based on usury.” The Islamic Education textbook for Grade 7 repeats the trope, claiming that “the Jews controlled the market of Medina before the Hijra, and their transactions were based on usury.”
According to [a] review, “Recent textbook revisions have not only failed to address these issues but, in some cases, have worsened them.”
According to the review, “Recent textbook revisions have not only failed to address these issues but, in some cases, have worsened them—introducing increasingly extreme antisemitic tropes, homophobic content, and portraying the peace treaty with Israel in a negative light.”
A Grade 10 History textbook omits the Holocaust, describing Nazism only as “a racist political movement which reached the seat of power in Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.”
A poem in the Grade 12 textbook on Arabic Rhetoric and Literary Critique romanticizes the ethnic cleansing of Israelis, describing them as “ghosts,” “ravens,” and “the darkness” to be expelled from Israel. Another poem calls for the “liberation” of Jerusalem with the sword, describing Palestinian bloodshed as “candles of light” leading the way. The textbooks also portray Zionism as a “racist” ideology with “greedy colonial ambitions” and a Western-backed conspiracy to divide and control Arabs.
Diplomats often tout Jordan as a pillar of moderation in the region. Unfortunately, the Jordanian government’s populism seems intent on undermining what little moderation remains in the Hashemite Kingdom.