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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/04/gaza-education-reform-indoctrination/
To Secure Long-Term Peace, Fix Gaza's Schools
(Washington Post) Todd L. Pittinsky - For decades, billions have been poured into Gaza. The biggest scandal is what's been taught in Gaza's schools - in large part funded through Western largesse. Every generation in Gaza grows up memorizing the language of martyrdom. Schools, summer camps, mosques and media channels work in concert to instill an uncompromising worldview: violence is virtuous, compromise is weakness, and the annihilation of Israel is a sacred duty. Few parents in London, Paris or Washington would tolerate their child being taught that violence is noble or that neighbors are subhuman. Yet the international community has subsidized precisely that curriculum for Palestinian children - and then has acted shocked when violence perpetuates itself. To ensure that hate does not take root again, reconstruction aid must come with nonnegotiable conditions: independent curriculum oversight by external auditors with direct access to materials and classrooms, teacher vetting for extremist affiliations and full donor transparency. When Western taxpayers fund schools, they have every right to insist those schools don't teach children to become terrorists. Indeed, they have every obligation to do so. We now know what failure looks like. The proper test in rebuilding a decent society for Palestinians is whether we enforce the standards we would insist upon for our own children. Gaza's children deserve schools that prepare them for life, not death. The writer is a professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at State University of New York at Stony Brook.