ADL: Saudi textbooks still teaching anti-Semitic incitement

Zionism achieves its goals through the use of “money, politics, womankind, drugs and the media,” a Saudi textbook says.

By Joseph Wolkin, World Israel News

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published a new report on Tuesday revealing Saudi Arabia’s use of hate speech in textbooks. The books preach not only anti-Semitism, but also vitriol against Christians, women and homosexual men.

The government-published textbooks are exposed in the ADL report, titled, “Teaching Hate and Violence: Problematic Passages from Saudi State Textbooks for the 2018–19 School Year.”

The ADL translated the textbooks from Arabic, exposing dozens of passages “that clearly propagate incitement to hatred or violence” against the aforementioned groups.

Twelve years ago, the United States issued a waiver from penalties to the Saudi government under the International Religious Freedom Act due to the Saudi ruler’s stated commitment to change the textbooks in an attempt to erase incitement.

But the pledge to filter out such speech in the textbooks remains unfulfilled.

Included in the material is a section called “The goals of Zionism,” according to which the movement’s goal is to seek “regional expansion through three successive stages: 1. The State of Israel in Palestine. 2. The State of Greater Israel in the Arab mashreq region. 3. The Global Jewish Government, to control the entire world.”

Furthermore, Zionism achieves its goals through the use of “money, politics, womankind, drugs and the media.” the text continues.

“If you go back to around the time of 9/11, virtually every group of people that was demonized in Saudi textbooks then is still demonized in the kingdom’s official textbooks today,” David Andrew Weinberg, ADL’s Washington Director for International Affairs and author of the report, said.

An example of hate speech directed against Christians is the statement that “Christianity in its current state is an invalid and perverted religion.”

“Beating [women] is a means of discipline, for the Almighty said ‘beat them,’” the books teach.

The report noted that in some cases intolerant language had been toned down, noting that Human Rights Watch found Saudi textbooks took a softer line regarding Shi’ite and Sufi Muslim rituals.

Also, the ADL the report said that it hadn’t “seen a recurrence of some of the many anti-Semitic passages identified in a previous review of Saudi high school textbooks from the 2010-11 school year, including assertions that God transformed the Jews into apes and pigs, and that the hateful hoax known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is historical fact.”

The ADL, in response to the findings, requested that the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs take action. Last year, the NGO endorsed the Saudi Educational Transparency and Reform Act, which would provide greater scrutiny of these textbooks.

ADLanti-SemitismSaudi Arabia