Our lesson today: jihad

Editorial

People around the world have faced an unanswerable question in the past year. We have asked ourselves how young people can become suicide bombers - how they can overcome the innate human instinct for self-preservation in the name of a political cause.

For months, these terrorists have been killing Israeli citizens. Then, on Sept. 11, a cabal of young men killed thousands of people in the United States.

Much effort has been made to psychoanalyze the forces that lead to this phenomenon, but we need look no further than the Palestinian education system to see an example of where the seeds of terror are planted; an education systems that Canadian taxpayers are, in fact, helping to fund.

As part of our support for Mideast peace efforts, Canada, in 1993, gave the Palestinians $165 million to support development and education. This country also contributes $10 million a year to a United Nations agency working in the region.

The next year, the Palestinians and Israelis agreed to eradicate from their educational curricula aspects that did not contribute to the struggle for peace.

However, the Palestinian Authority has just issued new textbooks at various grade levels from Grade 1 to Grade 11 and the propaganda remains intact. The books include hateful references to Israelis, urge young people to idolize "martyrs" and call on children to strive for the liberation of Palestine which, according to maps in the textbooks, includes the entire area of Israel.

There have been chilling scenes after various suicide attacks, in which Palestinian parents say they are glad their sons have gone to heaven and hope their other sons will also grow up to be martyred. A recent opinion poll said that an overwhelming proportion of Palestinians support the use of suicide bombings to meet their political ends.

Like ordinary Germans during the Holocaust driven to perform inhuman acts, images of these parents and their self-sacrificing sons are almost impossible for us to fathom. Such extreme hatred is generated by religious underpinnings, social situations, peer pressure and a vast range of other factors that most of us have never experienced. Foremost among those factors is the education that is given to Palestinian young people.

Canada may not have immense national power to force peace on the region. We may be incapable of bringing these two sides together toward a non-violent entente as our peace-keeping forces have done over the years. But we can at least register our disapproval of the use of blatant propaganda in the Palestinian texts and, if they do not amend them, we can cut off funds and urge our allies to do the same.

There are many diplomatic subtleties in the Middle East situation. The new Palestinian textbooks are not among them. They are brickbats being used by old Palestinian leaders to indoctrinate a generation of promising young people to throw away their lives in a murderous jihad. At the same time, Israeli textbooks have been altered to acclimatize young Jews to understand the challenges and views of their Palestinian neighbors.

What could be more fundamental in the struggle for peace than to teach children values of respect, diversity and tolerance? But Yasser Arafat has shown he is unwilling to find a peaceful solution. His textbooks will ensure that, after he is gone, his values of violence, intolerance and insularity will carry on in another generation.

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