NEW YORK- A prominent leftwing Israeli group has publicly acknowledged that the “main theme” of the Palestinian Authority’s official school textbooks “is that Israel should not exist.”

In a statement issued on December 8, 2004, the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, headed by Dr. Gershon Baskin, said:

“Text books issued by governments are an authoritative source to determine the values that any society lives by. Until now, the Palestinian Authority text books have not provided evidence that the Palestinian Authority has been implementing a policy of peace making … [T]he main political theme imparted to the students is that Israel should not exist and that is essentially the Palestinian goal. Assuming that this is not the political message that the Palestinian Authority adheres to, there is a need to make real revisions and amendments in Palestinian textbooks.”

Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), commented: “Israelis from right to left now acknowledge that the Palestinian Authority has been raising an entire generation of young Arabs to view the destruction of Israel as their main goal. All the elections or negotiations in the world will not bring peace so long as the Palestinian Arabs’ educational system is based on promotion of hatred and violence. We urge the Bush administration to used the $213-million annual U.S. aid package to the Palestinian Arabs as leverage to force the Palestinian Authority to stop teaching children to hate.”