Palestinian Authority-run schools in the West Bank are glorifying Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror spree, using the Israeli death toll to teach third graders math lessons and hosting school-wide assemblies where children publicly commit to “cool the fire in our heart with the body parts and screams of soldiers,” among many other such examples, according to a new investigation obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.
The celebration of Oct. 7 inside these primary and secondary schools, reported here for the first time, is fueling fresh concerns at the State Department about the fledgling PA’s fitness to govern in the Gaza Strip as it jockeys for a central role in President Donald Trump’s reconstruction plan. Multiple U.S. officials confirmed to the Free Beacon that the PA is violating promises to end terror incitement, potentially disqualifying it from overseeing Gaza schools, where for years Hamas has taught children to hate Israel and Jews.
The PA’s schools have long been notorious for exposing schoolchildren to virulently anti-Israel as well as antisemitic ideology. But antisemitic indoctrination in the West Bank has soared to new levels following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, which is now being routinely glorified by PA schools and worked into children’s lessons, including into completely unrelated subjects such as math.
The new investigation—assembled through pictures, videos, and documentation unearthed by the Israeli watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)—reveals how the PA school system has fully integrated Oct. 7 into its lesson plans and also organized school-wide ceremonies where children recite poems praising the Hamas fighters who raped, tortured, and murdered more than 1,200 Israelis. Further, the materials unearthed by PMW show that the glorification in West Bank schools of Oct. 7 extends well beyond biased textbook passages or lesson plans, and is fully embraced by teachers and administrators across the West Bank.
The PA’s math curriculum, for instance, bizarrely uses the Oct. 7 attacks to teach nine-year-old children basic arithmetic skills.
“Multiplication exercise: The [Oct. 7] Al-Aqsa Flood: At least 150 Israelis were killed in one day. What was the number killed in nine days? Solution: 9 X 150 = 1,350 killed,” states one math problem from the Al-Kuwait Co-ed Elementary School run by the PA. “May Allah protect you! Excellent!” the teacher responded on the child’s worksheet.
In another math problem, the question states: “[Hamas’] Al-Qassam Brigades sent 150 Jihad fighters to [each of] nine settlements (i.e., Jewish towns) in Israel. How many Jihad fighters entered [all] the settlements?” After the child provided the correct answer, the teacher wrote, “May Allah protect you. Champion! Victory to the residents of Gaza!”
Other questions center around the number of “martyrs” killed in Gaza: “At least 150 Martyrs were killed in Gaza in one day. How many were killed in nine days?” The child’s correct answer again prompted the teacher to write: “Excellent! Champion! Our blessings be fulfilled! Mercy and forgiveness to our Martyrs!”
At least 11 PA schools held assemblies shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks that featured “readings and posters celebrating Oct. 7, referring to the murder, the blood, the death, and the torture,” according to PMW’s report.
In one, a young, keffiyeh-clad girl from the Kharas Girls’ Elementary School in Hebron describes how waking up on Oct. 7 was “a beautiful dream.”
“That day went down in history… We woke up to the sounds of laughter. There are those among us who thought they were dreaming, but it is a beautiful dream that they never want to wake up from,” she says. “On Saturday [October 7], the people who resist returned to their land … It was impossible to express the emotions in our hearts, and we never imagined such pride in our people on our faces. The sense of honor that we felt is indescribable.”
In another reading from the West Bank’s Shweikeh Mixed Elementary School, another young girl welcomes “October, month of blood.”
“We came to you (i.e., Israel) in multitudes, open your door, we are death. We will let you taste eternity in fire [of hell],” the girl proclaims in a video captured on Nov. 5, 2023. “Only blood do we see as an ally, and we will cool the fire in our heart with the body parts and screams of soldiers. Open your door, we are death, or close it – we will get to you, the target is identified.”
At the Sinjil Boys’ High School near Ramallah, a Palestinian boy recounts how Oct. 7 unleashed “resistance toward our occupied lands [Israel].”
“October 7 will be a date that historians will mark in the coming years, and it is a historic day that brought us joy and restored our hope for liberation and independence,” the boy says.
In another example compiled by PMW, a very young girl at the Siris Elementary School for Girls reads from a script describing how Oct. 7 succeeded in “inflicting heavy losses on the Israeli enemy and raised the morale of the Palestinian people.”
Other assemblies documented by PMW included signs declaring, “Our land will be liberated from the Jews” and “Just as Gaza tasted the taste of Martyrdom – Israel tasted the taste of death.”
Earlier PMW reports determined that the PA Ministry of Education has named dozens of its schools after terrorists, and even named one after the notorious Nazi collaborator and Hitler associate Amin al-Husseini, who served as Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti during World War II. At least five PA schools are named after Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian terrorist who killed 38 Israelis in a 1978 massacre.
According to initial plans being discussed by the Trump-led Board of Peace and other stakeholders, a “reformed” PA could play a major role in the looming reconstruction and governance of Gaza. But Israel opposes any role for the PA, which has long resisted being “reformed.” The Free Beacon first reported in April that the PA continues to pay salaries to convicted terrorists, including those released by Israel in April 2025 as part of a hostage deal with Hamas. Many of those payments were furnished through a newly established welfare system that was created to hide the funding from Western donors.
A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon that “the PA still has not and must end its incitement, glorification of violence, support for terrorism, and refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist in its educational curriculum and materials.” The spokesman made clear that before the PA and its sister group, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), can be “considered partners for peace” in post-war Gaza, they must “consistently end support for and repudiate terrorism, including the October 7 massacre, and end incitement to terrorism in education, as promised by” both organizations repeatedly for years.
School administration inside Gaza has emerged as a major issue as the Trump administration works to dismantle the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the U.N.’s deeply troubled Gaza aid operation which has been fully infiltrated by Hamas and uses Hamas-approved lesson plans.
PMW founder Itamar Marcus told the Free Beacon that his report was privately presented to State Department officials earlier this month, when he made the case that “the heads of the PA Ministry of Education, the school principals and teachers are all guilty of poisoning the minds of Palestinian children by indoctrinating hatred and celebrating murder.”
“They must all be removed from positions of influence and replaced by new educators who are carefully supervised, in the same way Germany’s education was supervised by the Allies after World War II,” Marcus said, adding that he hopes the United States will lead the international community in pressing for these reforms.
But the evidence gathered by PMW shows that even if the PA was willing to follow the conditions set forth by the State Department, it would need to engage in a wholesale restructuring of its entire educational system, a daunting if not impossible task.
PMW notes in its report that the growing list of Western countries that have recognized a state of “Palestine” diplomatically—including China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada—”have chosen to ignore” the vast body of evidence showing the PA “and its Ministry of Education are fundamentally terror-promoting and terror-celebrating entities.”
“The U.S. and E.U. countries have demanded the PA make changes in schoolbooks. However, as this report shows, the entire PA Ministry of Education is the breeding ground for Palestinian terror that must be completely dismantled,” said PMW founder Marcus. “Making some symbolic changes in school books without replacing the educational directors, school principals, and teachers is like treating a cancer with aspirin.”
A U.S. diplomatic source familiar with the Trump-led Board of Peace’s reconstruction plans told the Free Beacon that the type of educational programs documented by PMW will not be tolerated in any future Gaza government.
“Institutionalized radicalization masquerading as education is poisoning the future of Palestinian children,” the source said. “The Board of Peace intends to ensure that Gaza is not only demilitarized, but deradicalized, and that its schools educate the next generation for peace and opportunity, not hatred and conflict.”
A second senior State Department diplomat who works on Palestinian affairs said it is clear that “the PA educational system needs a complete overhaul” and that the West Bank government led by long-serving president Mahmoud Abbas, 90, “is fully aware of what this entails: Teach math, not martyrdom. Vocational skills, not loving odes to suicide bombers.”
An ongoing federal investigation by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Inspector General has revealed that dozens of Hamas operatives have been daylighting as school principals and teachers within UNRWA. A successor organization administered by the PA is not likely to implement the educational reforms championed by the United States. “End the hate, end the incitement against Israel and America, and fire any teacher or principal who spews hate and incitement,” said the second diplomat.
Congressional leaders are also warning the Trump administration and its Board of Peace against giving the PA a leadership role in Gaza, saying the latest findings by PMW offer just the latest proof that the West Bank government—like Hamas—is breeding future terrorists.
“Palestinian Authority schools are institutionalizing terror, hatred for Jews, and bloodshed. If we ever want to see long-term peace and stability in the region, we cannot allow the PA to have a say in running the show based on their continued support for genocidal Hamas terrorists,” Rep. Pat Fallon (R.-TX), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Free Beacon. “The idea that they are systematically promoting the October 7 attacks for children is the definition of evil.”
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