The first thing the Nazis had done upon assuming power in Germany was to turn the children into loyal Nazis, and ultimately into heartless killers. The Palestinians under Yasser Arafat and Mahmud Abbas have done the same. Peace can not be made with a regime that indoctrinates their youth to wage an uncompromising war against the Jews and encourage them to become martyrs for Palestine. That is what the Nazis did, and this is what the Palestinians are doing now. And if one wonders why there is no peace between the Palestinians and Israel, one clear answer is the Palestinian educational system, Palestinian media and the mosques that support it.

The Hitler Youth turned a generation of young people into Nazis. Hitler banned all other youth movements including the Boy Scouts, and consequently, 90% of young German children became members of the Hitler Youth. Already in 1922, the Nazis had a youth arm designed to train and recruit members for its paramilitary. Once the Nazis became more powerful, their youth arm grew exponentially. In January 1933, when Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany, there were 50,000 members of the Hitler Youth. By the end of the year, there were more than 2 million. As the 1930’s progressed, the Nazis waged war on popular groups with German youth. They banned children’s groups associated with political parties, such as the Socialists and Communists, and then proceeded in 1936 to ban all youth groups including the Boy Scouts. Jewish children were banned from any participation.

Making the Hitler Youth the exclusive and only youth group in Germany allowed Hitler and the Third Reich to indoctrinate children in their most impressionable years, and it let the Nazis separate the children from the influence of their parents. The Nazis understood that cohesive family units would be an obstacle to their goals. The Hitler Youth was a way to get Hitler’s racist and antisemitic ideology into family units. It worked! Many Hitler Youth members denounced their parents to the Nazi authorities, displaying their loyalty to Hitler over their own parents. The Hitler Youth became more like a mini military than a Boy Scout den. The Nazis imposed military-like order and trained the youngsters in the use of weapons. In addition, hefty doses of propaganda were used to turn the boys (and girls) into a blind and almost religious devotion to the Fuhrer, namely Hitler.

If one wonders why a 12-year-old Palestinian youngster sets out from his home to stab and kill any identifiable Jew, a peek into the Palestinian Authority and Hamas textbooks, and school curriculum would explain it. The Palestinian leadership’s educational emphasis is focused on blaming Israel and Jews for Palestinian misfortune. Billions of aid dollars from the USA and the European Union is pocketed by corrupt Palestinian officials. Instead of making genuine efforts to find creative solutions for peace through cooperation and compromising with Israel, Palestinian school material propagates the destruction of Israel. Rather than investing in superior education for its young people, the Palestinians in both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, are militarizing their young people. The longer the Palestinians reject solving the conflict with Israel, the more it becomes intractable.

A report by IMPACT-se organization on changes in the 2020-21 Palestinian school curriculum grades 1 through 12 found that in contrast with previous Palestinian curricula, the new curriculum omits discussion of peace education in the context of the conflict with Israel. Peaceful resolution as the ultimate goal isn’t taught to students. References to historical Jewish presence have been erased. Instead, Jewish history and heritage are presented as falsified; Jewish holy places are presented as Muslim areas usurped by Zionists. Jewish existence in contemporary Israel is characterized as an act of racist aggression against the Palestinians, and there is no mention of Jewish historical roots in the land.

An 11th-grade history textbook implies that Jews control the world, using classic antisemitic imagery that would make the Nazis proud. Students are presented with the antisemitic canard that Jews control money, the media, and politics, and are characterized as sinful liars and fraudsters that turned against the Prophet (Muhammad) in early Islam. Jews are described as “the enemies of Islam in all times and all places.”An Islamic Education chapter teaches that Jews are corrupt and are doomed to extinction as their “corruption of the land will be the cause of their annihilation.”

The 2020 edition of the IMPACT-se study shows an emphasis placed in the Palestinian school curriculum Martyrdom on the killing of infidels, which is glorified. It stresses that those who die as martyrs (shuhada) while killing Christians and Jews, will go to paradise, where Allah will raise their status. In summary, the IMPACT-se study found that the Palestinian curriculum had “moved further from meeting the UNESCO standards, and contains a systematic insertion of violence, martyrdom, and Jihad across all grades and subjects. Therefore, it concludes that the curriculum rejects the possibility of peace with Israel.

The Holocaust, in which Six Million Jews were murdered, including one and one half million children, was made possible by a Nazi hate and racist educational system that deemed Jews to be sub-humans, and therefore expendable. It enabled young men who just left high school and now served in Hitler’s army to smash Jewish babies’ heads. Today, young Palestinian graduates of the Palestinian educational system go the distance to knife Jews to death regardless of age, sex, or orientation. Racist hate pervades in their decision to murder, and they believe in the promise of heavenly rewards for their deeds.

American and European policymakers, and non-governmental agencies who reward the Palestinians with generous aid packages seem to be oblivious to the impact of their “generosity.”In more than one way they are responsible for the blood of innocent Israeli Jews who are knifed by young Palestinians, gunned down, and killed by vehicular homicide. A two-state solution won’t change the hatred among the Palestinians who know no boundaries. As long as the Palestinian educational system indoctrinates its young people to kill Jews and become martyrs, peace hasn’t got a chance. The poisoning of a young mind is hard to expunge. Deborah Singer Soffen, in a Times of Israel piece, wrote “The path to peace begins in the classroom…”