Jordan's Defense of Its Textbooks Is a Confession

When IMPACT-SE released its May 2026 review of the Jordanian national curriculum, the findings were familiar: antisemitic tropes presented as fact, the textbooks glorify jihad and martyrdom, Israel is erased from maps, the Holocaust is all but ignored, and homosexuality labeled a threat to mankind. 

A former Jordanian education minister, Dr. Izzat Jaradat, published a rebuttal headlined as a refutation of the "fabrications." The funny thing is that his "refutations" confirm every single accusation.

Jaradat claims that there is no such thing as antisemitism in the Arab world, claiming the concept arrived in the Middle East through Jewish historians Bernard Lewis and Mark Cohen — an illegitimate yardstick for Arab-Islamic education. And then he justifies hatred for Jews:  Jewish hostility to Islam is, he writes, a historical and doctrinal fact. Jewish "economic extortion" in European societies is what produced "the Jewish question." Jews practiced deception and covenant-breaking in Arab-Islamic societies, and that too is history. The textbook teaches that treachery is an inherent trait of the Jews; Jaradat's reply is, yes, why does that bother you?

 On the maps that erase Israel, he asks "which Israel?" — 1948, 1967, 1973, or Netanyahu's dreams — and notes that Israeli textbooks name no borders either. It isn't true, but it is an admittance.

On jihad and martyrdom in Jordanian poetry, he answers that celebrating sacrifice is the office of poetry among all nations, and brings as proof Shimon Peres; 1970 book on the founding of Israel's armed forces as his proof.  I don't think Peres wrote anything quite like this:

The honorable Sunnah of the Prophet mentioned a number of the virtues of the martyrs and their status with God Almighty. For instance, the Messenger of God explained a number of the martyrs' qualities, of which he mentioned: "[The martyr] is forgiven from the first drop of his blood that is shed; he is shown his place in Paradise; he is spared the torment of the grave; he is kept safe from the Great Fright; he is adorned with a garment of faith; he is married to (wives) from among the wide-eyed houris; and he is permitted to intercede for seventy of his relatives."  

As far as the Holocaust is concerned, he explains that it is a Jewish-European matter grafted onto the Western mind, not an Arab concern, and points to a UNESCO survey showing European interest has faded; the Holocaust is absent because, in his account, it belongs to someone else. 

On homosexuality as a threat to mankind, he says this is consistent with Jordanian educational philosophy and human dignity.

So there is no refutation — this is only defense of everything IMPACT-SE found.

Jordan maintains a peace treaty with Israel, promotes the Amman Message to the world as a charter of moderation, and presents itself as the region's reliable moderate. Its former education minister was handed a report documenting that its schools teach the opposite, and his answer was to defend the textbooks. 

That's moderation, Jordanian-style. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)