“Some of the things Gaza needs: a government, security and tools to rebuild” proclaimed a recent NPR headline.
“Worse than starting from scratch: How big is the task of rebuilding Gaza?” was a BBC header.
Gaza indeed needs what NPR asserts, and the Beeb is on-target about the scope of the challenge ahead.
Both, though—and most of the world watching to see whether the tunnel-ridden wasteland along the Mediterranean can be restored to a livable place—are ignoring the most important part of the reconstruction effort: the rebooting of the Gazan mind.
Some Arab states have wisely signaled that they will not fund Gaza reconstruction as long as Hamas remains, de jure or de facto, in power. The world doesn’t need another October 7 attack and two-year war. And so US and Israeli officials are weighing a new approach of rebuilding in a part of Gaza under Israeli control, creating an example of peace and recovery behind what Israel calls the “yellow line.”
The hope is to inspire change throughout the territory.
John Spencer, executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute, calls it the “Disneyland strategy,” an effort “to show Gazans what life could look like without Hamas.”
It’s tempting to imagine Gazans being impressed enough by a thriving society next door (though they’ve had one called Israel for quite a while). But even if all of Gaza became a Disneyland or the “Riviera of the Middle East,” to borrow President Trump’s phrase, the hatred of Jews that permeates much of the Arab world will not just disappear from Gaza with the rubble.
Whether the future governance of Gaza will be a reformed Palestinian Authority or some other entity, the Gazan wasteland turned Disneyland will still return to being a badland.
Unless, somehow, an even more challenging rebuilding than that of physical infrastructure takes place in Gazan society: a reconstruction of hearts and minds.
According to the international education watchdog group Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), the current educational curriculum for Gaza’s students, which was developed by the Palestinian Authority, includes a good deal of anti-Semitic incitement.
The PA committed to the removal of such content in July 2024 as a condition for receiving 380 million euros in funding from the European Union. But—surprise, surprise—the PA used the funds to develop a curriculum “promoting violence, glorifying terrorism, promoting jihad and martyrdom, spreading anti-Semitic rhetoric, vilifying Israel, and denying its existence.” A fifth-grade textbook, for example, encourages students to emulate Dalal Mughrabi, who perpetrated the 1978 Coastal Road massacre that killed 38 Israeli civilians—including 13 children.
The European Parliament itself has condemned PA school textbooks for promoting anti-Semitism and inciting violence.
Students, the IMPACT-se found, are informed that Jews do not constitute a legitimate nation and that Israel is a colonial entity. An Islamic religious textbook depicts “the Jews” as “liars and manipulators” and an Arabic-language textbook accuses Israel of “Judaizing” the city of Jerusalem (where the Batei Mikdash stood centuries before Muhammad’s grandfather was even a glimmer in the eye of his grandfather). Other sections lionize terrorists and depict “holy war” as one of the “gates to paradise.”
One video from January of this year shows young girls chanting “We ignited the Intifada, with a stone and a knife” while making rock-throwing and throat-slitting gestures. In a Gaza City elementary school, students recited a poem that glorified the October 7 massacre.
Just imagine what Hamas teaches.
And, it must be added, what parents teach their children.
Zeh l’umas zeh—good and evil exist in parallelism. And so, just as the most meaningful chinuch Jewish children receive is supplied by their parents, so, l’havdil, are the “ideals” taught by Muslim parents planted in their young. A July 2024 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 71% of Palestinians, asked about Jews’ “level of humanity,” gave a score of… zero.
There’s considerable attitudinal reconstruction needed on American college campuses, too, and the Trump administration has taken steps to address the tolerance for lies about and hatred for Jews and Israel in American higher education.
But with billions of dollars expected to be spent to rebuild Gaza, all entities that are expected to pitch in to the effort must understand that, without rebuilding the minds of Gazans, the new homes and buildings will be no more lasting than if they were constructed of toothpicks and Elmer’s Glue.
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