Here’s the first bit of news that at first glance sounds ever-so-slightly encouraging:

The European Union passed several resolutions condemning Palestinian Authority educational materials containing antisemitism and glorification of jihad, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) has reported.

In the EU’s report on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2024, it called for any future funding to the PA to be conditional on the removal of “antisemitic content, incitement to violence and the glorification of martyrdom and jihad” from textbooks.

The European Parliament’s budget report emphasized that EU financial assistance and engagement “should support education that promotes peace, tolerance and coexistence.”

This may seem like a no-brainer. But although I first read about the phenomenon of the vicious Jew-hatred in Palestinian textbooks some time during the 1990s, until now I’ve been unaware of any particular European move against them, and certainly no effective ones. Whether or not the PA complies, Palestinian society is inundated with this sort of thing. But the textbooks are an important part of it.

Doing some research now, I discover this is not a new phenomenon with the EU, although at this point their statements seems a little stronger. Here’s an article from 2021 [my emphasis]:

A study commissioned by the European Union examined 156 Palestinian Authority textbooks and 16 teachers’ guides. Eighteen texts are from 2020, the rest from 2017-2019. The report said they present “ambivalent – sometimes hostile – attitudes towards Jews and the characteristics they attribute to the Jewish people” and their “frequent use of negative attributions in relation to the Jewish people…suggest a conscious perpetuation of anti-Jewish prejudice, especially when embedded in the current political context.”

The EU provides funding for the Palestinian education system …

So the EU helps pay for the education in hatred. The article goes on to say this:

In October 2021, Britain announced it would cease direct funding to Palestinian education in the PA. The government denied it; however, the decision was related to the EU report. According to an investigation by the Jewish News [UK], roughly $137 million was spent by Britain in the previous five years, including on the salaries of the Palestinian civil servants and teachers responsible for drafting the PA textbooks.

In 2022, a group of European Union lawmakers called on the European Commission to reduce funding to the PA if it continues refusing to purge its K-12 curriculum of materials that “incite schoolchildren to hate Jews and emulate terrorists.”

But guess what? Although it appears the funding was frozen for a very short while (the article doesn’t make it clear whether it was just the British funding or the EU funding), it was restored in 2022 pending still another study. How many studies do you need? The problem with the textbooks isn’t subtle, it’s huge and overt.

More history here:

According to IMPACT-se, this is the seventh consecutive year in which such condemnations have been issued.
“>In July 2024, the PA signed an agreement with the EU to reform its curriculum, affirming its commitment to the process, but not all of the EU’s guidelines for the removal of violent, extremist content have been met.

As of November 2025, according to an IMPACT-se report, PA textbooks and educational materials still include content that glorifies jihad and incitement to violence.

Hard to say whether it will end up mattering this time, but it continues to be unconscionable that the EU funds this.

The second piece of news is this from Sweden:

Maria Malmer Stenergard, Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, announced before parliamentary representatives that the government will no longer use the term “Islamophobia.” She described the concept as “problematic,” because, according to her, “it focuses on individuals’ irrational fears.”

Stenergard emphasized that the Swedish government will also seek to replace the term with “anti-Muslim racism” or “anti-Muslim hatred” in international bodies, including the European Union and the United Nations. Discussions on this matter are set to continue during the third week of May in Brussels.

The decision has been welcomed by the right-wing Sweden Democrats party. Charlie Weimers, a member of the European Parliament for the party, said, “Islamists have exploited the term Islamophobia to advance their agenda and secure EU funding.” He described the government’s action as “finally scrapping a fabricated concept.”

Faw Azzat, Secretary General of the Global Alliance for Peace and Justice (GAPF) in Sweden, also praised the decision, stating that the term Islamophobia was “coined by Islamists themselves to equate criticism of a religion with racism against people—a semantic trick dressed up as anti-racism.”

I think this is pretty meaningless as well. Whether it’s called “Islamaphobia” or “anti-Muslim racism,” the term is often applied not only to generalized hatred of Muslims but also over-applied to rational and realistic evaluations of the radical Islamist devotion to terrorism and violence against the infidel.