Israeli chief rabbi praises pro-Israel changes in Saudi curriculum

An Israeli-American rabbi has praised changes made to Saudi school textbooks, including the deletion of the anti-Zionist content, despite criticism that Saudi Arabia has yielded to US demands.

“We appreciate Saudi Arabia’s ongoing efforts to improve school curricula, including work to address the issues of concern in the textbooks,” Rabbi Yehuda Kaplon wrote on social media platform X.

Kaplon, who is also the so-called US envoy to combat anti-Semitism, expressed Washington’s pleasure with the Saudi move.

“President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio have made it clear: In the spirit of the Abraham Accords, let us build on the vision of our common ancestor Abraham to promote peace and coexistence between our peoples,” he wrote.

The well-known Yemeni cartoonist Kamal Sharaf has reacted to Kaplon’s message in a caricature, showing an American hand inserting the updated Saudi textbook in the head of a Saudi child. In the image, the child transforms into to a boy wearing a kippah displaying the Israeli flag and speaking Hebrew.

According to critics, Saudi Arabia has made wide-ranging changes to the content of its school textbooks in recent years.

Those changes, which were launched in the late 2010s, accelerated under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of Saudi Vision 2030 with the alleged aim of “reducing extremist content, promoting tolerance and coexistence, and aligning with international standards of peace and tolerance.”

The changes included removing from textbooks a description of Zionism as a “European racist movement”, whose goal is to expel Palestinians and occupy Arab territories, including oil wells and holy sites. Phrases such as “Zionist enemy” or “Israeli enemy” have also been replaced by “Israeli occupation.”

Meanwhile, the name Palestine has been removed from parts of some maps that used to show the Israeli-occupied territories as “Palestine”.

A complete high school social studies textbook that contained anti-Israeli content has been removed, and chapters on the “Zionist danger” or the 1969 Zionist burning of al-Aqsa Mosque have also been deleted.

Moreover, content related to jihad and verses and hadiths related to jihad in the way of Allah have been removed from Saudi textbooks.

This comes as Trump has been pushing for a normalization deal between Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

On July 22, Trump approved a long-term nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that could allow the Arab kingdom to develop a civilian nuclear program.

However, just a day later, Trump introduced a new condition to the deal requiring Riyadh to normalize ties with Israel through the framework of the so-called Abraham Accords.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have long maintained covert ties, but Israel “craves public recognition as the path to ending its isolation in the Islamic world,” according to the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman (MbS) were reportedly close to reaching a normalization deal in September 2023.

However, the talks were derailed following Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza which began in October of that year, which made it politically difficult for Riyadh to be seen as partnering with Tel Aviv.

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