A multiplication exercise photographed in a Palestinian school notebook asks children to build a math problem around the Gaza war.
At the top of the page is the name Hamas gave its October 7 attack: “Al Aqsa Flood.”
The instruction asks pupils to create a word problem “from the reality of the war” using 9 × 150.
According to a new report by Palestinian Media Watch, some of the children turned those numbers into questions about Israelis killed on October 7, Hamas rockets fired at Israel and fighters entering Israeli communities.
One answer, as translated by PMW, reads: “At least 150 Israelis were killed in one day. What was the number killed in nine days?”
Another calculates how many rockets would be fired if Hamas launched 150 per hour for nine hours.
A third asks how many fighters would enter Israeli communities if 150 were sent to each of nine communities.
The children were not simply solving equations, according to the report. Their work was marked by a teacher, with PMW translating comments including “Excellent,” “Champion” and, in one case, “Victory to the residents of Gaza.”
But there is an important verification issue.
The photographs published by PMW clearly show a war themed multiplication exercise. “Al Aqsa Flood,” the 9 × 150 calculation and an instruction to create a word problem from the reality of the war can be read in the images. One photographed exercise involving the number of children described as “martyrs” in Gaza can also be independently deciphered.
The more explosive examples involving Israeli deaths, Hamas rockets and fighters entering Israeli communities, however, cannot be independently read in full from the low resolution photographs PMW published. Those details therefore rely on PMW’s transcription and translation.
The school itself presents another unanswered question. PMW identifies it as Al Kuwait co ed Elementary School, but independent research could not locate the school in Palestinian Authority education records or establish where it is located. An official looking Palestinian institutional stamp appears on the children’s work, but the writing identifying the specific institution or ministry is not readable.
That means the photographs are evidence that the assignment existed. They are not evidence that officials at the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education in Ramallah designed or approved it.
Children celebrating October 7 at school
The math exercise is only one part of PMW’s report.
The organization also published videos it says originated from Palestinian school social media accounts in the weeks following October 7.
The footage shows children delivering prepared readings and performances about the attack.
In PMW’s translations, one schoolgirl describes October 7 as “a beautiful dream” and speaks of the pride and honor she felt.
Another welcomes October as the “month of blood” and recites a text about revenge, death and the screams of soldiers.
A schoolboy describes October 7 as a historic day that “brought us joy and restored our hope for liberation and independence.”
At another school, a girl describes the attack as an operation that inflicted heavy losses on Israel and “raised the morale of the Palestinian people.”
One of the most disturbing translations comes from a girls school performance in which PMW translates students as declaring: “Our land will be liberated from the Jews.”
The eleven videos cited by PMW are publicly accessible on the organization’s YouTube channel. However, Israel Newswire’s research was not able to independently retranscribe the original Arabic audio. The quotations therefore remain PMW translations and should be understood as such.
The original 2023 Facebook posts cited by PMW could also not be independently retrieved, and PMW did not provide direct source URLs for them.
Those limitations matter.
But they do not erase the larger story.
Because the educational pattern documented here did not suddenly appear after October 7.
The pattern was documented years before the massacre
Long before Hamas attacked southern Israel, independent institutions were already raising concerns about how violence, martyrdom and the Israeli Palestinian conflict appeared in Palestinian educational material.
One of the most important examinations came not from an Israeli organization, but from Germany’s Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research.
The institute conducted a major study of Palestinian textbooks with financial support from the European Union, examining 156 textbooks and 16 teacher guides published by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
Its findings were complicated.
The researchers found material promoting human rights, tolerance and pluralism. They also documented changes in later editions that reduced some content considered escalatory.
But they found something else.
The study concluded that the Arabic term “shahid,” or martyr, was used not only for Palestinians who were victims of violence but also for “individuals killed while committing violent attacks against Israel.”
It also found that Palestinian violence, including violence against civilians, was presented in certain historical contexts as a legitimate form of resistance.
The researchers identified combat related interpretations of jihad and emotionally charged descriptions that could dehumanize Israelis.
And significantly for the new multiplication exercise, conflict related examples had already entered subjects such as mathematics and science.
Martyrs were already being used to teach math
That connection becomes even clearer in another body of evidence.
Reviews conducted by UNRWA of the Palestinian curriculum, later examined by the US Government Accountability Office, identified mathematics problems involving prisoners and problems that used the number of “martyrs” to teach mathematical concepts.
That finding predates the publication of the new October 7 exercise.
The exact textbook exercise and wording could not be independently retrieved during Israel Newswire’s review, so it would be wrong to claim the old problem was identical to the new one.
But the educational format itself is not new.
Using politically charged casualty figures as material for mathematics lessons was documented before October 7.
The new 9 × 150 assignment appears to take that existing format and insert the Gaza war and the “Al Aqsa Flood” into it.
The argument has been going on for years
Concerns about Palestinian educational material have repeatedly reached European governments and the European Parliament.
European lawmakers have spent years demanding changes to material they say glorifies violence, jihad and martyrdom, while debating whether European education funding should be conditioned on compliance with standards promoting peace and tolerance.
The controversy is not confined to textbooks.
Schools have also been criticized for being named after Palestinians responsible for deadly attacks against Israelis, including Dalal Mughrabi, who led the 1978 Coastal Road attack in which 37 Israelis were killed, including children.
Belgium suspended cooperation with the PA education ministry in 2018 following a dispute over schools named after Mughrabi. A Belgian ministry statement reported at the time said that glorifying terrorism or perpetrators of terrorist attacks was unacceptable.
The Palestinian Authority rejects the broader accusation that its curriculum promotes incitement.
Its longstanding position is that the curriculum reflects Palestinian history and national identity and that control over educational content is a matter of Palestinian sovereignty. Palestinian sources have also argued that the curriculum addresses Zionism as a political movement rather than Jews as a religious or ethnic group.
There is evidence complicating the picture as well.
An UNRWA review of Palestinian textbooks in 2017 reported finding no cases it classified as incitement to violence in books for grades one through ten.
A later review found issues of concern on 3.85 percent of more than 13,000 textbook pages examined. An independent UN commissioned review nevertheless described even that limited amount of problematic material as a serious neutrality issue.
The Georg Eckert study likewise found substantial material promoting human rights and coexistence alongside the examples involving violence, martyrdom and antagonistic portrayals of Israel.
So this is not evidence that every Palestinian classroom, teacher or textbook teaches children to celebrate terrorism.
It is evidence that the phenomenon exists inside parts of the educational environment and that it existed before October 7.
October 7 supplied new material for an older pattern
That distinction is what makes the new PMW report significant.
October 7 did not have to create an educational language around martyrdom, armed resistance or violence against Israelis.
That language was already documented.
The attack instead provided a new event around which that language could be organized.
There was now a new date to celebrate.
New fighters to praise.
New rockets and casualty figures to put into exercises.
And a new Palestinian national trauma and Israeli catastrophe that could be incorporated into material presented to children.
Some of PMW’s most dramatic new claims still require independent verification. The unidentified Al Kuwait school’s status remains unresolved. The original Facebook posts are unavailable. Several of the handwritten sentences cannot be independently deciphered from the photographs, and the assembly translations remain PMW’s own.
Those caveats should not be hidden.
Neither should the history.
Independent European, American and UN linked research had documented troubling elements involving martyrdom, violence and conflict inside Palestinian educational material years before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
The new school material documented by PMW fits that older pattern with an unsettling precision.
October 7 did not invent the template.
It gave it new material.
