The case for an Abraham Accords curriculum in our schools

Americans have been shocked by the display of antisemitism on college campuses in recent months. Angry campus mobs have called for death to Jews, death to Israel and death to America, while administrations stood by, impotent. This extremism can only be prevented by addressing its root cause: what our schools are teaching about Israel and the Middle East.

Support of the terrorist organization Hamas and the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement will continue to rage on our campuses until colleges introduce widespread curriculum reform. That reform should be centered in an Abraham Accords approach to the study of the region, which teaches the history of the Jewish people.

Normalizing relations between Arab countries and Israel offers more than prosperity for the region. It helps American students differentiate between the Hamas narrative of endless war and the peacemaking approach of Abraham Accords.

The two narratives hinge on fundamentally different answers to the question: Are the Jewish people “occupiers” in the land of Israel?

In the Hamas narrative, the Jewish people originated in Europe, and Western powers invaded an Islamic religious empire to facilitate Jewish immigration to the Middle East. Archaeology and history are irrelevant in this analysis, which focuses on power and depends on an arbitrary start date for history. In this narrative, once the Meccan Islamic empire established its province, “Jund Filastin,” (the military district of Palestine) in the mid-7th century, the territory was forever Arab and Muslim imperial land and could never revert to Jewish indigenous rule again.

Indeed, Hamas’ brutal military tactics on Oct. 7 gave away its imperial intent. In Hamas’ view, they were re-establishing a religious empire over “Jund Filastin” by dominating the bodies of indigenous Jewish victims.

In the Zionist view, the fundamental question is reversed, and the answer is based in science, history, archaeology and nationalism. Despite the contest between Western and Islamic empires over the last 1,500 years, the State of Israel is a repudiation of “empire” and is the first successful indigenous national movement.

Indeed, the Zionist movement outlasted both the Ottoman and British empires in the 19th and 20th centuries to restore the Jewish people to their one and only indigenous homeland. This is akin to the clause in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres that all parties must recognize Armenia as a free and independent state from the defeated Ottoman empire. Does anyone question Armenia’s right to exist?

The Jewish people’s indigenous presence in the land of Israel from the 13th century BCE to the present is incontestable. It is not the presence of a colony; it is the presence of an indigenous people.

The four common elements of all indigenous peoples — language, land, calendar and religion — are embedded in layer after layer of Israel’s soil. Zionism restored the Jewish language, Hebrew; it restored the Jewish people to their land; it restored the calendar of the Jewish people with its agricultural and seasonal holidays that make sense only in Israel; and it restored Judaism, the indigenous religion of the land of Israel. Israel has no imperial intentions and is not claiming any land other than the land in which the Jewish people have historically dwelt.

So what does this have to do with an Abraham Accords curriculum for American schools? Currently, the Hamas narrative is dominating America’s academic environment. It is not only antisemitic, but it is factually wrong, and it is poor scholarship. And it is warping the minds of American students and inciting them to irrational hatred of the Jewish people, causing entire campuses to shut down.

Abraham Accords countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, are ahead of us. They have recognized that in order to live in peace with the Jewish people in their region they need to be educated about tolerance. UAE textbooks teach about the history of the Jewish people in the Middle East, historical tolerance between Muslims and Jews, the legitimacy of Judaism as a regional religion, and the necessity of peace with Israel. The Emiratis are faithful Muslims, and they rejected a religious empire. They decided to seek peace and prosperity in their own borders and allow other regional partners to do the same, including the Jewish state.

If Jews and Israelis are to become safe again in America’s schools, and if American students are to be educated rather than indoctrinated, we need curriculum reform now. We could benefit from the Emiratis’ example.

Alan Clemmons is founder of American Patriots for Israel and served for 18 years in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he authored the first law establishing penalties for those businesses that engage in any discriminatory boycott of Israel. Bart Marcois is a former U.S. diplomat and the former principal deputy assistant secretary of energy for international affairs who now heads a private consulting practice in Washington, D.C. Jason Olson is a U.S. Navy veteran and holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. The authors’ views are their own.