Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): The move to change the school curricula in Bahrain may have been brought to a halt, or in fact being reviewed, but it is important to know how it was done, and what arrangements were made between the authorities in Bahrain and the government of the Israeli entity to change the school curricula. 

Israel started studying the curricula through its cultural arm, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, known as IMPACT-se.

This organization, registered in London and Tel Aviv, is in fact an Israeli monitoring body that focuses on the Palestinian and Arab curricula, especially their contents related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It was established in 1998 and is tasked with monitoring the educational curricula of the Arab and Islamic countries and curricula that teach Arabic and Islamic subjects.

On January 23, 2022, the Israeli Ambassador to Bahrain, Eitan Na'eh, submitted to the Secretary-General of the Higher Education Council, Rana bint Isa Al Khalifa, the recommendations of a study prepared by IMPACT-se that said that the Bahraini curricula should generally comply with "international standards of peace and tolerance," and that textbooks should be free of hatred and incitement against others. IMPACT-se recommended that students be taught "the value of respect for other cultures and encourage curiosity and dialogue," within the curricula.

The study also called for teaching the Holocaust and Jewish history. The institute's study noted that Arabic textbooks have failed in teaching the history of slavery in the Middle East, and noted that Bahrain can improve its educational review of Israel, pointing out that anti-Israel material has been modified.

The project was clearly approved by the Royal Court and the government before its beginning.

After months of preparation, specifically in July 2022, the Bahraini Minister of Education met with the Acting Israeli Ambassador Itay Tagner, during which it was agreed to form a small committee of supervisors and teachers to introduce the required amendments, which will be made gradually for the late primary and elementary stages.

On the 2nd of last March, the Secretary-General of the Higher Education Council, Rana bint Isa Al Khalifa, met with the president of the International Affairs Advisor to World Jewish Congress, Eli Cohanim. It was officially announced that the officials discussed modifying the curricula and developing others within the framework of the normalization agreement, including issues related to religious tolerance.

New books began to be printed and replaced urgently, even though the current scholastic year will end soon, as the government tried to make the changes without attracting public attention.

Sources say that "the regime in Bahrain was shocked by the wide and declared opposition to the project to change the curricula, and the biggest mistake was omitting some of the hadiths narrated by Al-Bukhari and Muslim," which provoked Sunni scholars, who did not explicitly oppose normalization, but were very clear with the regime regarding tampering with religious hadiths and Islamic history.

IMPACT-se is part of the occupation entity's institutionalized efforts to invade the minds of generations of the Arab and Islamic region and stifle any breath of struggle, as the institute monitors the content of the Arabic curricula word by word to ensure that children learn "peace and cultural tolerance" in schools according to the Israeli narrative; peace and tolerance of the kind that serve the projects of normalization and brainwashing of issues of religion and the nation.

After its establishment, the institute's work later expanded to include writing reports and making researches that evaluate the content of curricula globally and specifically in the Arab world, invoking UNESCO's standards on "tolerance" and "accepting others".

Most of the organization's leaders are Israelis and Americans united by Zionist ideology and service to the occupation entity, and some of them have direct links to the Israeli army, as it is shown in their personal profiles, noting that most of them live in the occupation entity. 

Contrary to what is commonly believed, this organization has already succeeded in changing parts of the curricula in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and has made specific proposals to Qatar to change its curricula, especially with regard to the Great Palestine Revolution known as Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Revolution.

The institute seeks to ensure putting Israel on the map of the region that is shown to students in textbooks.

Recently, the institute has praised the changes in the Emirati curricula, and the Saudi-led changes in curricula in recent years.

Arabic Version