This past summer, we told you how US tax dollars were being

sent to the Palestinian Authority,

and then used to support the families

of Palestinian terrorists who killed or maimed Israelis.

Well now, a new report says some of the money Americans send

to the United Nations is actually

being used to educate Palestinian schoolchildren

to commit acts of violence against Jews.

Well, joining us to sort this all out

is Rabbi Abraham Cooper.

He's associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal

Center in Los Angeles.

Rabbi Cooper, I guess we'd expect

this from privately funded Palestinian textbooks,

but from UNRWA, United Nations Relief and Works Agency,

what are they doing?

Right.

So the Wiesenthal Center has helped back a research

on hundreds of new Palestinian textbooks, many

of them now being used in UNRWA schools that

educate a significant portion of Palestinian children

in Gaza, the West Bank, and throughout the Middle East.

And unfortunately, the themes that still pervade,

here we are in 2017.

Denial of the legitimacy of their Jewish neighbors,

denial of Jewish history, a mindset that their neighbors

are not to lived peacefully with,

they are to be remove, that the Jewish people have

no place in the Holy Land.

And you won't find Tel Aviv on a map.

You'll see poems that extol martyrdom,

that will invoke some of the Islamist language,

but really for the nationalistic goal of a complete Palestine.

In other words, it's not a two-state solution

where you have Arab Palestinians on one side and Israeli

Jews living side by side, which is what we keep

hearing from political leaders.

But what they teach their kids is there's one Palestine,

the Jews don't belong there, and one way

or the other, the 6-plus million Israeli Jewish citizens

of the democratic state of Israel

should and will be removed.

Now the report mentions three areas of concern.

You mentioned them briefly.

Let's look at each one of them.

First, denial of Israeli legitimacy.

Tell me about that, give me one good example

that we see in the textbooks.

Well I think again, if you just

look at the maps at their demographic studies,

they will give you a list, I think

of nine million Palestinians worldwide,

counting everyone in what they call their diaspora.

But you'll be hard pressed to see

a listing of six million Israeli Jews living in the Holy Land.

You'll be hard pressed to find the words state of Israel

in almost any of those textbooks.

So what they teach themselves and repeat it over and over

again as a mantra is, this land between the Mediterranean

and Jordan is and was Palestine.

Though the Western Wall is actually a holy Muslim site,

we know from their efforts that UNESCO, which actually started

in these kinds of textbooks, Rachel's tomb

in Bethlehem, which was safeguarded

by Muslims for centuries for their Jewish neighbors,

is now being rebranded as a mosque.

The tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron,

you can go right down the list.

And what young kids learn about is this is all their land,

everything that they see next to them

was done through deceit, through mass murder.

These are people who hated the prophet, killed Jesus,

didn't follow Moses' law, the worst human beings that you

can possibly imagine.

That is a kind of mentality that breeds the kind of hatred that

leads to terrorist actions and the terrible toll

among all citizens of Israel from terrorism.

And I think again, it should be a wake-up call to the Trump

administration as well and the State Department, which

is I think really fallen down on this over decades, which

is only people make peace.

And in order to make peace, there

has to be a sea change in how you look at the other.

This study devastatingly shows and proves that

the Palestinian leadership, the people

making the decisions for the PA within UNRWA, from Hamas,

they've done exactly the opposite.

They continue to do so, and to the extent

that we can get the United States

Congress, our administration, NGOs in Europe

and the European Union to wake up to this fact,

they have enough leverage collectively

to force some changes.

And without those changes, we're not

going to have peace anytime soon in the Holy Land.

Tell us what you have discovered from Bahrain,

and how that may lead to a reformation

in the Muslim world.

Well, as you know, you've reported

on in CBN, the change in the Gulf,

I think in many ways for two reasons.

Number one, the existential threat

that the mullahs from Iran pose to the entire zip code as well

as the state of Israel and Egypt has

pushed former enemies closer to each other.

It's no secret that the intelligence

and military sources in all of these countries

are talking and probably cooperating with each other.

What we found quite remarkable in Bahrain

was a small Arab society, but a historic one,

in which churches, I think the largest church in the Middle

East is being built right now.

Various churches, the Coptics, the Catholics,

I saw them worshipping openly.

You can see from across the street publicly.

But nonetheless, here is an Arab society

where it is possible to see it every day people

can go from their homes and go to their house of worship, not

necessarily a Muslim one, be proud Christians, Jews, Hindus,

and not have to worry about being ostracized or being

targets of violence or of terrorism.

And if there is a way, and here's where President Trump's

move to Saudi Arabia and his visit

there, if that nation will finally turn away

from its Wahhabism and its anti-Semitism

and the extreme kinds of religion that

have led unfortunately to a lot of suffering and terrorism

in the world, if that ever happens,

then we can be looking at a new Middle East.

And it's something that we hope to work together

with the Arab and Muslim leaders,

as well as with the Trump administration

to try to test the waters as soon as possible,

in a very direct way.

And maybe have some influence on the Palestinians.

And it begins with education and their textbooks.

Right.

And I think that if we're successful in changing

the dynamics, in this case with the Sunni world,

and the Palestinian leadership takes

a look at the neighborhood and sees that they're

no longer the veto between relations

between the Arab and Jewish world,

I think that that can actually contribute

to a significant change in their mindset

and our grandchildren will be talking about,

how can we change the conversation

and get some peace in the Holy Land?

OK, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Thank you so much, some excellent insights.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

Happy new year.

Shana Tova.

Shana Tova.