In 2003, the U.S. Senate held a committee hearing in the topic of Palestinian Education. The committee heard testimony from Arabs, Israelis, and U.S. administrators, from across the political spectrum. The committee examined the issues of incitement, and U.S. funding for Palestinian educational and cultural projects. The hearing was chaired by Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA).

Read the full transcript. (34 pages)

Highlights of the hearing:

SENATOR SPECTER: This morning we are going to take up the issue of education of Palestinian young people, the issue of the funding of the United States government for the Palestinian Authority, and the implications on the Mideast peace process.

A few days ago, I had an opportunity to see some videos of young Palestinians talking about suicide bombings and the benefits of participating in that kind of a suicide bombing as an entry to Heaven and as an entry to Paradise. Notwithstanding some substantial experience of terrorism and what is going on in the Mideast, I found these videos to be absolutely shocking ― absolutely shocking that teenagers, attractive young Palestinians, were stating a view that of the desired goal in life was to be a suicide bomber, to kill as many Israelis as they could, as an entry to Nirvana, to Heaven, and to Paradise.

ITAMAR MARCUS: Everything that you'll see was filmed on Palestinian Authority television, this is PBC, Palestinian Broadcast Company, that is owned and operated by the Palestinian Authority.

In July of 2002, two articulate 11-year-old girls were interviewed in the studio of official Palestinian television. What has caused this compelling desire for death among these children? The Palestinian Authority has been making a supreme effort to convince their own children that there is no greater achievement than to die for Allah in battle, known as shahada.

This indoctrination film clip is designed to offset a child's natural fear of death. It portrays shahada as both heroic and tranquil and was broadcast repeatedly over the last two years.

The film's hero, a nice-looking school boy, leaves his father a farewell letter explaining his choice to carry out shahada. This film was broadcast on official Palestinian television. Most of the scenes portrayed blood and death. The film ends with this screen displaying, in Arabic and in English: "Ask for death, the life will be given to you."

In another film clip, "I Am The Shahid, My Mother," mothers are urged to be joyous over the shahada death of their own children. The Palestinian Authority's ministry of education textbooks portray shahada as an ideal. For example, the home of the shahid appears in textbooks on four grade levels and extols yearning for death.

Palestinian polls show that 72 to 80 percent of Palestinian children desire death as shahids. Having been repeatedly exposed to this indoctrination, Palestinian children today actively set their sites on shahada as a personal goal.

Even if just 1 percent of the children attempt to fulfill their duty and seek shahada through suicide terrorism, the ramifications will be cataclysmic. The targets of a future Palestinian terror wave will be Israel and, in all likelihood, other Western democracies as well. This education is an indelible stain on Palestinian society and places the Palestinian Authority among the greatest child abusers in history.

DAVID SATTERFIELD (Deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs): The subject of this hearing today is a very serious one for the administration. Indeed, Mr. Chairman, if we look back on the record of the modern peace process since 1993, the issue which has been most problematic for us and for our partners in peacemaking to address has been the challenge of how one changes minds, hearts, and attitudes. Frankly, too little attention was given to this challenge during the many years of the peace process when focus was placed upon treaties, agreements, understandings. They had their place, certainly, but the fundamental changes in the way peoples look at each other and deal with other, the way they look at themselves and their culture and society, that also has to be addressed…

And this is a challenge that remains before us. Some progress, as I said, has been made, but much more needs to be done. Mr. Chairman, those images which we witnessed, the challenge that confronts us as we deal with Israel and Palestinian peacemaking, also is reflected on a broader regional scale. We are committed to doing everything possible, not just to addressing the call for death, the call for martyrdom, which we saw here today, but also the continuing images of anti-Semitism, rejection of Israel, rejection of Israelis, rejection of Jews as a people who merit a life in peace and security in the Middle East and elsewhere throughout the Middle East and the world.

MARCUS: OK, thank you. One of the challenges I think facing any funding of the Palestinian Authority is that not only do the Palestinians use television, as we've seen, the Palestinians use the full range of social structures and cultural structures within Palestinian society in order to promote these values...

So, for example, this summer there was a whole summer camp infrastructure, which we would presume to get children out of the cities and out into the country. And yet the summer camps infrastructure was one that was focused, as well, on the suicide terrorists. So, for example, there was a summer camp named after Wafa Idris, who was the first woman suicide bomber. And if you look at the bottom of the article here on the screen you'll see that UNICEF was thanked for its support of the camps at the closing ceremony. So you have a camp named after the first woman suicide bomber, UNICEF funding for this camp. We had another camp for the Ayyat al-Akhras, 17-year-old girl, youngest suicide bomber, again this summer so that summer camps are used as this means as well.

And this role modeling, by the way, and naming after terrorists is not limited to terrorists who have killed Israelis. It includes terrorists who have killed Americans in Iraq so, for example, we found in the Palestinian newspaper just four days after the first suicide Iraqi terrorist killed four U.S. Marines, the P.A. renamed the square in Jenin after that suicide terrorist. So this role modeling and turning the terrorists into heroes is directed not just at Israelis but at Americans as well.

SPECTER: Thank you very much, Mr. Marcus. We now turn to Dr. Hassan Abdul Rahman, chief representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority in the United States. He attended universities in Puerto Rico before earning his Ph.D. from the City University of New York. And thank you for joining us; Dr. Rahman, and we look forward to your testimony.

RAHMAN: I really hesitated before coming to appear before this subcommittee for the very simple reason: There are two parties to this conflict, Palestinian and Israeli. And there is incitement on both sides. I see only the Palestinians brought to task here, and no mention what the Israeli media, what the Israeli textbooks say or do not say about the Palestinians. I would have liked the chairman, in the spirit of fairness, to have a hearing on the incitement in both textbooks and both medias, Palestinians as well as Israeli…

SPECTER: Were you saying the comments were taken out of context? We just saw the videos, and I am not in a position to have translated them, but we have seen teenagers and an 11-year-old girl say that she was prepared to give her life as a suicide bomber in order to go to Heaven. Was that an inaccurate translation of what she said?

RAHMAN: If we want to take a statement that's made by a sheikh in a mosque and base our policy on that statement, we go nowhere, and we would reach the wrong conclusions. I am saying that we have textbooks that we have to deal with. We have television we have to deal with. We have incitement, yes. But the incitement is the product of the conditions that exist in the Palestinian territory.

SPECTER: Dr. Rahman, how about the part where the young man had written a letter to his father saying "Do not grieve for me; I have given my life for my country and I have sacrificed myself so that I can go to Heaven"? Was that also a religious statement, or wasn't that a statement by a young man who had, in fact, been a suicide bomber?

RAHMAN: If I remember correctly what was said, the kid is 14 years old, he is saying to his father, "When I become 18, I'm going to fight for my country and be a shahid for my country." He did not do it; he was not a shahid yet.

SPECTER: Dr. Rahman...

RAHMAN: If I quote correctly what I saw.

SPECTER: But, Dr. Rahman, isn't it true that there have been very young people, Palestinians, who have become suicide bombers really in carrying out just exactly the theme which we saw on the videos?

RAHMAN: Yes, sir, I believe that there has been, and there is, and there may be going to be more suicide bombing.

SPECTER: Well, let's see it again... And what I will do is I'm going to send a transcript of this hearing to Chairman Arafat and to the Palestinian Authority prime minister with the question will they act to stop Palestinian television carrying these messages. But let's take a look at it again.

SPECTER: Right there, where you say the shahids go to Paradise, isn't that in the context, Dr. Rahman, of a suicide bombing?

RAHMAN: Not necessarily. I may become a shahid even praying ― praying, not fighting. Going to Mecca as a pilgrim I can die and become a shahid. So this is a religious connotation. It has nothing to do with suicide bombing.

MARCUS: In the context of this video, the two first girls are talking about their desire for the shahada. The third girl who is speaking was specifically applying this to a 17-year-old suicide bomber. And the moderator said, "Is this natural for a 17-year-old girl to blow herself up?" And she said, "Yes, it is natural." And the two girls in the continuation, which wasn't shown for time limitations, were actually asked about this and then expressed similar sentiments. So, shahada definitely can mean anyone who has died in a conflict. The Palestinians define all of the suicide bombers as shahids, as martyrs...

So, "Is it natural for a 17-year-old to blow herself up to become a shahid?" and the answer was, "It is natural." So that is the way it is presented.

RAHMAN: Yes, this is a talk show, Senator. Somebody expressing ― it is not ― he is ― the reporter is not telling her, but she is saying that, "I want to sacrifice for my country and I" ― they are, in fact, even Al Jazeera network, every single Arab network refers to suicide bombers as shahada.

That is ― it is religious. Whether he is shahid or not I am not ready to really make a judgment on him…

SPECTER: Gentlemen, thank you very much. I intend to send this transcript to Chairman Arafat and the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority with the request that they stop showing these videos on Palestinian television.