Saudi Arabia has removed a school lesson that claimed Israel planned to expand its territory from the Nile River to the Euphrates as part of an alleged plan to establish “Greater Israel,” according to a new review of Saudi textbooks.
The change was documented in a July 2026 review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), which examined revisions to the Saudi curriculum as part of a broader assessment covering textbooks published between 2024 and 2026.
The Removed Lesson
According to the review, the removed lesson was titled “The Zionist Danger” and had previously appeared in a Hadith textbook for students in Grades 10 through 12. The lesson accused Israel of seeking territorial expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates to establish what it described as “Greater Israel”.
Broader Pattern of Curriculum Revisions
IMPACT-se’s review found that Saudi Arabia has continued to revise how its textbooks address Israel, Zionism, religious minorities, jihad, and other sensitive subjects.
Among the changes identified, a Grade 11 history textbook replaced the phrase “the Zionist enemy” with “the Israeli occupation”, while another textbook removed the sentence, “The Muslims will never give up Jerusalem.”
The review also reported that Saudi textbooks have removed several previously flagged references involving Jews and other religious communities, with the organization stating that every example it had previously classified as antisemitic was absent from the latest curriculum materials it reviewed.
Some Language Toward Israel Remains Unchanged
Despite these revisions, IMPACT-se said Saudi textbooks have not fully overhauled their treatment of Israel. Some books continue to describe Israel as an occupying state, and Israel remains absent from several maps used in the current curriculum.
