German textbooks present Judaism well but fall short on Mideast conflict, study finds

German school textbooks provide balanced information on Judaism, Jewish history and the Holocaust, but present an uneven picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a new report by the educational monitoring organization IMPACT-se.

The study examined 12 textbooks used in upper-secondary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, as part of its Europe-wide research program measuring school curricula against UNESCO-based standards for peace and tolerance in education.

It finds that textbooks present Judaism as an integral part of German society and explicitly reject collective Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus. Holocaust education is seen as detailed and historically grounded, covering Nazi antisemitism, Jewish resistance, societal complicity and Germany’s postwar reckoning. One textbook characterizes the Holocaust as the destruction of Jewish civilization in Germany.

However, the report says, textbooks sometimes focus on Palestinian grievances and Israeli military actions while downplaying Israeli security concerns and Palestinian terrorism.

In one example cited, a textbook presents an image of an Israeli soldier alongside an operative from Hamas’s armed wing under the heading “Mutual threats and violence,” without explicitly identifying Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Elsewhere, textbooks acknowledge Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians but place greater emphasis on Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule and Israeli military responses, it finds.

The findings come amid persistently high antisemitism in Germany, IMPACT-se notes. Berlin recorded 2,197 antisemitic incidents in 2025, more than double its annual average between 2018 and 2022, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).

“German textbooks do an excellent job of confronting the horrors of the Holocaust and the country’s antisemitic past. But this commitment to historical accuracy must also extend to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” says IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff. “Equating Israeli soldiers with Hamas fighters risks dangerously distorting young people’s understanding of the conflict.”