A note on this syllabus: When writers decide what to include, that decision is inherently partisan—because they also decide what to leave out. Sometimes what they exclude reveals more than what they present.
The educational theorist Philip Jackson, and later Elliot Eisner, gave these omissions a name: the null curriculum—subjects a system quietly buries because they complicate the lesson. Alongside it sits the hidden curriculum—the values and assumptions transmitted without being named. Every syllabus has both.
I sat in those rooms. I used the vocabulary. I didn’t notice what was missing until October 7th made it impossible to keep ignoring. What follows is the syllabus I never got in graduate school—built around the Israel-Palestine conflict honestly, with everything the standard account left out.
01
Primary Sources
Hamas Founding Charter (1988) Required
The governing document of the entity that controls Gaza. Article 7 calls explicitly for the killing of Jews. Freely available online.
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Hamas 2017 Policy Document
Softened language without replacing the original 1988 charter. Compare both to understand what changed—and what didn’t.
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Pramila Patten, UN Report on Sexual Violence — October 7 Attacks (March 2024) Required
“Clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, has been committed against hostages.”
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UN OCHA Gaza Humanitarian Dashboard
Daily aid flow data throughout the war. Cross-reference with Hamas aid interception documentation.
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02
Reports & Studies
BESA Center — Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War 2023–2025 (September 2025) Required
Led by Prof. Danny Orbach (Hebrew University). Documents a 500km tunnel network with 5,700 shafts in civilian infrastructure. Debunks starvation narrative: food deliveries exceeded pre-war levels throughout most of the conflict. Finds no evidence of a systematic Israeli policy to massacre civilians. Documents Hamas Health Ministry data manipulation.
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Henry Jackson Society — Hamas’s Human Shield Strategy in Gaza (May 2025) Required
80-page forensic analysis. In 367 UN reports on Gaza since October 7th, “human shields” appeared four times—always as an Israeli allegation. The UN issued ten reports critical of Israel in the same period. Four versus ten. That ratio is a position.
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John Spencer / West Point Modern War Institute — Urban Warfare Analysis (2024–2026) Required
Chair of urban warfare studies, West Point. Israel’s civilian-to-combatant ratio of 1.5–3:1 compares to the UN’s documented global average of 9:1 in modern urban warfare. Israel sent 6 million voicemails, 65,000 texts, and 20,000 phone calls to civilians before major operations. No military in history has done more. The Lieber Institute (West Point, March 2026) notes that ratio analysis cannot account for Hamas’s human shield conditions—the factor the standard curriculum never discusses.
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UN Watch — UNRWA Staff Terror Ties and October 7 Incitement (2024) Required
Documents 3,000-member UNRWA worker Telegram group. 30 endorsed the October 7th massacre in real time. 150 shared content glorifying Hamas and Hitler. The head of UN Relief confirmed Hamas members were on the UNRWA payroll.
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IMPACT-se — Palestinian Curriculum Review 2025–2026 (December 2025)
270 textbooks, 71 teacher guides. Second-grade lessons send children to become martyrs. The PA deliberately chose extremist content over UNESCO reform standards required for continued EU funding.
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The Dinah Project — Sexual Violence on October 7: Documentation and Testimony (2024)
Named for the biblical figure. Comprehensive documentation of sexual violence at Nova, Kibbutz Re’im, and across the attack sites. UN Women declined to formally condemn for weeks. The National Organization for Women issued nothing.
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03
Testimony
Amit Soussana — testimony reported by The New York Times (March 2024) Required
First released hostage to publicly testify about sexual violence in Hamas captivity. International Women of Courage Award, April 2025. The National Organization for Women and UN Women were largely silent.
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Emily Damari — Testimony to Prime Minister Keir Starmer (February 2025)
Shot twice, lost two fingers, held 471 days. Describes UNRWA facility housing and a civilian family home where she was mocked and denied food.
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Romi Gonen & Doron Steinbrecher — Hostage accounts of UNRWA facilities
Both report being held in locations connected to UNRWA infrastructure during captivity.
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04
Historical Record: The Peace Offers
Camp David Summit (2000)
Barak offered ~94% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, capital in East Jerusalem. Arafat said no. No counter-offer. Documented by Special Envoy Dennis Ross.
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Taba Negotiations (2001)
Israel improved the Camp David terms. Still no agreement. The standard curriculum treats Israeli inflexibility as the obstacle to peace. The historical record suggests otherwise.
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Olmert Offer (2008)
Widely considered the most generous proposal in the conflict’s history. Abbas did not respond. “The Palestinians never came back to me with a map.” — Ehud Olmert
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05
Financial Documentation
Hamas Leadership Wealth — Mashal ($2–5B), Haniyeh ($2–5B), Abu Marzouk ($2–3B) Required
Men who ask Palestinians to die for liberation live in Doha and travel by private jet. The people dying for the cause aren’t invited. The null curriculum is the financial record.
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Palestinian Authority Financial Record — Abbas, Arafat
In 2012, the International Labour Organization — a UN agency — reported in an official document signed by its Director-General that Gaza’s tunnel smuggling trade had "created over 600 new millionaires in Gaza." That same year, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told The Economist the real figure was higher: 800 millionaires and 1,600 near-millionaires controlling the tunnels. Gaza was never just poor. It was poor and extracted from — by its own rulers.
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Hamas Aid Taxation and Diversion — Lawfare (2026)
Hamas taxed goods at rates exceeding 20%, redirected supplies, sold remainder at inflated prices. UNRWA lost track of supplies entering Hamas networks.
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06
The Standard Curriculum — What It Does Assign
Fayez Sayegh — Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965)
Published by the PLO’s own research center. Repackaged a religious war as a secular anti-colonial struggle. The movement commissioned its own founding vocabulary. Read alongside its Soviet-era political context.
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Edward Said — The Question of Palestine (1979)
Applies Said’s Orientalism framework directly to Zionism, arguing Israel is a product of European imperial expansion. Read critically alongside Derek Penslar’s historical rebuttal and Benny Morris’s archival findings.
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Rashid Khalidi — The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020)
“A colonial war waged against the indigenous population…to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will.” Assigned across American universities. Read alongside Khalidi’s omission of rejected peace offers.
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Patrick Wolfe — Settler Colonialism Thesis
“Settler colonialism destroys to replace.” The academic scaffold beneath most campus antizionism. These are the assigned texts. The Hamas charter is not. Read alongside Derek Penslar’s critique of its application to Zionism.
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07
Background & Context
Palestinian Prisoner Payments / Martyrs Fund
Monthly stipends to families of Palestinians who kill Israelis. The amount scales with the number of victims killed and the prison sentence received.
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Al-Aqsa TV and Palestinian Media Analysis
Al-Jazeera, funded by Qatar (which also funds Hamas), has been shown to promote Hamas rhetoric. Six Al-Jazeera journalists were found to be Hamas members. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE have all banned it for these reasons.
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On Evidence and Inquiry
This syllabus does not ask students to adopt any political position. It asks them to read primary sources before forming conclusions, to examine what their existing assumptions require them to ignore, and to ask why many courses omit the documents, reports, and testimonies listed above. The test of a curriculum is not whether it confirms what you already believe. It is whether it acknowledges or ignores its own hidden and null curriculum.
On the Curriculum of Antizionism
When teachers decide what to include in their curriculum and syllabi, it is inherently partisan—because they also decide what not to include. The hidden curriculum transmits values without naming them. The null curriculum buries subjects because they complicate the lesson. Every course has three syllabi, and only one gets read. This is an attempt to make the null curriculum visible—to name what gets left out, trace why, and ask what follows when students read it.