Dalal al-Mughrabi, the perpetrator of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre which killed thirty-eight Israelis including the niece of US Senator and thirteen children on a civilian bus, is celebrated in a detailed 10-page Arabic reading comprehension text for fifth graders. The text exalts her and the terror act as “heroism,” describing how the massacre made her memory “immortal” in the “hearts and minds” of Palestinians. After reading, students are instructed to search the Internet for how Israel allegedly abused her body, and copy and rewrite sentences praising her “pure blood”. The lesson notably does not offer Palestinian women any way to demonstrate an outstanding commitment to their people, other than violence.

The most recent version presents a distinctly falsified version of the event, exonerating Al-Mughrabi of any wrongdoing and quoting her as saying she had no wish to kill hostages, as well as accusing the Israeli forces of killing both her and the hostages “with planes and tanks”. In reality, Al-Mughrabi and her companions are known to have deliberately killed multiple people, including American photographer Gail Rubin, long before they were engaged by Israeli security forces; those forces primarily consisted of Israeli civilian police, who possessed neither tanks nor airplanes. Meanwhile, the military leader Ehud Barak, who is credited by the textbook with overseeing the Israeli “attack” on the bus, was in fact studying in the US at the time.