Indonesia’s classrooms are not sites for Zionist social engineering

The spectacle of a foreign official discussing how to “change textbooks” in a sovereign country should be recognised for what it is: an assertion of ideological dominance. Recent remarks attributed to Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun— a Miami businessman, Chabad Hasid adherent, Trump campaign donor, and now the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism—represent a naked attempt to police historical memory beyond US borders. Confirmed by a narrow, partisan Senate vote of 53–43, Kaploun now wields ambassadorial authority at the State Department. He has made clear how he intends to use it.

Speaking at the Jerusalem Post Washington Conference, Kaploun identified Indonesia as a priority target. “Indonesia has 350 million Muslims living in their country. How are we going to change their educational books?” he asked, before insisting that curricula must be reshaped to determine “who should be responsible” for Gaza. This was not careless language. It was a declaration of intent: to reengineer how millions of Indonesian children understand colonialism, violence, and Palestinian suffering—using US power as leverage.

This has nothing to do with combating antisemitism. It has everything to do with narrative control.

Indonesia’s solidarity with Palestine is not driven by religious animus, and even pro-Israel watchdogs concede this. It is a direct extension of Indonesia’s own anti-colonial identity. The 1945 Constitution commits the nation to opposing colonialism “in all its forms,” a principle forged through centuries of Dutch exploitation and Japanese occupation. Indonesians recognise the architecture of domination when they see it: land confiscation, military rule, segregated legal systems, and resistance criminalised as terror.

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That recognition is reflected in Indonesian textbooks—and that is precisely what Israel and its allies seek to dismantle.

According to the Indonesian newspaper Republika, Israel has monitored Indonesian curricula for years through the British-Israeli think tank IMPACT-se, in collaboration with the Ruderman Family Foundation. Its 2023 report analyzed 169 textbooks used in Indonesia’s General Standard Pathway, covering approximately 85 percent of students nationwide. The findings strongly refute claims of antisemitic indoctrination.

References to Jews in Islamic education textbooks are overwhelmingly neutral or positive. Terrorism is explicitly condemned. Pluralism and cultural diversity are celebrated. Bias against religious, ethnic, and racial minorities is actively discouraged. Even these Israeli-linked researchers admit Indonesia’s textbooks present a balanced view of international relations.

What they object to is political truth. Israel is described as a colonial occupier. Palestinian dispossession is treated as an ongoing injustice. The indigenous presence of Jews in the region is acknowledged, but Zionist state practices are analysed through the same colonial lens Indonesians apply to Dutch and Japanese rule. Textbooks even recognise limited material developments under colonialism—while unequivocally rejecting domination itself. This intellectual honesty is what now stands accused.

IMPACT-se’s CEO Marcus Sheff praised Indonesia’s tolerance only to argue it should be weaponised to “correct” narratives about Israel, while Jay Ruderman, a board member of IMPACT-se and president of the Ruderman Family Foundation, dismissed Indonesia’s curriculum for lacking “factual” Israeli history and sufficient Holocaust education—a demand that in practice seeks to normalise Zionist statehood by diluting, displacing, or erasing Palestinian history.

Kaploun has now signalled that compliance will be enforced through pressure on governments and UN-funded education programmes, with “accountability” mechanisms for those who refuse. This is not diplomacy. It is coercion. Education is being weaponised to manufacture consent.

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The obscenity of this project is sharpened by its timing. As Israel obliterates schools and universities in Gaza, kills educators, and wipes out entire generations of Palestinian students, Washington shows no comparable urgency to protect Palestinian education. Instead, it fixates on disciplining Indonesian classrooms for refusing to sanitise Israeli crimes. The destruction of learning in Gaza is tolerated; the refusal to lie about it in Jakarta is not.

Indonesia’s government must respond with defiance, not diplomacy. Jakarta should categorically reject foreign interference in its curriculum, assert its constitutional commitment to anti-colonialism, and expose the false equivalence between opposing antisemitism and enforcing Zionist orthodoxy. Indonesia can strengthen its position by expanding universal anti-racism education—explicitly condemning antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of racism—while maintaining an uncompromising stance on Palestinian rights and international law.

Indonesia’s position resonates precisely because it is principled. Increasingly, Indonesians—especially younger generations—embrace the vision of a single state in historic Palestine, where Jews and Palestinians live as equals rather than as rulers and subjects. This vision rejects ethnic supremacy, permanent occupation, and selective human rights—the very logic Indonesia fought to escape.

What truly terrifies those seeking to rewrite Indonesian textbooks is not hatred, but coherence. Not ignorance, but memory. Indonesia does not need moral supervision from Washington. It needs its sovereignty respected. Justice has never been built by silencing the colonised—and Indonesia, born of resistance, understands that with painful clarity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.