WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- An Israeli-American rabbi serving as the U.S. envoy to combat anti-Semitism has praised changes made to Saudi school textbooks, including the deletion of anti-Zionist content, despite criticism that Riyadh has yielded to American demands.
“We appreciate Saudi Arabia’s ongoing efforts to improve school curricula, including work to address the issues of concern in the textbooks,” Rabbi Yehuda Kaplon wrote on social media platform X, expressing Washington’s pleasure with the Saudi move.
“President Trump and Secretary Rubio have made it clear: In the spirit of the Abraham Accords, let us build on the vision of our common ancestor Abraham to promote peace and coexistence between our peoples,” he wrote.
The well-known Yemeni cartoonist Kamal Sharaf reacted to Kaplon’s message with a caricature showing an American hand inserting the updated Saudi textbook into the head of a Saudi child. In the image, the child transforms into a boy wearing a kippah displaying the Israeli flag and speaking Hebrew.
According to critics, Saudi Arabia has made wide-ranging changes to its school textbooks in recent years. The changes, launched in the late 2010s, accelerated under Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman as part of Saudi Vision 2030 with the alleged aim of “reducing extremist content, promoting tolerance and coexistence.”
The changes included removing descriptions of Zionism as a “European racist movement” and replacing phrases such as “Zionist enemy” with “Israeli occupation.” The name Palestine has been removed from maps that used to show Israeli-occupied territories as “Palestine.” 
A complete high school social studies textbook containing anti-Israeli content has been removed, and chapters on the “Zionist danger” or the 1969 burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque have also been deleted. Content related to jihad has been removed from Saudi textbooks.
The changes come as Trump has been pushing for a normalization deal between Riyadh and Tel Aviv. On July 22, Trump approved a long-term nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, but just a day later introduced a new condition requiring Riyadh to normalize ties with Israel through the Abraham Accords.
Saudi Arabia and Israel have long maintained covert ties, but Israel “craves public recognition as the path to ending its isolation in the Islamic world,” according to the Brookings Institution. 
Netanyahu and Crown Prince bin Salman were reportedly close to reaching a normalization deal in September 2023, but talks were derailed following Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, which made it politically difficult for Riyadh to be seen as partnering with Tel Aviv.