Thursday : March 10 : 2005

The lack of objectivity in Israeli propaganda by Ene-Liin Tamm Israel has been constantly complaining that Palestinian schools are inciting hatred against Jews. Until recently the Palestinians had to rely on severely censored Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks. The word "Palestine" was removed, maps were deleted, and anything Israeli censors deemed nationalist was excised. No investments in educational infrastructure had been made since the beginning of Israeli occupation in 1967, resulting in a decline in the quality of education. The Palestinians assumed control of their educational system in 1994, following the Oslo Accord that gave them limited autonomy. The first Palestinian curriculum center began its work in October 1995 with a team of researchers analyzing the existing curriculum. They consulted with educators and teachers and produced a blueprint containing the basic principles that should govern a unified Palestinian curriculum. The first new textbooks were introduced in September 2000. Palestinian textbooks do not provide a map of Israel because the latter has yet to define its borders, and they do not provide a map of Palestine because its borders remain to be negotiated. The texts do, however, reflect the notion that Israel is a settler colonial entity that forcibly expelled Palestinians from their homes and destroyed their villages. The narrative presents the establishment of the State of Israel in most of Palestine in 1948 as a disaster for the Palestinians. "The books portray Jews throughout history in a positive manner and avoid negative stereotypes," according to a study by Ruth Firer, director of peace education at the Truman Institute at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Sami Adwan, professor of education at Bethlehem University. "However, according to the everyday experience of Palestinians, modern-day Israelis are presented as occupiers." Still, the study "found no incitement for the use of violence at all." "The texts teach Palestinian students to respect human rights, justice, peace, equality, freedom, and tolerance, in terms of both self and others. They caution students to avoid extremism and stereotypes, and encourage them to treat all people equally," Firer and Adwan write. "Palestinian students are warned in the texts about the terrible results of wars and conflict, and are encouraged instead to resort to negotiation and peaceful forms of conflict resolution." Israeli textbooks on the other hand "aim at implanting the desire for war in the souls of students as a sole means for defending what they believe legitimate and historic rights with the objective of mobilizing the Israeli public opinion for a constant state of war," Egyptian education expert Safa Abdel Aal said during a convention dealing with a new American law against anti-Semitism, which is actually aimed to block criticism of Israel. "Israel has been mobilizing youngsters to be ready to give sacrifices on war as did the first Zionist generations to regain what they believe their legitimate rights," she writes in her new book "Racist Education in Israeli Curricula". With such an attitude, she maintains, Israel aims at getting students to "give their souls for liberating the lands of the Jewish predecessors and for establishing the Kingdom of Israel." "One of the main tasks of the Israeli educational system is to plant the seeds of hatred and fear of the other in the minds of the current and future Israeli generations, implant hatred and malice in their psyches," she said. The Israeli textbooks include anti-Semitic sentences such as "Arab thieves", "Arabs are bastards thirsty for the Jewish bloods", and "underdeveloped Arabs". "These textbooks hamper attempts to achieve peace or to establish an independent Palestinian state," she explained. Her publisher Mohamed Rashad told Reuters that "negotiations are under way with a European publishing house to translate the book to let the sympathizers with Israel know how the Israelis are implanting enmity and hatred against the Arabs and non-Jewish."