Reading, writing - and propaganda

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

By Akiva Eldar

10/09/2004

Systematic incitement against Israel or a serious effort to strengthen values such as democracy and freedom? Reading between the lines in Palestinian school books used in the West Bank and Gaza

By Akiva Eldar

Last Wednesday morning 1.2 million Palestinian boys and girls started the new school year in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Many of them were delayed at Israel Defense Forces checkpoints, others waited patiently for a soldier to open a gate in the separation fence. The books the children carried in the schoolbags are not only material on history and civics, mathematics and computers; in recent years those books have become hot merchandise in the propaganda war against the Palestinian Authority.

Every year the Israeli Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry issue a lethal report on a new series of textbooks published in the PA. The latest report ("Incitement against Israel, Zionism and the Jews and their vilification in Palestinian textbooks") was published on June 9 of this year by the Department for Palestinian Affairs under the command of the coordinator of government activities in the territories, Major General Yosef Mishlav.

There is no doubt that the Palestinian books contain subject matter that does not make for pleasant reading by Israelis, material that reflects the well-known Palestinian narrative. But both Israeli and international research show an improvement in the new books, as compared with the Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks that were used by the education system in the territories for decades.

Unfounded allegations

One study, which was conducted at the initiative of the donor states in the European Union, referred to a report on the textbooks that was submitted in November 2001 by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP - www.edume.org). The report, which was extensively covered in the Israeli and world media, was intended to persuade the donor states to cease funding the new textbooks. However, the European study shows that, to put it mildly, the Israeli report fails to reflect the true state of affairs, as it presents Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks as the new textbooks of the PA.

"Quotations attributed by earlier CMIP reports to the Palestinian textbooks," says a Middle East Working Group of the EU, "are not found in the new PA schoolbooks funded by some EU member states; some were traced to the old Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks that they are replacing, ... and others [were] not traced at all." Moreover, the EU study finds that many of the quotations "have been found to be often badly translated or quoted out of context, thus suggesting an anti-Jewish bias or incitement that the books do not contain ... New textbooks, though not perfect, are free of inciteful content ... constituting a valuable contribution to the education of young Palestinians."

The European document notes that CMIP, too, confirmed that the new books do not contain most of the problematic quotations that were cited in earlier reports of the center and adds, "These allegations against the new textbooks funded by EU members have proven unfounded."

Prof. Nathan Brown, from George Washington University, a former adviser to the U.S. Agency for International Development, noted an odd phenomenon in his study of the Palestinian curriculum (November 2001). He found that even though the PA's National Education books for grades 1-6 were "devoid of any anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli material," Israel "allowed the offensive Jordanian books to be used in the East Jerusalem schools but barred the innocuous PA-authored books, probably fearful that use of the PA books would be an implicit recognition of sovereignty." The office of the government coordinator in the territories says in response that the inflammatory chapters were deleted from the Jordanian books and that the PA restored the original texts.

In that period the Israeli authorities also tried to persuade the World Bank to abandon its financial support for the Palestinian textbooks. About three months ago, Major General (res.) Amos Gilad told Haaretz that the representatives of the World Bank were persuaded that the books contained inflammatory material and decided to stop underwriting their publication. However, Nigel Roberts, the head of the World Bank's mission in the territories, is unaware of any such decision. There had been a problem with maps in some of the Palestinian textbooks, he says, but they agreed to correct them and the World Bank never stopped financing the project.

It turns out that even the Israeli defense establishment didn't always think the textbooks "engage in systematic incitement, contain motifs of poisoning the mind and rejecting Israel's existence, and reflect a bitter reality in which the PA effectively legitimatizes acts of terrorism and murder," as the last two government coordinators, Gilad and Mishlav wrote. The report by the office of the government coordinator, dated November 2000, which examined the first series of new textbooks (for grades 1 and 6), stated, "Even though the peace process is played down and negative elements are given expression in the Palestinian books, we cannot ignore the refinement of the terminology, the abandonment of certain subjects (Zionism, for example) and no more than an implicit attack on other subjects (such as the Jewish people). An effort by the Palestinians to moderate the feelings of hostility toward Israel is discernible." At the time this report was written, a few weeks after the outbreak of the intifada, a Labor-Meretz government was in power and the government coordinator in the territories was Major General Yaakov ("Mendy") Orr, who was an active partner in the peace contacts with the PA.

That report, which was not widely disseminated, found direct references to the PA in the new books and a respectable mention of the Palestinians' Declaration of Independence in Algiers, in 1988 (which adopted the principle of the partition of Palestine). The document notes that the new books contain no expression of an educational policy that would give special weight to the peace process, recognition of Israel and encouragement of coexistence with Israeli society. The peace agreements are mentioned in the 6th-grade book as a move that made possible the arrival of the "Palestinian Liberation Army." At the same time, "the Palestinian curriculum, as distinct from its Jordanian forerunner, contains no examples of blaming the Jews for an attempt to harm Muslim Jerusalem and its holy sites. The message comes across in a positive manner and thus avoids a tendency to incite and vilify."

The authors of the report also surveyed the textbooks of the Jordanian education system for grades 2 through 5, which the Palestinians are using until the PA's new textbooks become available. "A clear and significant difference can be perceived between the character of the literature that is being prepared by the Palestinian Authority and that which originates in Jordan," the document states. "The Jordanian textbooks describe Israel as a cruel enemy with expansionist ambitions ... A negative attitude is also displayed toward the Jewish people and the Zionist movement, to which natural and innate negative traits are attributed ... The use of these books undoubtedly already influenced a whole generation of elementary-school students since the peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians."

Less than a year later, in September 2001, a few months after General Orr retired, the office of the government coordinator published a new report (on the same textbooks and on new books as well, for grades 2-7). This time the authors didn't find even an iota of positive material in the new books. The flattering comparison with the Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks vanished without a trace, along with any mention of the existence of the previous report. The concluding sentence, which characterizes the language of the entire report, states, "Palestinian youngsters are educated from childhood in an atmosphere of religious and national incitement, which does not heave so much as one positive angle [of vision] of Israel and causes intensification of the hatred toward Israel, fans violence and encourages and justifies terrorism." A year later another report appeared, in a similar spirit, about the same series of books.

The Middle East expert Matti Steinberg, at the time the adviser to the head of Shin Bet security services on Palestinian affairs, decided to make a thorough study of the PA's textbooks. He completed his study in October 2002; its title: "A different view of Palestinian textbooks." He found, for example, that the map which was cited in that year's report by the office of the coordinator as proof that the Palestinians do not recognize Israel's existence, was actually a geographic map on which students were supposed to note lines of longitude and latitude, and therefore not only the name "Israel" was missing from it, so was the name of "Palestine" or "State of Palestine."

Covert messages

The authors of the report claim that the textbooks are replete with covert messages advocating the right of return. For example, "The park in the illustration is called 'Jaffa Park,' the word  'Caesarea' is used to teach the relevant letter in the Arabic alphabet, and the number of letters in the word 'Haifa' helps teach numbers groups in mathematics." Steinberg, though, asks whether a visit  by two children to "Jaffa Park" shows that the "right of return" is a "central motif," as the document of the government coordinator maintains. "A casual perusal will show that the value the authors want to teach the second-graders is not 'return' but 'cleanliness.'"

Steinberg also dismisses the argument of the report's authors that the PA's education system effectively preaches the the liquidation [of Israel] by means of jihad and realization of the "right of return." The expression "jihad," he says, does not appear at all in a Palestinian context, but only in regard to the Muslim struggle against the Crusaders and the Yom Kippur War.

The report by the government coordinator also asserts that the image of Israel is reflected in the books "by the image of the wicked soldier who prevents the refugee girl from visiting her father who is imprisoned in the Negev, by the tractor that is demolishing a home or uprooting an olive tree despite the protests of an Arab family, by the sniper that shot the 'mercy nurse' in Deir Yassin and by the torture chamber and the gallows on which the Palestinian poet dreams of his freedom."

Steinberg, in contrast, says the report's authors are amiss not only with regard to the facts but also entertain exaggerated expectations. How can textbooks reflect messages of peace and conciliation at a time when the possibility of a permanent settlement seems so distant? Indeed, Steinberg says, "Despite the vagueness of the interim situation, relative improvements were noted in the Palestinian textbooks. True, they do not contain a distinctive message of total peace and conciliation, but neither do they send a message of abysmal hatred and militancy, but restraint, which should be seen as necessary preparatory stage ahead of peace."

Steinberg's efforts to persuade key individuals in the establishment that the facts relating to the textbooks differ from the government coordinator's report failed. In response, "A different (and perhaps bizarre) view of the textbooks," Amos Gilad accused Steinberg of impugning the credibility and intellectual integrity of the authors of the government coordinator's report. The Middle East expert Aryeh Spitzan, who is responsible for the report on the textbooks, rebutted Steinberg's points one by one and described his analysis as "feigned hairsplitting."

To reinforce its arguments, the office of the government coordinator referred Haaretz to studies made by independent bodies, especially IPCRI, the Jerusalem based Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (www.ipcri.org), and the prestigous Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (www.gei.de/english/project/israel.shtml). However, the IPCRI report on March 2003 states, "Firstly, the Palestinian MOE [Ministry of Education] should be applauded for its willingness to embark on replacing the existing curriculum in spite of the difficult situation on the ground ... The MOE is doing its best to do away with many stereotypical references to Jews and Israelis ... The overall orientation of the curriculum is peaceful ... It does not incite hatred and violence. The curriculum promotes peace and tolerance within Palestinian society but fails to extend those principles and concepts to include Israelis ...

"The territory of the State of Israel is shown on the maps without any label. No reference is made to Palestine, either. The rationale for this approach, as explained by political officials and educators, is that Iarael itself has not yet marked its borders and that no final agreement has been reached with the PLO and the PA as to the final status of the borders..."

The study by the Eckert Institute, which was conducted in cooperation with researchers and educators from Israel and the territories, refers to Israeli criticism of the new Palestinian textbooks. It states that "objective analyses have found that especially those sections pertaining to social studies attempt to convey a balanced and mediating view of the situation ... It is obvious that where martyrs of the struggle are celebrated, strategies for mediation can hardly be conveyed ... Can an Israeli student imagine an international solution to the Jerusalem question when he sees Israeli soldiers in front of the Wailing [Western] Wall in Jerusalem on pictures in his school textbook?"

The government coordinator's office published its latest report at the conclusion of the last school year. This time, without any fanfare, the authors note that on most of the maps that appear in the new PA textbooks (grades 4 and 9) the boundaries of "the territories" [quotation marks in the original] are marked. The report's authors attribute "positive ideological significance" to the fact that the books mention the peace accords. However, they point out a "lack of readiness by the Palestinian education system to recognize the existence of the State of Israel." According to the authors, the Palestinians have come up with "a method of bypassing problems using technical means; they use the caption "Historic Palestine" to describe "the totality of Israel and the territories."

The Palestinian minister of education, Dr. Naim Abu al-Hommos, says borders are not within the jurisdiction of the education ministries and promises that when politicians decide on the permanent borders, his ministry will be the first to demarcate them on maps. "In the meantime, we are showing the borders of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. whilw you have erased the Green Line from all your official maps." The poor condition of the schools, he says, disturbs him more than the maps.