April 3, 2003 - Maureen Meehan

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Israeli Schoolbooks Promote Hate

First published on April 21, 2002, 06:48 AM



WASHINGTON

Israeli school textbooks as well as children’s storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray Palestinians and Arabs as “murderers,” “rioters,” “suspicious,” and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule, rather than the exception, in Israeli schoolbooks.

Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University studied 124 elementary, middle, and high school textbooks on grammar and Hebrew literature, history, geography and citizenship. Bar-Tal concluded that Israeli textbooks present the view that Jews are involved in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refuses to accept and acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel.

“The early textbooks tended to describe acts of Arabs as hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair, with the intention to hurt Jews and to annihilate the State of Israel. Within this frame of reference, Arabs were delegitimized by the use of such labels as ‘robbers,’ ‘bloodthirsty,’ and ‘killers’,” said Professor Bar-Tal, adding that there has been little positive revision in the curriculum over the years.

He also pointed out that Israeli textbooks continue to present Jews as industrious, brave, and determined to cope with the difficulties of “improving the country in ways they believe the Arabs are incapable of.”

Hebrew-language geography books from the 1950s through 1970s focused on the glory of Israel’s ancient past and how the land was “neglected and destroyed” by the Arabs until the Jews returned from their forced exile and revived it, “with the help of the Zionist movement.”

“This attitude served to justify the return of the Jews, implying that they care enough about the country to turn the swamps and deserts into blossoming farmland; this effectively delegitimizes the Arab claim to the same land,” Bar-Tal told the Washington Report. “The message was that the Palestinians were primitive and neglected the country and did not cultivate the land.”

This message, continued Bar-Tal, was further emphasized in textbooks by the use of blatant negative stereotyping which featured Arabs as: “unenlightened, inferior, fatalistic, unproductive and apathetic.” Further, according to the textbooks, the Arabs were “tribal, vengeful, exotic, poor, sick, dirty, noisy, colored” and “they burn, murder, destroy, and are easily inflamed.”

Textbooks currently being used in the Israeli school system contain less direct denigration of Arabs, but continue to stereotype them negatively. He pointed out that Hebrew- as well as Arabic-language texts used in elementary and junior high schools contain very few references either to Arabs or to Arab-Jewish relations. The coordinator of a Palestinian NGO in Israel said that major historical events hardly get a mention either.

These acts by Israeli soldiers are completely justified in the eyes of Israeli schoolboys

“When I was in high school 12 years ago, the date ‘1948’ barely appeared in any textbooks, except for a mention that there was a conflict, Palestinians refused to accept a UN solution and ran away instead,” said Jamal Atamneh, coordinator of the Arab Education Committee in Support of Local Councils, a Haifa-based NGO.

“Today the idea communicated to schoolchildren is basically the same: There are winners and losers in every conflict. When they teach about ‘peace and co-existence,’ it is to teach us how to get along with Jews.”

Atamneh explained that textbooks used by the nearly one million Arab Israelis (one-fifth of Israel’s population) are in Arabic, but are written by and issued from the Israeli Ministry of Education, where Palestinians have no influence or input.

“Fewer than 1 percent of the jobs in the Education Ministry, not counting teachers, are held by Palestinians,” Atamneh said. “For the past 15 years, not one new Palestinian academic has been placed in a high position in the ministry. There are no Palestinians involved in preparing the Arabic-language curriculum [and] obviously, there is no such thing as affirmative action in Israel.”

In addition, there are no Arabic-language universities in Israel. Haifa University, Atamneh points out, has had a steady 20 percent Arab student population for the past 20 years.

“How can that figure have remained the same after all these years when the population in the north [of Israel] has grown to over 50 percent Arab?”

Answering his own question, Atamneh rattles off statistics that reflect excellent high school scores among Arab students, which he contrasts to their subsequent lower-than-average performance in Hebrew-language college entrance exams given by the state.

“No major scholarships have ever been awarded to an Arab; there are no dorms for Arabs and no college-related jobs or financial aid programs. They justify this legal discrimination by the fact that we do not serve in the army. There are numerous blatant and official methods used to keep Palestinian Arabs out of the universities.”

Dr. Eli Podeh, lecturer in the Department of Islamic Studies and Middle East History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says that while certain changes in Israeli textbooks are slowly being implemented, the discussion of Palestinian national and civil identity is never touched upon.

“Passages from ‘experts’ about the existence of a Palestinian identity were introduced, but in general it appeared that the textbook authors were not eager to adopt it,” said Dr. Podeh, adding that “the connection between Palestinians in Israel and Arabs in Arab countries is not discussed. Especially evident is the lack of a discussion on the orientation of Palestinians to the [occupied] territories.”

“While new textbooks attempt to correct some of the earlier distortions, these books as well contain overt and covert fabrications,” said Dr. Podeh.

“The establishment has preferred — or felt itself forced — to encourage the cover-up and condemn the perplexity.”

One Israeli public high school student told the Washington Report that the contents of the schoolbooks and the viewpoints expressed by some teachers indeed have a lasting negative effect on youngsters’ attitudes toward Palestinians.

“Our books basically tell us that everything the Jews do is fine and legitimate and Arabs are wrong and violent and are trying to exterminate us,” the unidentified student said.

This was a Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2001.

This article is brought to you in association with Arab News

© April 2003 Arabia Online Ltd. All rights reserved

...is the sign of a very sick mind. It is spiritually bankrupt and contrary to the teachings of all the great Religions.

As a one time student of a conservative Jewish synagogue that is now promoting the war in my old home town of Chicago, I would have to agree.

The pervasive attitude that all Arabs are enemies of the Jewish population is reinforced at every turn by scared descendants of Holocaust survivors.

I know, I am one who has overcome my families calling me "Israel Hater," and a host of other more villainous names.

I do not hate Israel, I simply cannot condone Jews behaving in any way shape or form like opressors. My cousin is a product of the Israeli system. He is indeed racist, however, even he offered a perspective we have not heard.

He told me that he felt good about protecting his town of Rishon LeTzion- translation first of Zion. But, with a furrow in his brow, he told me of Israelis like himself that do not want to protect any of the West Bank. They too feel that they are being sacrificed for the stupid settlers who are not following any law or common sense. He desperately feared and hated going there, even as he left his vacation in America to join the IDF.

The term in Hebrew is Dros Dos- which basically means run over all jewish fundamentalists with your car. It's a popular sticker, akin to the one I just bought that says "doing my part to piss off the religious right."

It is those fundamentalist neo-cons on the border that cause dispute for the average man. These people get Sharon hired every time. And for anyone mainstream, anyone who is not racist, as I believe, the fundamental idealism of a Jewish race is indeed racist, we all suffer for their fervor.

However, in respect to those of extreme belief that do not harbor these birthright priveledges ( as the Hindus harbor their racist cast system), there are always good guys and bad guys on every end.

To the extent that evil intentions have dominated religion and education since the first segregation in the Bible known as Abrahams covenant, religion has been a tool of controll. But to the extent that spirituality has overcome the hatred of our brothers and brought many Jews to the forefront of things like the civil rights march, religon can be a liberator.

The difference in what is taught, and what is absorbed and learned is remarkable. For even as Jews may be teaching their children to hate, they are also reminding them of the devastation of the Holocaust daily.

And the one lesson that is always learned and sometimes practiced is that no one should ever go through that again.

Like Americans, Jews are human beings easily swayed by fear and terror and race. But also like Americans, some Israeli's are fierce and uncompromising in their desire to know the whole truth and not the half. Let us not divide ourselves into sectors of faith, or even of fundamentalism, but rather if we must divide, let us divide on the basis of who gives the most back to the world and who wreaks the most destruction. In this case, any nation or religion as a whole is divided into good and evil. Good being the humanitarian and environmental sectors of a poulation, evil being the materialistic and greedy.

And even then, you cannot divide those into the haves and have nots, for some will have and give, some will not have and give of themselves, some will have and spit on you for wanting.

So then how can we divide ourselves? As Jews who want fairness and Jews who breed hate?

Certainly, let it be known, that whatever teaching may be found in the current religious or secular text, let it be known, that whatever your degree of devotion, that hate and violence are never a virtue, and that those who hate and defile are never winners in the karmic realm. Who these people are, is for god not man to judge.

They will not suceed, because freedom is inside, and out. Freedom is the ability to think for yourself, to use imagination, to write your own books so to speak.

I propose in an effort to combat the teaching of hate, we ask our children to show us the teaching of love, and write their own books.

As far as history goes, we all have to our best to educate people with the knowledge that history always favors the teller of the story, and not the other side. And as long as we still can tell all sides of the story, the playing field will be level.

As long as we keep vigilant and teach our side, the other side will be laughed at as propoganda by anyone with a sense of reason. For even my semi-racist parents have been schooled by me once or twice. They are lucky however, to have been schooled by me and not by those that were opressed with their approval.

My family has almost been brought to the brink of war itself, with me and my sister who is a Berkely student on the side of peace, and everyone else on the other.

And, despite the argument, fervor, and teachings, my sister and I know wrong from right as if it were instinctive.

I believe in instinctive knowledge of a creator and the natural evolution of compassion into the realm of dominance. All men are endowed with the inherent feeling of good will towards others. Even those, who at their weakest moments have been essentially evil, have had some grace steer them home eventually, if only at their death beds.

Consciousness of good will is growing, it cannot be overcome by anything, even fear mongering, once it takes hold. This Israeli knows that from the heart.

Kindly provide a link to the original source of this document.

You hit it right on Simon. These people give documents with no source what so ever and expect us to belive them. Plus, mymicz, how did Sharon get elected if he is not mainstream?

Talk about flipping the script! I'd laugh at the sheer balls of these guys if they weren't such a threat to democracy and peace in the world. THEY print textbooks demonizing Jews and then proclaim that that Israeli textbooks are "teaching hate." Give me a break. Arab textbooks are notorious for having the most hatefull sterotypes of Jews, Arab media broadcasts the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and publishers throughout the Muslim world print almost as many copies of Mein Kampf as the Koran. Jewish groups have been outraged by this behavior for years and the left never cared.