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When the ADL Went Soft on Arafat’s Textbooks

By
David Bedein
-

In September, 2000, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti Defamation League(ADL), led a delegation of donors to dedicate a new ADL office in Jerusalem, and then meet with parties to the sensitive negotiations that continue between the Israeli gov’t and the Palestinian Authority.

Foxman brought the delegation to meet Yassir Arafat, inviting a select group of journalists and photographers to witness the session.

Since ADL had been assured by Arafat in April 1999 that Arafat would initiate a new curriculum, I wondered how ADL would confront Arafat with the fact that the new school books that have just been published for the first time by the PA and introduced to the first and sixth grade still continue to prepare Palestinian pupils for war with Israel.

Our news agency had indeed purchased a set of these texts from the PA curriculum center in El Birah, and we’ve begun to peruse them.

In the Palestinian sixth grade civics text, you see the picture of the Hamas icon, Izzadin Al Khassam, eulogized as the ultimate Palestinian folk hero. Jaffa and Acre are described as occupied lands that must be recovered. Jews are mentioned as a target for scorn in Islam. According to the new Palestinian texts, not only does Israel not exist – no Jews even live there, while all natural resources belong to the Arab nation.

Yet when Foxman led the delegation to meet Arafat, Yediot Aharonot reported that they held a lively discussion of the peace process. ADL delegation members told me that the discussion with Arafat did not mention Palestinian education. At the conclusion of the session, Abe Foxman handed Arafat a letter about the school books. Although Foxman and the ADL staff had never seen, perused nor studied the new PA school books, Foxman wrote Arafat that “we are encouraged by reports that the new textbooks do not have incendiary anti-Israel or anti-Jewish passages. However, we are disappointed that the textbooks appear to do nothing to educate Palestinian children on the peace process, the existence of the state of Israel, or promote tolerance between Palestinians and Israelis…Indeed, the maps of the region do not designate the state of Israel”

ADL had apparently relied on misleading “reports” which had stated that the new schoolbooks were be devoid of anti-Israel and anti Jewish passages.

ADL’s lack of desire to examine or peruse the schoolbooks of the PA is not new.

Each year, the annual survey of worldwide anti-semitism that is funded by the ADL has been devoid of any study of the schoolbooks of the Palestinian Authority, even though the schoolbooks have always been made available to the ADL for review.

Yet even without school books at hand, Foxman could have raised other aspects of Palestinian education with Arafat, such as the “educational summer camps” of the Palestinian Authority that were held this summer for 25,000 youngsters, which the New York Times on August 3rd reported as nothing less than a training ground for young Palestinian terrorists.

Foxman could have used the Arafat meeting to question the daily call for liberation of all of Palestine and all of Jerusalem that is communicated on the official media of the Palestine Broadcasting Corportation, a media outlet that is under the direct control of Arafat.

Instead, Foxman used the meeting with Arafat to inform the Israeli public that American Jewish leaders had found Arafat to be a “healthy, stark, alert and ready” for negotiations with Israel, as Foxman portrayed Arafat to Yediot on Sept. 21st.

Before departing from Israel on September 25th, Foxman was invited to speak from the rostrum of the Knesset forum on Antisemitism, where he declared that “no true peace can come until Arabs in their education are innoculated against anti-semitism.

In that light, I asked Foxman why ADL staff would conduct a study of the new books of the Palestinian Authority, and why the ADL had never included them in its studies on anti-semitism. He responded by saying that that he stood by his letter to Arafat, saying that Arafat’s new books were a step in the right direction. I then asked him how he could say that if he had never seen the books, which I took out from my briefcase to show him. Foxman shrugged his shoulders.

Abe Foxman went on to say that the older schoolbooks in the Palestinian Authority were published by Egypt and Jordan, noting that Israel had never objected to the Jordanian and egyptian schoolbooks. Foxman apparently forgot that Israel had censored the anti-Israel passages in these books until the PA took over in 1994 and reinstated them.

Foxman also neglected to mention that these books remain in the curriculum of the Palestinian Authority school system, with their persistent calls for Jihad and their constant description of Israel as a Nazi entity.

Meanwhile, the ADL website section on PA anti-semitism has not been updated in two years. Why?

The writer is the bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency

Asking President Clinton to recall US ambassador Martin Indyk

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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I wish to take the unusual step of asking the President of the United States, The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton, to recall the current US Ambassador to Israel, Mr. Martin Indyk.

That is because Mr. Indyk has taken the unusual step of interfering with the internal affairs of the state of Israel, while making statements that have been highly inappropriate.

In Mr. Indyk’s recent prepared remarks that were delivered at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem on September 16, 2000, the US ambassador made the tendentious statement that “There is no solution but to share the holy city…and cannot be the exclusive preserve of one religion”.

Commenting on Indyk’s remarks, the Guardian correspondent described them as “sharp departure from Washington orthodoxy in recent years”.

And where did Indyk get praise for such remarks?

For one, from a leading Washington-based Arab lobbyist, as quoted in by the Guardian, who declared that “we are pleased to hear in public what we have been hearing privately for many years from the US administration”.

Indyk also stepped over a clear red line when he meddled in the sensitive internal religious affairs in Israel, by expressing support for the “secularist revolution” that Israeli Prime Minister has recently been floating in the Knesset, an idea which is now in the heart of Israel’s INTERNAL public debate.

The US amabssador’s intervention in such an internal matter led a leading liberal commentator for HaAretz, Akiva Eldar, to express his surprise that Indyk had interfered with what is clearly an internal Israeli matter, asking that one can “imagine what American citizens would say if the Israeli ambassador to Washington were to come to a local religious institution and say such things”.

Just imagine the American outcry that would portend if Israeli officials were to express their feelings concerning American church-state controversies.

I believe that I speak for a consensus of public opinion in Israel when I take issue with such interference in the democratic process of the state of Israel.

Ambassador Indyk’s remarks about Jerusalem remain an affront to Israel, particularly since he made them in the heart of the city that he aspires to divide.

It is likewise inexplicable that a foreign ambassador to Israel would choose to interject his private religious preferences into the debate over secular-religious tensions in Israel.

This is not the first time that US Ambassador Indyk has interfered in the internal affairs of our country: Last January, immediately following Indyk’s return to Tel Aviv, the US embassy began to lobby Israeli Arab leaders regarding a possible referendum on the Golan Heights.

Mr. Indyk has neglected a vital role that he could have played to forward the peace process, since the US plays a formal, key role as the designated chair of the US-ISRAELI-PLO incitement monitoring committee that was set up by the US following the Wye Accords.

Mr. Indyk’s predecessor, Mr. Ned Walker, made every effort to energize this committee. For whatever reason, the current US ambassador has for whatever reason seen to it that this vital organ of the peace process has stopped functioning.

As a result, the daily incitement to war in the official Palestinian media has gone unchecked, without any response whatsoever from the US ambassador.

The Palestinian Authority has issued new school books that relate to Israel as if it does not exist. “Palestine” covers all of Israel on the official Palestinian maps. The name of Israel is not even mentioned. Meanwhile, Israeli cities such as JAffa and Haifa are described as Palestinian cities.

This is Palestinian education that is designed to eternalize the confrontation, and to prepare the future generations of Palestinian children for conflicts in the future, not for peace or coexistence.

All this has gone unchecked, and, surprisingly, without any response from the US ambassador.

It was the task of the US embassy in Tel Aviv to monitor and respond to such incitement.

Yet the current US ambassador chose not to carry out this vital task ole.

As the former chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee and the current chairman of the nonpartisan Knesset state control committes (the equivalent of the governmental affairs committees in western parliaments and the US Congress) I have been a consistent advocate of stronger ties between the US and Israel.

The time has come to repair the damage that has been done to this special relationship between our peoples by seeing to it our diplomats respect the internal affairs of our respective nations.

The writer is the Chairman, of the Knesset government control committee and the former chairman of the Kneset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee

The “right of return”: the PLO negotiating position that stalls the process

By
David Bedein
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The most significant decision of the Sept. 13th PLO central committee was barely reported: The absolute and uncompromising Palestinian position that every refugee who left Palestine in 1948 should have the “inalienable right” to return to the 531 Arab villages that they left at the time.

(That would mean, for example, that the campus of Tel Aviv University, built on the razed Arab village of Sheikh Muawannis, would revert to the descendents of that Arab village)

In coordination with that PLO decision, Palestinian support groups around the world have designated Sept. 16th, 2000 as a day to support the Palestinian demand for the “right of return”.

What a contrast that is to those days in September, 1993, exactly seven years ago, when a different decaration of principles for peace and recognotion was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, and Yassir Arafat, the leader of the PLO, and witnessed by Jorgen Holst, the Foreign Minister of Norway, which established a self-ruling Palestinian Arab entity in the predominantly Arab populated areas of the west bank and Gaz, while leaving the more difficult issues such as the Arab refugees who have wallowed in United Nations refugee camps since 1948 to be resolved during seven years that were set aside for a dynamic and complex negotiating process.

Exactly seven years after the genesis of a middle east peace process of hope, the negotiations have ground to a halt over the issue of these Arab refugees.

Over the past two weeks, I had occasion to hear, and then see, the Palestinian Authority’s pursuit of the issue of the “right of return” as their primary issue of concern in this, the final stages of the Oslo process.

On September 8, 2000 I attended a meeting at PLO’s Orient House in Jerusalem, at which the strategy of the PA with regard to the right of return and the compensation claim were clarified. I met with Khalil Tafakji, the Director of the Arab Studies Society. Mr. Tafakji is director of a project to computerize the land records of Jerusalem and its environs, cross-referencing the property records with the ownership claims of the refugees. The project will be completed within three months. He apologized for meeting with me on a Friday, since this was his Sabbath. However, he explained, the computers have to function 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When the project is completed, the PA will have records that will show the present owner or user of each parcel in Jerusalem and the Arab owner of each parcel prior to 1948. Tafakji notes that this is the first step in preparing a legal claim for return of the properties or claims for damages for the value of the properties.

Tafakji noted that similar projects are being planned for other parts of Israel with regard to properties to which Arab refugees will make claims. It should be noted that the Arab refugees in the UNRWA camps dwell according to the precise neighborhoods and villages that they lived in 1948, while UNRWA workers, whose salaries are paid for by the UNRWA donor countries, encourage UNRWA residents to make claims for their properties from before 1948. Meanwhile, UNRWA now organizes daily bus trips, for UNRWA camp residents to see the homes and neighborhoods that they will soon be claiming for themselves, in places such as Canada Park, the Tel Aviv University campus, and Ben Gurion International Airport.

The theory of the PA is similar to that of the Jewish claims against Germany, Austria and countries to which Jewish assets were sold or transferred by the Germans and their allies. It is also similar to the claims against Switzerland and other countries that benefited from the deaths of Jewish property owners whose assets were confiscated after their deaths at the hands of the Nazis.

The implications of the PA strategy are clear. It is entirely possible that a court, such as the World Court in The Hague, will give these claims a sympathetic hearing and order properties returned to their pre-1948 owners. In the alternative, the Court could order that the previous owners be paid fair value for their property together with interest from the time the properties were seized. Israel will have to show that the properties were voluntarily abandoned, which may be an impossible task. The result could be hundreds of billions of Dollars in damages, or, even worse, an order to evict the present owners and return the property to the claimants. Given the respect that Israeli jurisprudence gives to international law, the possibility exists that Israeli courts would give full faith and credit to an order of the World Court.

The Palestinian Authority’s determination to push the “right of return” issue was confirmed by Israel Member of Knesset, MK Dan Meridor, who serves as the security-sensitive chairman of Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. Meridor, who served as the cabinet secretary when Prime Minister Menachem Begin negotiated the Camp David agreement with Egypt in 1978, also played a key role in Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s delegation at the Camp David summit. Meridor participated in meetings on all core issues addressed at the summit, especially the subcommittee that dealt with the “Right of Return” and that of compensation demands for the returnees.

Meridor told me that that the consistent position of the PA throughout the summit, a position that has not changed as a result of the summit, remains that 3.6 million Palestinians have the absolute right to exercise their right to return to their homes and villages in Israel.

Meridor specifically mentioned that the PA asserts that these persons have the same rights as Holocaust survivors and the refugees who were displaced in Serbia and Kosovo¦ to be repatriated to their homes and to recover their property, even if we are relating to a period of fifty two years. The PA asserts that these refugees may, at their option, return to their homes, or receive compensation for the loss of their property and their suffering. As Meridor related it, the Israeli delegation at the Camp David had assumed that that the PA’s position was an opening negotiation gambit, even though the PA has emphasized this position throughout the seven years of the Oslo process.

After 40 hours of negotiations, Meridor reported that the Israelis are convinced that the Palestinian position is no mere negotiation strategy.

On the issue of compensation, the PA demanded that Israel provide it with property records so that the present owners and uses of the property of the refugees could be determined. In this manner the PA intends to arrive at a valuation of its compensation claim against Israel in respect of the displaced property owners.. Meridor felt that the PA could be preparing for the filing of legal claims against Israel and the present owners or users of the property to which the refugees claim ownership.

It is important to note however, that as Israel negotiates the final status issues with the Palestinians, Israel must take note of the intentions and plans of the PA in the matter of Arab refugees. As the media focuses on the fight against terror, someone may wish to pay attention to the people with lethal computers as well.

BACKGROUND ARTICLE

During the 1948 war of Independence, when the new state of Israel was invaded by seven Arab armies, between 350,000 and 650,000 Arabs left their homes in Palestine, depending on which United Nations report you read, while an undetermined number of Jews fled from their homes in the Old City of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem suburbs of Neveh Yaakov, Atarot, and the Etzion Bloc.

The “Inalienable Right of Return” resolution #194 that was adopted by United Nations resolution #194 on December 11, 1948, during the height of that war of independence, legislated that all Jewish and Arab refugees from the 1948 war had possessed the absolute and “inalienable” right to return to the homes and villages that they left during the war. That resolution also determined that all of these refugees would be entitled to financial compensation.

To implement this resolution, the UN established UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, whose purpose was to confine Palestinian Arab refugees to “temporary” transit camps, under the premise and promise of the “right of return”. Israel also established temporary refugee camps to receive the Jewish refugees from 1948, along with more than two million Jews who streamed to Israel in the first decade of the state’s turbulent history. While no Jewish refugee camp still exists, the UN and the Arab nations have continued to confine what are now 3.6 million Palestinian Arab refugees in refugee camps, forbidding them to move out of the camps. Even the new Palestinian Authority, soon to be a Palestinian state, forbids the Palestinian Arab refugees from moving into permanent homes in the areas under PA control. Why? That would mean that this would violate their right to return to the 531 Arab villages that have been replaced by Israeli cities, collective farms and woodlands, all of which lie within Israel’s pre-1967 cease fire lines.

Has the Israeli human rights community abandoned human rights in favor of political expediency?

By
David Bedein
-

A commitment to human rights and civil liberties includes an inherent even if unwritten oath to uphold the principles of human dignity, regardless of any political or ethnic considerations.

For example, in 1992, in the course of work as a journalist, I found that fifteen Arabs who worked in Kiryat Arba and lived with their families in the village of Bani Naim, had been served with arbitrary home-demolition orders. Our news agency printed the story, and also joined with a human rights group based in Efrat and Kiryat Arba to help these families bring a petition to the Israel High Court of Justice. The petition was successful. For those of us who became involved in this case, the point was not the political allegiance of those families or our views thereof. The point was that an injustice was being done to them, and it had to be corrected.

The themes of human rights, civil liberties and human dignity have been on prominent display in Israel-Arab relations, and earn banner coverage in the media.

Advocacy groups for the Palestinian-Arabs made very effective use of these themes in diverting public attention from Arab-PLO terrorism and belligerency as moral issues, to Palestinian Arab-rights as a moral issue. They thereby won wide support from a well-meaning if not always keenly perceptive public.

News coverage of these rights peaked during the first two years of the intifada, The PLO encouraged youngsters to get onto the front lines of riots, knowing full well that they would be most exposed there and presented by the news media as child victims. This was a propaganda device that brought the PLO great dividends in public relations.

The Palestinian Human Rights Information Center, based in Jerusalem and in Washington, coordinated a campaign that succeeded in igniting the passions of human rights groups throughout the world and, eventually, throughout Israel.

By 1990, at least sixteen internationally respected human rights organizations were monitoring the human rights policies of the government of Israel. All of them had Israeli members and Israeli counterparts. During the Gulf War in 1991, when the PLO sided with Iraq and its supporters cheered the Iraqi scud-missile attacks on Israel, these human rights groups clung to their support of the PLO cause.

In the United Nations-sponsored (UNRWA) camps for displaced Arabs, the relief workers gave moral and logistical support to the PLO campaign, while helping to propagate false rumors that the camps faced starvation at the time of the Gulf War.

In this period, espousal of the PLO cause might have wanted with its support and encouragement of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and its scud attacks.

Yet the human rights coalition, in Israel and abroad, remained fixed in its pro-PLO stance.

These organizations contributed mightily to shaping a public opinion that pushed Israel into recognizing and dealing with the PLO in the Oslo Accords of 1993.

In the spring of 1994, a self-governing Arab-Palestine entity was set up under the rule of Arafat. There was by then a long record of Arafat’s autocratic methods and executions of opponents. Nevertheless, human rights groups hoped that the establishment of a Palestine National Authority with an intricate governmental structure, parliament and legislative council would provide a new era of human rights, civil liberties and human dignity for the Arab-Palestinians.

In August 1994, Arafat closed the Palestinian Human Rights Information Center and put its staff in prison. That was just the beginning of his ongoing campaign to ignore the complaints of human rights organizations, and indeed to crush the organizations entirely.

The writer brought this to the attention of the Israeli group Rabbis for Human rights, which then forwarded a letter of protest to Arafat. There was no reply. That did not inhibit the Rabbis for Human rights from making cordial visits to Arafat in Gaza and putting his grinning face on their brochures.

Arafat’s suppression of human rights and civil liberties seems in keeping with Israeli government views at the time of Osclo Accords, On September 2, 1993, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin: This will be a process that will give the Palestinians an entity without Bagatz [right of appeal to the High Court of Justice] and without Bitzlem (a human rights organization that worked on behalf of Arab-Palestinian human rights).

Thus, a process that had been driven by human rights organizations on behalf of the Arab-Palestinians culminated in depriving those people even of the rights that had been accorded to under Israeli administration. Those organizations that had for years stood so loudly for Arab-Palestinian rights succeeded in placing them under a rule with no human rights or civil liberties.

The government of Israel government pays 62 percent of the budget of the Palestine Authority. Yet the Israeli human rights establishment refuses, as a matter of policy, to make aid to the Palestinian Authority contingent in any improvement in PA human rights policies.

Bassam Eid, an Arab who had been active in Bitzelem, found that his organization and the Israeli Left were less interested in human rights and more interested in the success Of the Oslo process.

Shortly after he left Bitzelem, on December 5, 1995, Eid stated: “I would sooner trust Rehavam Ze’evi [leader of the nationalist Moledet party] over Yossi Sarid [leader of the left-wing Meretz party] any day.”

Israel Resource News Agency has therefore put some questions to the Association for Civil Rights In Israel (ACRI), an umbrella organization supported by the New Israel Fund in the United States: 1. Would ACRI support aid to an entity that denies human rights and civil liberties as a matter of policy? 2. Can ACRI be silent while a government of Israel proposes to strip human rights and civil liberties from Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and hand them over to the rule of Arafat and his security chief Jibril Rajoub? 3. How does ACRI respond to the June 2000 series in the newspaper HaAretz, that documented how Israeli police look on and watch while Rajoub’s “police” abduct, interrogate, torture and even murder Israeli Arab citizens of Jerusalem.

The reply from ACRI came from its chairwoman Edna Margolit and its director Vered Livne: ACRI does not and will not interfere with political issues.

ACRI legal counsel Dan Yakir did say that ACRI did not approve of Israeli police subcontracting law enforcement to Rajoub to enforce the law. However, he would not put this in writing or recommend that ACRI issue any policy statement on the subject. He also said that he was not familiar with the reports in HaAretz. (Yet, ACRI retains media professionals who comb the press to monitor human rights abuses.)

Israel Resource News Agency placed the same questions to Rabbis for Human Rights. There has not been any response.

Amnesty International, that had long been very active on human rights for Arab-Palestinians when they were under Israeli administration, has recently issued a scathing report on the human rights abuses of the Palestine Authority. Neither ACRI nor the Rabbis for Human Rights has addressed itself to this report.

It would seem that the Israeli human rights establishment, including its rabbinc component, has adopted Rabin’s view that an independent Palestinian entity must be set up and supported at any cost to its subjects in human rights and civil liberties.

Despite this indifference by their former Israeli champions, Arab-Palestinians have been developing an underground network on behalf of human rights and civil liberties, freedom of speech and press, due process of law, police reform and more. When Bassam Eid was interviewed in the television film Vanishing Peace (BBC/CBC, May 1999), he pointed out that the salaries of Arafat’s PA security men are paid directly by the United States, Canada and the European Union, who do not make any respect for human rights a condition for their subsidies.

It would seem that Israel’s human rights establishment, along with much of the international community, is willing to subject Palestinian Arabs to a regime that denies them any semblance of justice or liberty. If this facilitates their political goal of a PLO state, then so be it.

In what way the achievement of the political goal forwards their avowed cause of human rights has yet to be explained.

The first interview with Senator Lieberman in the Jewish media since his vice presidential nomination

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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In his first major interview with a Jewish newspaper since being nominated, Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman shared his opinions with the Jewish Advocate on the status of Jerusalem, American Jewry and Torah.

Lieberman was in Boston last week for two Democratic fundraising events.

The first event, a $10,000 per plate luncheon for 50 Jewish guests garnered nearly $500,000. The evening event, which featured a three-song musical appearance by James Taylor, was highlighted by an address from Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. The two events raised nearly $2.5 million for the Gore-Lieberman campaign.

Despite a hectic schedule that took him from Washington to New York to Boston in less than three hours, the Connecticut senator seemed invigorated by the news of the Democratic ticket’s ascent in the polls. Wearing a light pinstripe suit, a red tie and his graying blonde hair combed immaculately, Lieberman’s deep blue eyes expressed a joy he has repeatedly articulated since becoming the first Jew to be nominated for vice president by a national political party.

When asked if he had a message to convey to American Jewry, Lieberman talked about the opportunities America has granted not only to Jews but to members of all faiths. “America is not just a change of address, it’s a change. It’s a unique country in world history, because it’s premised on equal opportunity and tolerance. And I happen to have the good fortune of being a great beneficiary of that. So, I think what it says to everybody in this country is that you should feel free to be yourself in America, and know that in doing so, you enrich the country,” the vice presidential candidate said.

He encouraged Jews to give back to America by embracing public service and volunteer work and “to do good deeds; acts of charity.” American Jews, said Lieberman, should also feel “real gratitude to this country for the extraordinary freedom it provides to all citizens.”

Referring to Judaism as the “the foundation of my life,” the 58-year-old Orthodox Jew, spoke about the importance of action in his faith. “I’ve always felt that Judaism is a religion of action, not just study. It begins with faith, and then it goes to study, but then the test is: are you doing something to make the world better, Tikkun Olam,” the senator explained.

When asked if he could point to any specific passages or stories in the Torah that he draws strength or inspiration from, Lieberman pointed to the document as one complete work. “The Torah is so full of inspiration,” he declared. “It’s such a human and at the same time, so inspiring a document, that I’ve drawn strength and lessons from the whole of the experience. I don’t think of anything specifically.”

He also stressed that while the Torah is a major influence in his life it is not the only influence. “You know, people ask me sometimes the affect of my faith on public service, and I always say that my faith has informed my service just as so many of the other experiences in my life have – the lessons my parents taught me, the lessons I learned from studying history and reading biographies, and then the lessons you learn from your experience. But there’s no question that my religion is one of those sources,” he emphasized.

On the subject of dividing Jerusalem, Lieberman seemed to embrace the same politics Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. He favors a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, but did not directly object to the notion of Palestinians having a piece of Jerusalem. Said Lieberman, “It’s a matter of American policies adopted in a piece of legislation that I co-sponsored along with a broad group of senators from both parties, that we should recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and that our embassy should be there. You know, I think in the specifics of this moment, which is a sensitive moment in which President Clinton is clearly trying to advance the cause of peace in the Middle East and one of the central questions is Jerusalem, I should leave it to the leadership of Israel and the Palestinians to continue to negotiate without my opining on it – because ultimately they’re the ones who have to live with it.

The writer is the editor of the “Jewish Advocate”, the Jewish newspaper that serves the Jewish communities of Boston and of Western Massachusetts

Israel Not On Map in Palestinian Textbooks

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept. 2 “ After years of sharp debate and bitter recrimination, one of the most delicate and politically loaded documents in the Arab-Israeli dispute was unveiled today amid great ceremony“ and immediately delivered into the eager little hands of first- and sixth-graders.

The pupils were Palestinians returning to school in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the documents in question were glossy new school textbooks on civics and other subjects, the first written exclusively by and for Palestinians. They replace aging Jordanian and Egyptian volumes that the Palestinians have used for years.

The distribution of the slim, soft-covered books was a major event because in the Middle East, textbooks are not simply neutral educational tools but are read closely as indexes measuring each side’s acceptance or rejection of peace. They are seen as a crucial instrument, along with TV, in forming Arab and Jewish images of one another.

Israeli critics have long said Palestinian textbooks are part of a general Arab effort to deny Israel legitimacy. Some had hoped the new books would speak explicitly about Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and peace partnership.

The Palestinians said they were determined to produce texts that were educational, not political. Their approach was to minimize references to Israel and Jews rather than to malign them ×’€“ and that alone may represent an improvement of sorts.

However, inside the covers remain points of potential friction:

Maps in a sixth-grade civics textbook depict a long, dagger-like green shape separating the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but do not say that the shape is known to most of the world as Israel. Nor does the map include Tel Aviv, although it does pinpoint other Israeli cities with large past or current Arab populations.

A chapter on tolerance speaks generally of the importance of that rare Middle Eastern commodity, urging that it apply not only among religions but also sports teams and political parties. But there is no specific mention of tolerance for Israelis and no suggestion of Arab-Jewish reconciliation in the accompanying illustration ×’€“ a Muslim sheik greeting not a rabbi but a Christian priest.

When it is discussed, Israel is characterized as an “occupier” and treated more like an old enemy than a new peace partner. “The Palestinian people were expelled from their land as a result of the Israeli occupation of Palestine,”the civics text says, “and have been subjected to massacres and banishment from their land to neighboring countries.”

Still, from the perspective of peace supporters, the Palestinian textbooks are an improvement over the old Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks, nearly all of which were written before the Oslo declaration inaugurated Middle East peacemaking in 1993. Some contain virulent attacks on the “treacherous and disloyal” Jews and predict military victory for the Arabs over Israel.

That made them handy ammunition for some Israelis, who said that using the old texts in Palestinian-run schools proved that Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority was a racist and warmongering regime whose peaceable intentions were dubious at best.

Stung, the Palestinians noted that old Israeli textbooks contain unflattering references to Arabs as backward, shifty and unclean. They dismissed their Israeli critics as right-wingers opposed to peacemaking, and insisted the Palestinians should be judged only by their own textbooks.

Now, say Palestinian officials, the new books ×’€“ the product of four years of work by hundreds of experts ×’€“ represent an enormous step forward and a way station toward building an independent Palestinian state.

“We are going to teach the truth,” Naim Abu Humus, the Palestinian deputy minister of education, said today.

Soft-spoken and U.S.-educated, Abu Humus told an audience including Arafat, diplomats and dozens of educators at the Education Ministry in the Palestinian-ruled city of Ramallah that the new texts fulfill “one of the dreams of the Palestinian people.”

Later, in an interview, he insisted the books reflect sound educational principles and nation-building goals, and do their best to steer clear of politics.

“It’s not necessary to relate everything to politics,” he said. “In [the Israeli] curriculum they don’t have the word Palestine. Our curriculum is not anti-anybody.”

Abu Humus said the books’ focus on Palestine, not Israel, is intentional. The chapter on tolerance was illustrated by a Muslim and a Christian because those are the two main religions of Palestinians, he said. As for the omission of Israel on the maps, that was the decision of political higher-ups, he said.

His brother, Omer Abu Humus, an education official who worked on the new textbooks, said the Palestinians were wise to sidestep the issue of Israel’s borders, which are the subject of current peace talks.

“If I ask you to show me the exact borders of Israel, you can’t show me,” he said. “Why indulge in political questions which remain to be negotiated?”

Still, it may be difficult to convince some Israelis, particularly right-wing skeptics of peace who stress that there can be none until Palestinian officials and schools get used to the idea that Israel is here to stay.

“Not mentioning Israel on the map and only referring to cities with an Arab past is consistent with the ongoing media campaign,” said Itamar Marcus, the Israeli research director for the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, a New York-based group that monitors Arab media.

“There’s no attempt to create legitimacy or recognition that Israel exists,” said Marcus, whose focus on Palestinian media has touched a nerve among Arabs. “They’ll have to go through a major education campaign to reeducate people to see us as human beings…. The fact that there’s not any vicious antisemitism is a basic minimum.”

Marcus characterized as “very, very upsetting” the fact that the textbooks omit Israel and Jews from the chapter on tolerance.

His critique reflected a theme in Jewish-Arab discord: the Israeli insistence that the Palestinians must preach peace to their people as a means of reconciliation, and the Palestinian rebuttal that justice “ the return of Palestinian land“ is the only real route to peace.

“What will change the situation will be to give the Palestinians their rights,” said Naim Abu Humus, the deputy education minister. “Without that, no newspaper, no textbook, will change the situation.”

The textbooks released today mark the beginning of a broad curriculum reform for Palestinian schools, whose growth rate is among the fastest in the world.

Until now, West Bank students have read textbooks from Jordan, and Gazans have used books from Egypt.

Funded by Italy, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland and Belgium, new textbooks for all grades through high school are to be phased in over the next four years. They will be used by 865,000 students in the more than 1,750 schools administered by the Palestinians and the United Nations in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Arab schools in East Jerusalem. However, the new books will not be distributed to U.N.-run schools for tens of thousands of Palestinians classified as refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

The curriculum reform calls for a 10 percent increase in class time, and all Palestinian students will be required to study English for 10 years, starting in first grade. Until now, compulsory English had been taught for only four years, beginning in fifth grade. Compulsory classes in civics, technology and science will be added, and more courses are to be offered in German, French and environmental studies.

The writer is the bureau chief of the Washington Post in Israel

‘A’ Is for Arafat, ‘B’ Is for Bethlehem. Skip Zion.

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept. 7 Inside a modern, secular private school here, the first-grade boys and girls stuffed their Pokemon and Barbie backpacks into their cubbies and gathered on the blue rug for story time.

Their 24-year-old teacher, Nesrin Alayan, kneeled, clasped her hands and began, in a singsong voice, to tell “the tale of a joyful home called Palestine.”

The tale begins, she told the children, with a large, happy family eating and laughing inside their house. One day, she said, “some people” come to the door with rifles and pistols, open fire on the house and seize it.

“We the Palestinian family are forced out into the cold,” she said. “And then we spend many, many years trying to get back into our house. In order to do so, we start throwing stones. And then people are killed. Do you boys and girls know the word intifada? That’s when the world starts paying attention to our tale.”

With her story, which concludes on the “path of peace,” Mrs. Alayan was improvising a setup for the opening lesson in a new first-grade reader, the very first official reader written by and for Palestinians.

The lesson deals with the symbols of the new Palestinian identity – the flag, the passport and it is part of a fledgling home-grown curriculum that was introduced this week in first- and sixth-grade classrooms throughout the Palestinian-ruled territories.

For decades Palestinians in the West Bank have used Jordanian textbooks and those in Gaza have relied on Egyptian ones, making for a disjointed and ultimately borrowed educational program. As part of the process of building institutions for an emerging Palestinian state, the Palestinian Authority, with money from European countries, is trying to create from scratch a genuine Palestinian curriculum, starting with two grades as a pilot effort.

But since the Palestinian nation has not yet emerged, the curriculum is a delicate work in progress, fodder for criticism from within and without.

With peace negotiations unresolved, it is hard to know how Mrs. Alayan’s tale will end. Her principal, Maha Shihadi, said it was almost impossible to teach geography. The regional map, as far as every Palestinian is concerned, cannot be drawn before borders are determined as part of the peace talks.

How, Mrs. Shihadi asked, can the children illustrate Palestine? She wondered if they should make cutouts, like snowflakes, to portray the unconnected parcels of land that now constitute the Palestinian-ruled territories. The textbook writers opted for what they call “the historic map of Palestine,” the map of 1948.

In other words, Israel is not pictured. Tel Aviv does not exist.

This greatly upsets those Israelis, mostly rightists, who monitor Palestinian media and literature, documenting hostility toward Israel and Jews. They say it betrays the whole spirit of the peace effort for the Palestinians to generate a new educational curriculum that, for starters, ignores Israel on maps.

Salah Yassin, the director general of curriculum development for the Palestinian Authority, defends this omission as calculated and unavoidable.

“Complain to the Education Minister!” he joked. Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, holds that portfolio.

Mr. Yassin said Israel, like Palestine, remained undefined. “That is what these peace talks are about, no?,” he said. “When the crisis is solved, we will clearly mark: `This is Palestine. This is Israel.’ But for now we educators are not going to get involved in politics. The texts are, by necessity, works in progress, and they will be modified.”

The Palestinian educators think it is significant that Palestinian students will crack open textbooks saturated with local images and references for the first time.

Math books ask students to calculate the distance between Bethlehem and Nablus in the West Bank, not Amman and Petra in Jordan. Arabic texts feature poems and essays by Palestinians and reading comprehension passages about the Palestinian olive oil and stone industries. Mr. Yassin also cited “Mary and Jesus” as examples of Palestinian personalities in the new books.

In the sixth-grade books, Palestinian history is presented not in linear narrative form but sketchily.

The creation of Israel is explained tersely as “the Israeli occupation of 1948,” which with the assistance of Britain “destroyed most of the Palestinian villages and cities and kicked the Palestinian inhabitants from their lands.”

In a section on the Palestine Liberation Organization, its “liberation army” is mentioned, as well as the return to the West Bank and Gaza of its “fighters” after the Oslo interim peace agreement was signed in 1993. Terrorism is not mentioned, and Oslo is not explained.

A chapter on “Palestinian problems” includes a grab bag of issues, including high unemployment, a brain drain, the Israeli settlement expansion policy and the “Judaization” of Jerusalem.

Text blocks tend to be short, followed by suggested activities – like inviting a Palestine Liberation Organization official to class or fill- in-the-blank exercises:

Palestine in the 20th century was under (blank) occupation and blank) occupation.

The correct answers are British and Israeli, omitting what some Palestinians consider to have been periods of Ottoman and Jordanian occupation.

For much of Israel’s history its textbooks were far from neutral themselves, sticking closely to a heroic Zionist narrative and avoiding any Palestinian perspective. Starting last year, shortly after Israel’s 51st birthday, a revised curriculum began using the term Palestinian freely and referring to a Palestinian people and a nationalist movement.

In a bid to introduce greater historical detail to the story of Israel’s founding, new textbooks said that in 1948 some Palestinians were expelled from their villages and that some fled because they feared Israeli soldiers. But the new books are used only in the mainstream secular school system, which serves about 60 percent of schoolchildren. And since some secular Israeli educators consider them offensive, they are not used throughout the system.

Mr. Yassin emphasizes that the first- and sixth-grade books must be seen as part of what will eventually be a complete first- through 12th- grade curriculum.

They cannot be judged in isolation, he said. Over the next four years, the Palestinian government intends to phase in the remaining grades and introduce broader educational reforms: more creative teaching, less rote learning, compulsory English starting from the first grade, third- language electives including Hebrew, technology classes.

But with so many inside and outside the Palestinian world anxiously wondering what shape the new state will take, the books have been pounced on this week, and not just by Israeli rightists. Palestinians, too, have been scouring them for signs of how the government is managing the delicate question of forging a national identity from so many strands: the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims and Christians, religious and secular. And academics are scrutinizing them to evaluate the educational standards they set.

In an article in the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds, a local professor condemned the new first-grade reader for underestimating Palestinian children. Every Palestinian child knows and understands the camel, a part of the landscape here, “the cargo ship of the desert,” he said. Why, he asked, did the textbook writers feel compelled to concoct a story about a camel and a lion that describes the camel as “the king of the jungle?”

At the private school here, which is called Al Mustaqbal, or the Future School, a seasoned science teacher expressed disappointment with the new sixth-grade science book. After conducting a lively anatomy class on joints, the teacher, Dalal Kasabri, said she had greatly departed from the text because it was overly simplistic, unimaginative and in some cases inaccurate.

“Obviously there are different levels in the West Bank and Gaza, in public schools and private ones like this one,” she said. “But we should be setting high standards for our children and our people.”

The illustration for a civics book lesson on tolerance shows a sheik and a priest shaking hands.

To the disappointment of Israeli critics, who were hoping that the new Palestinian textbooks would preach tolerance for Jews, too, the books look inward only, where Palestinian educators say a lot of work must be done. As part of an interfaith effort, they also produced textbooks on Christianity, which will be used by Christian children during the period when their Muslim classmates study Islam.

Back in Mrs. Alayan’s class, the children were examining one little girl’s shiny new Palestinian passport. The young teacher, her face shining, asked the children how they could use their new documents, their new badges of Palestinian identity.

“Teacher, teacher!” one boy called out, leaping with his outstretched arm into the air. “To go to America!”

The writer is the bureau chief of the New York Times in Israel

Analysis of a new textbook of the Palestinian Authority

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

“NATIONAL EDUCATION FOR SIXTH GRADE” Published by the “Ministry of Education for the State of Palestine”. presented September 2000.

. Pages 8 – 9. A GEOGRAHIC MAP SHOWS WHAT IS CURRENTLY INTERNATIONALLY DESIGNATED AS ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY AREAS, BUT ISRAEL IS MISSING FROM THE TITLE OF THE MAP

[Ed. From the content of these pages it is clear that this entire area is referred to only as Palestine]

[The student is instructed to] “Look at the map and answer the following questions…..

1. What are the natural resources of Palestine? 2….Mention the borders of Palestine from all four sides. 3. “Which are the continents which Palestine connects?” 4. Mention the seas that are “on the land of Palestine”.

The Location of Palestine.

Palestine has an important place in the heart of the Arabic motherland because

1. She is the connection between three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

2. She is the connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, and that is why she is extremely important from a strategic, political and military point of view………….”

HISTORICAL PALESTINE

“In the division of Palestine, there are four parts:

1. The coastline. The cities that are on its coast are Acco, Haifa, Jaffa and Gaza. 2. The mountain areas which include the Galilee, Nablus, Jerusalem, Hebron, and the cities which include Nazareth, Jenin, Tulkharam, Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem and Hebron 3. The Jordan Valley which extends from Lake of Tiberius to the Dead Sea. 4. The Negev comprises half of the territory of Palestine [geographically]. This is semi desert & its important city is Beer Sheva……….

THE WATER RESOURCES OF PALESTINE I. Rain II. Other water sources include A. Rivers, including the River Jordan and springs,and rivers Al-Muqata, Al-Odja and Al-Faria. B. Lakes – the most important is the Lake of Tiberius

165 square km. In area and consisting of sweet water, and the Dead Sea, 1050 square km. with salt water. It is also rich in minerals.

3. Underground water, which is in the form of springs and wells. [Ed. This is a literal translation. One presumes that the reference is to the aquifers although the sentence construction is ambiguous.]

Page 11

1. Draw a map of historical Palestine 2. Indicate the main cities on the coastline. 3. Indicate the main cities in the Jordan Valley.

THE POPULATION OF PALESTINE IN FEBRUARY 1999.

1. The West Bank 1,972,000 2. Gaza 1,113,000 3. Palestinians Within Palestine 1,094,000 4. Palestinians Outside Palestine 4,419,000

5. TOTAL 8,598,000

[Ed. Note: There is an absence of statistics for the Jewish population residing in the area currently known as the state of Israel].

Page 11

“Let’s understand that… Palestine is a part of the great Arabic motherland and the Palestinian people are a part of the Arabic nation. Arabic unity is the goal that the Palestinian people work for”, quoted from the Laws of the Palestinian National Authority. Chapter 1, Paragraph 1.

Page 13. Characteristics of Palestinian Society… “All of Palestinian History is a struggle manifested by courage and bravery. The Palestinian people fought the British authority and Israeli occupation and they have revolted several times. They had thousands of martyrs and wounded……….’

[Ed. Regarding Arabic National Issues}…

4. The flag of the Palestinian National Movement is the Arabic flag and the national anthem is the Arabic anthem. Arabic unity is the desire of the Palestinian people.

5. In Palestinian society brotherhood and tolerance exists between the Moslems and the Christians…

“The Palestinian people were expelled from their land because of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the Palestinian people were subjected to massacres and made to emigrate to neighboring states.

Page 15. 3 photographs show…

A. Arab revolt of 1936 B. Subtitle reads “This is the map of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza” C. Azzadin-al-Kassam (Mujahid)**

The following questions then appear 1. Mention the name of the Imperial power which colonized Palestine from 1918 to 1948. 2. Mention the means which the Palestinian people used to fight the British imperialists. 3. Give the name of the Arabic leader who died as a martyr in Yaabad in 1935 in his fight against British imperialism…”

**NOTE: AZZADIN AL-KASSAM IS THE MARTYR AND HERO OF THE VIOLENT MOSLEM MOVEMENT “HAMAS”

Page 17

1. “Imperialism”…[talks of British imperialism]…”and the Israeli occupation in 1948 with the help of Great Britain”…Israeli occupation has destroyed most of the Palestinian cities and villages, expelled the Palestinian residents and forced them to leave their lands and villages.

2. Israel has embraced a new policy in occupying the Palestinian lands, which is settling the land and including developing agricultural,industrial and residential components

[Ed. NOTE: the Arabic words used for “settling the land by Israelis” has a highly pejorative implication in Arabic].

3. Under the Israeli conquest, [the Israelis] were neglecting the health, education and social services of the Palestinian people.

4. Israel took control of underground water supplies in Palestine.

5. The lack of independence of the Palestinian economy…being influenced by the Israeli economy…

6. Judaizing Jerusalem and obliterating the Palestinian identity of its [Arab] residents.

Page 18

2. Explain the policy which Israel carried out against the Palestinian people after its conquest of Palestine. FILL IN THE MISSING WORDS [IN THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE]

3. part C. The leader Azzadin al-Kassam died as a martyr while fighting against the occupation…[student is instructed to fill in the answer in the dotted line spaces provided]whereas the leader Khalil il Wazir (Abu Jihad)died as a martyr while fighting against the occupation [fill in the answers here]…. [Ed. required answer to the first part is “by the British”. Required answer to the second part is: “the Israelis”.]

Page 19

Write a short report regarding the negative effects resulting from the “settling of the land” by the Israelis.

Page 29 THE STATE

[from the Declaration of Independence (of the state of Palestine) on 15 November 1988 at the meeting in Algeria]

The National Council declares in the name of God and in the name of the Arab Palestinian people the establishment of the State of Palestine on our Palestinian land, and its capital Holy Jerusalem. The State of Palestine is an Arabic state and is part of the Arabic nation and is a part of its tradition and culture.

[Questions relating to this are ]

1. When was the Palestinian state declared?

2. Name the capital of the Palestinian state.

Page 30

The declaration of the creation of the state of Palestine and its capital, Holy Jerusalem occurred in Algeria in 1988.

Page 32 [Ed.] Includes a significant portion of the Declaration of Independence of 1988….not further translated in this report at this time.

Page 64 entitled “Me and The Others” [talks of] Invention, Tolerance, Racism, Imitation*, Justice and Values… [Asks the student to]….. Explain the dangers of racism in the society. [ *which may be either positive or negative imitation.]

On Page 70… A picture illustrates a Moslem Imam and Christian Cleric shaking hands. [Ed. Nowhere is any reference made regarding tolerance towards the Jews]

Page 72 Question 1. “What is the position of the Islamic religion about the people of other revealed religions?

[Ed. NOTE. Connotation of “other revealed religions” is of Judaism and Christianity]

[Quotes a line from the Koran regarding the People of the Book]…….. “Don’t argue with the People of the Book unless it is for something good”

[Ed. NOTE: Although specifically mentioning Moslems and Christians, there is no mention of the Jews, in this textbook despite the fact that Islamic culture traditionally recognizes the three religions, Moslems, Christians and Jews as People of the Book. The item quoted from page 72 may be an oblique reference to Jews and possibly an entree to discussions in the classroom regarding the Jews and the policy of the Palestinians]

Page 73 Shows Picture A.[subtitled] “Release of a [ Palestinian] prisoner”

[Asks] Question 4: “What are the feelings of the person, after his release, and also when his motherland is liberated from the imperialists?”.

[continues] Question 5. “Mention a few of the movements and revolts that took place in Palestine and the Arabic motherland for freedom”

Page 75

Shows two columns with name of country and event.[and asks student to pair up country with appropriate event]. [Subtitle explains.]…”The Movement of Struggle for Freedom and Independence” Name of Country and…Event

Morocco Revolt of Saad Zaghlul in 1919 against the British Iraq Revolt of Azzadin al-Kassam against the British Palestine Revolt of Abd al-Karim al- Khitabi against the Spanish Algeria Revolt of Rashid al-Kilani against the British Egypt Revolt of Abd al-Kader al-Jazayiri against the French

[Ed. NOTE: The required answer is to pair “Palestine” with “Azzadin al-Kassam”. This is yet another glorified reference to Azzadin-al-Kassam who is the marytred hero of the “Hamas” Movement]]

EDITOR’S EPLIGOUE The 1993 Declaration of Principles of the Oslo process required both the Israeli government and the PLO to introduce a peace education program for both the Israeli and Palestinian populations. Seven years later, the peace curriculum is in its seventh year of operation in the Israel Ministry of Education.

Now that the PLO’s Palestinian Authority has finally introduced its own curriculum into its school system, there is no indication of peace education or reconciliation with the Israelis.

It is as if seven years of a peace process never happened.

END OF REPORT

The writer is a research psychiatrist who recently retired from active work at the Truman Center for Peace, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

Muhammad and Meira begin first grade

By
David Bedein
-

I work with a senior Palestinian TV journalist, Mustafa, who, like me, hits fifty this month and, like me, has a child, Muhammad, who begins first grade this week.

My Meira, also six, is excited to know that ever so soon she will learn how to read and write like her older siblings.

I witness the same excitement that I see on Meira’s face when I see Muhammad at his home in Ramallah, sitting with his older siblings.

Muhammad, who always runs to get me Kosher cookies when I come to work with his father on a fliming assignment, tells me that now that he’s in first grade he’ll be able to read the kosher label on the cookies.

Yet when I joined Mustafa this week to cover the beginning of the school year in both the Israeli and Palestinian first grades, the difference in the curriculum could not be more dissonant.

When I went to the curricula center in the Al Bira, the well kept middle class Palestinian suburb of Ramallah, the PA director of textbooks and printings, showed my Palestinian journalist and myself the new school books that have been published for the first time by the Palestinian Authority itself, with special grants received from the nations of the European community, beginning this year with brand new books for the first and sixth grade.

The other school books used by Palestinian school children, published for the PA in Egypt and in Jordan, are rampant with passages that prepare Palestinian children for war against the state of Israel, while describing the Jewish state in Nazi-like terms.

When the Israel Civil Administration had supervised the Palestinian school system until 1994, Israel had deleted all such passages. The PA simply reinstated them.

Many people had held out hope that the new school books published by the Palestinian Authority would contain passages of peace, unlike the others. No such luck. The history and geography books for both the first and sixth grades contain maps which portray all of Palestine, and numerous new passages that call on a new generation of Palestinian children to liberate all of Jerusalem and all of Palestine.

The contrast with what Israeli school children are learning is striking, since a peace curriculum has been required in the Israeli schools and Israeli educational Television since 1993.

As I browsed through the Palestinian school books, I could not help but think about the difference between Meira and Muhmmad.

Meira knows the Sesame Street song “let’s be friends” in Arabic from the program that he has been watching on Israeli educational TV since she is four, and she sometimes insists on singing it at the Shabbat table.

For her, the idea that she might make friends with Arab kids her own age has caught her imagination from a young age.

Yet Muhammad, at the same age, can’t stop singing the Biladi song of the PLO, the marching song which calls on every Palestinian youngster to take up arms against the Jews.

Such manipulation of children was not supposed to be part of the peace process.

After all, “peace education” was to be included in the second paragraph of the Oslo declaration of principles that was signed and issued by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jorgen Holst, and PLO leader Yassir Arafat back in September, 1993.

Yet almost seven years to the day from that declaration of principles, and despite numerous grass roots efforts at reconciliation, the official organs of the PLO and its administrative creation, the Palestinian Authority, have yet to issue their first statement in Arabic that calls for peace and reconciliation with Zionism and/or the state of Israel.

I inquired as to whether the Italian consul, Mr. Gianni Ghisi, who was responsible for organizing the funding of the European consuls to fund the new Palestinian textbooks, had even seen the new textbooks of the Palestinian Authority that he had funded.

Mr. Ghisi responded by saying that the PA would not let him see the books before they were published, despite an agreement that they had to review the texts before publication.

Recognizing that the PLO and the PA had instead substituted incitement for peace in their official rhetoric, the US, PLO and Israel had agreed at the Wye conference in October, 1998 to establish a continuing task force to address the subject of official PLO incitement to war.

That task force met constantly for more than a year, even into the Barak administration, which assumed the helm of Israeli leadership in July of 1999. Barak appointed Yaakov Erez, the editor of Maariv, to head Israel’s delegation to the task force on incitement.

The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, an agency that monitors school books on all sides of the middle east conflict, dispatched streams of material to the task force, and organized an unusual nonpartisan session of the Knesset in May to address the subject of PA education, which constantly depicts Israel as a Nazi entity that needs to be wiped off of the face of the earth.

The Center’s website can be accessed at: www.edume.org.

Following my visit to the PA curriculum center at AL Bira, where I had perused the new textbooks of the PA, I called Yaakov Erez to ask him if the textbooks had been seen and evaluated by the task force on incitement. Erez told me that he had resigned from the committee, and referred me to the Israel Foreign Ministry, who had assigned a senior staff member to continue Israeli representation at the committee.

When I got to the Israel foreign ministry and finally located the Foreign Ministry staffer who was assigned to the incitement committee, he informed me that the task force on incitement was no longer meeting. The reason given by the Israel Foreign Ministry staffer: Lack of interest demonstrated by the current US ambassador.

So there you have it.

Meira begins first grade knowing the Sesame Street song in Arabic by heart, wondering aloud if she will ever have an Arab friend, while Muhammad will be handed a map of the whole of Palestine on his first day of school, and inculcated to do everything that he can in his young life to make war on my children.

It was therefore not surprising that the New York Times, in a front page story on August 3, 2000, entitled “Palestinian Summer Camps Offer Games of War”, documented how the schoolyards of Palestinian educational institutions were used all summer to train 25,000 Palestinian school children in the art of war.

The writer, who now works as a journalist, has worked on issues of reconciliation and holds a master’s degree in community organization social work practice

Professional Review of the Palestinian Authority teachers guide

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Analysis of “REPORT: PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS”, compiled by the “Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace” CMIP); Research Director: Itamar Marcus. (CMIP is accessible at www.edume.org)

140 textbooks were reviewed by CMIP.

Of these, 36 were quoted in their Report.

From these 36 books, 7 are analysed here in greater detail for content.

(1). “Our Arabic Language for Fifth Grade. 22 items from this textbook appear in the report. The content within these twenty-two items includes:- – Need to liberate Jerusalem, Palestine or both by force from Jews: Appears 13 times -Jihad as duty/Muslims defeating enemy:Appears 6 times – Map of Palestine which includes whole of Israel:Appears 2 times – Importance of Martyrdom:Appears 8 times – Claims that various Israeli cities including Jerusalem are actually Palestine: Appears 5 times -Jews are referred to as “the thieving conquerors”: 1 time

* See, for example, page 27 of the Report:- “Why must we fight the Jews and drive them out of our land?”

(2). “Our Arabic Language for Seventh Grade, Part A.” 2 items from this textbook appear in the Report. The content within these two items include:- Need for force to liberate Palestine from the Jews.*Appears 1 time Claims that various Israeli cities are actually Palestine 1 time Concept of Palestinian land being stolen by the Jews: 1 time * See page 13 of the Report: “Subject for Composition: How are we going to liberate our stolen land? Make use of the following ideas: Arab unity, genuine faith in Allah, most modern weapons and ammunition, using oil and other precious natural resources as weapons in the battle for liberation.”

(3). “Our Arabic Language, Part 2 for Sixth Grade.” 4 items from this textbook appear in the Report. The content within these four items includes:- – Concept of Jihad. Appears 4 times – Martyrdom Appears 2 times See page 31 of the report:- To be learned by heart the poem “Mother of the Cities” in which BAGHDAD is to liberate Jaffa, Nablus and Shaar Hagai, (the entrance to Jerusalem)

(4). “Contemporary History of the Arabs and the World.” 4 items from this textbook appear in the report. The content within these four items includes: – Equating Zionism with racism, Nazism and Fascism:3 times – Comparing Zionism with Imperialism: 1 time

NOTE: stating that Zionism advocates elimination of the original inhabitants, whereas Imperialism has not gone as far as eliminating the original inhabitants. See page 9. – A so-called “Talmudic quote” stating that “We the Jews are God’s people on earth,to… marry into the various religions [to have] the final word in managing the countries [of the world]…… We should cheat [the non Jews] and arouse quarrels among them that they then fight each other… Non Jews are pigs who God created in the shape of man….that they be fit for service to the Jews…..” See page 8.

(5)“Modern Arab History and Contemporary Problems, Part 2, for Tenth Grade.” 13 items from this textbook appear in the report. The content within these four items includes: Expulsion of the Arabs by colonialist, aggressive Jews: 1 time Denial of Jewish nationhood, history and legitimacy: 4 times – False maps 1 time – Colonial powers use Israel 1 time

Note. The USA is helping Israel in its aggressive wars against the Arabs. See page 52 – Israel is occupied Palestine 1 time – Zionist Greed 1 time – Israeli or Jewish provocation 2 times

“Israel constitutes a military, economic, political and security provocation to the Arab world. The struggle has whittled away much of the economic capacity of the Arab world…. “ See page 38

** “Revolt of 1929: [started] when the Jews congregated at al-Buraq Wall {The WesternWall} and raised the Zionist flag over it as a provocation to the Arabs. This was an insult to Moslem worshippers and they attacked the Jews.” See page 38. – Israel transferring out water resources: 1 time

(6). “Our Arabic Language, Part 1, for Sixth Grade.” 11 items from this textbook appear in the report. The content within these eleven items includes:- – Need to fight, war, Jihad“ 3 times – The Jews as thieves (0f Palestine) 3 times – Martyrdom, including its glories and heroism. 4 times – the Zionist danger: 1 time. (7). “Reader and Literary Texts for Eighth Grade.” 13 items from this textbook appear in the Report. The content within these thirteen items includes:- – Advocates the need for Force to liberate Jerusalem: 8 times * &

*For example: from poem entitled “Bayonets and Torches” “….Without blood not even one centimeter will be liberated….”

The text then continues “The poem represents a reality lived by Palestinians. Explain this.” (See page 13 of the report ). – ** From poem, “Palestine” “My brothers! The oppressors [Israel-ed.] have overstepped the boundary, Therefore Jihad and sacrifice are a duty………let us gather for war with red blood and blazing fire……Oh, Palestine, the youth will redeem your land…” page 28 of the Report

The Jews as greedy, thieves, and making false claims to Jerusalem…………………… “ 2 times

The text asks “What can we do to rescue Jerusalem and to liberate it from the thieving enemy……..”

page 22 of the Report

– False claims of arson and a Zionist plot: 1 time – Occupiers set al-Aqsa Mosque on fire on 21.8.69…. a further chapter in the Zionist plot…to destroy all that is holy to Islam there…What can we do to rescue Jerusalem and to liberate it from the thieving enemy?”

Editor’s note: the fire was set by a non-Jew from Australia-ed. At his trial he was found to be of unsound mind, and was committed to a mental hospital.

The writer is a research psychiatrist who recently retired from active work at the Truman Center for Peace, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

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