Palestinian textbooks don't demonize Jews or Israel

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Question is: can they find some Israeli textbooks that don't demonize Arabs ?

Book review: how Israeli school textbooks teach kids to hate

I'm pretty sure you won't lose any sleep over that, though.

How quickly can getting caught be buried under a barrage of deflection? The OP study refutes your rhetorical question.

[sandinista! 1,816]

Asked and answered, and then when you don't like the answer, and being shown up as a hack who couldn't even be bothered to read the study you have a bunch of criticisms,of, then you deny you asked the answered question in the first place? Ok.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

How quickly can getting caught be buried under a barrage of deflection? The OP study refutes your rhetorical question.

Ready, why don't you actually read both studies, and don't neglect to take notice of exactly which books each study looked at, from which years, from which schools, etc. Then you might start to realize that they are quite different studies. It may even dawn on you that both studies may indeed accurately report their results within the scopes of their respective studies.

Elhanan-Peled is not the only scholar who has done studies on Israeli textbooks and found disturbing characterizations of Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general. Nathan Brown (already cited by Sandi) is another.

So... who are the folks who invented and perpetrated the fraud about the Palestinian textbooks "demonizing Jews and Israel" ? I wonder if you can guess

[ready4ONE 5,400]

If you two believe the OP study was a good one, why accept the results only regarding Palestinian textbooks?

Why bother trotting out said results only regarding Palestinian textbooks, then post opposite results from a different study?

Then proffer the conspiracy theory that bad Palestinian textbooks are yet another Israeli plot, forced upon the Israeli loving Hamas?

Honestly I don't believe either of you has ever posted anything which remotely criticized Palestinians. Not once. Not ever.

I responded to the one sided report in the OP. And the left handed response which was to point to a different study.

If you can find takers for your one sided Palestinian propaganda machine more power to you. But I'm not buying it.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

If you two believe the OP study was a good one, why accept the results only regarding Palestinian textbooks?

Why bother trotting out said results only regarding Palestinian textbooks, then post opposite results from a different study?

Then proffer the conspiracy theory that bad Palestinian textbooks are yet another Israeli plot, forced upon the Israeli loving Hamas?

Honestly I don't believe either of you has ever posted anything which remotely criticized Palestinians. Not once. Not ever.

I responded to the one sided report in the OP. And the left handed response which was to point to a different study.

If you can find takers for your one sided Palestinian propaganda machine more power to you. But I'm not buying it.

So you still haven’t bothered to read a single one of the studies mentioned in this thread - much less the one from the OP article - yet you’re still here arguing that only one can be “right” and all the others must be dismissed and shouldn't even be mentioned. Even though you already tried to cast doubt on the OP study as well.

You don't get it and you don't want to get it, Ready. All of these studies were conducted within certain parameters, and those parameters vary by study. That must be why you don't want to actually read any of the studies before making pronouncements about them - better for you to just ignore the fact that they're different so that you can keep insisting that they must come up with identical results. And never mind if your demand is completely illogical and unscientific...

All the studies cited here provide additional insight and breadth to the study in the OP topic, which busts a huge hole in key Israeli government propaganda about Palestinians that Israeli officials have cited over and over as a central justification for delaying final peace negotiations. This propaganda has been repeated for years, even though Israeli officials were well-aware of the fact that Israel has controlled which Palestinian textbooks are used in the occupied West Bank from 1967 to the present (and controlled those in Gaza as well from 1967 to 2006) - a fact which you try to dismiss as a "Hamas conspiracy theory."

So now, all that's left to back up the fraud (to which you keep referring as the “other side” of the story) is stuff like PMW (Palestinian Media Watch) clips - which seem to have been used to initially "break" the story about the Palestinian texts, and then to mass-market the scam.

No textbooks in the world have been subjected to the same kind of scrutiny that Palestinian textbooks have been subjected to. And nothing backs up PMW - scratch the surface of PMW claims, and you find they refer to Jordanian or Egyptian texts that the Israeli government forced Palestinians to keep using (a situation which Israel was apparently delighted to misrepresent in order to smear Palestinians.)

The study in the OP did look at some Israeli texts as well as Palestinian texts, but it admits it focused much more heavily on the Palestinian ones (there's an easy-to-read chart that details this information, which you might have even seen if you had bothered to read the study.)

However, Elhanan-Peled, Nathan Brown, Daniel Bar-Tal, Eli Podeh and Adir Cohen (who are all Israeli Jews, with the exception of Brown who is an American Jew) have all done extensive studies focusing on Israeli school textbooks as well as Israeli children’s storybooks, and they’ve documented multiple instances of delegitimization, racism, and negative stereotyping of Arabs. (Of course there are Israeli Arabs who have also studied what Israelis teach their kids, but I will not mention them here as you will automatically reject anything from a Palestinian source.)

This is the basic story that Israeli children (as well as supporters of Israel all over the world) are taught, and we have seen examples of the central themes repeated over and over on this board:

“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,” said Daniel Banvolegyi, a 17-year-old high school student in Jerusalem.

“We are accustomed to hearing the same thing, only one side of the story. They teach us that Israel became a state in 1948 and that the Arabs started a war. They don’t mention what happened to the Arabs—they never mention anything about refugees or Arabs having to leave their towns and homes,” said Banvolegyi.

Banvolegyi, who will be a high school senior this fall, and then will be drafted into the Israeli army next summer, said he argues with his friends about what he regards as racism in the textbooks and on the part of the teachers. He pointed out a worrisome example of how damaging the textbooks and prevailing attitudes can be.

“One kid told me he was angry because of something he read or discussed in school and that he felt like punching the first Arab he saw,” said Banvolegyi. “Instead of teaching tolerance and reconciliation, the books and some teachers’ attitudes are increasing hatred for Arabs.”

http://www.wrmea.org/wrmea-archives/179-washington-report-archives-1994-1999/september-1999/9609-israeli-textbooks-and-childrens-literature-promote-racism-and-hatred-toward-palestinians-and-arabs.html

By the way, your demand that I (or Sandi) should somehow be debating your points for you is absurd. Do your own work.

Edited February 13, 2013 by wife_of_mahmoud

[OriZ 3,157]

A new study funded by the US State Department and conducted by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land titled “Victims of our own narrative: the Portrayal of the Other in Israeli and Palestinian School Books” has declared that dehumanizing characteristics of the other are rare in Palestinian textbooks. This conclusion is surprising, given the large amount of evidence showing how ‘hatred of the other’ is rampantly spread throughout the Palestinian Authority schools.

Evidently, in order to reach these conclusions, scientific advisory panel member Dr. Arnon Groiss claims that 40 significant items that attest to incitement in the Palestinian textbooks were not included in the study. Additionally, Groiss had severe reservations about the methodology of the study. In fact, according to one scientific adviser panel member, who chose to remain anonymous, this document has the potential to be “another Goldstone report.” Indeed, like the Goldstone Report, this study was conducted by biased sources and thus came up with questionable results.

Israel Academia Monitor, an organization dedicated to monitoring anti-Israel academics, has asserted that Daniel Bar Tal, the Israeli researcher for this project, “helped organize a 2006 conference where Johan Galtung served as a keynote speaker, in spite of the latter’s well known anti-Semitism. Indeed, Bar-Tal sat on the podium next to Galtung who launched into his standard Israel- bashing routine. In 2012 Galtung alleged that the Mossad was linked to the recent massacre in Norway and quoted from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; he was roundly denounced and fired by the Swiss Academy of Peace. In spite of IAM calls, however, Bar-Tal refuses to condemn Galtung or apologize for letting the latter to engage in “nazification of Israel” at the 2006 conference.”

Given that Israel Academia Monitor has documented the anti-Israel radicalism of Daniel Bar Tal, the fact that his conclusions aren’t based in reality shouldn’t be surprising. The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, which published over 20 studies on how Middle Eastern school textbooks portray the other in order to examine whether they uphold international standards set by UNESCO, has asserted, “Our own study of Palestinian and Israeli textbooks, has found that while Israeli state-approved textbooks include a respectful depiction of Muslim, Arab and Palestinian history narratives, Palestinian textbooks present no such parallels. […] The situation regarding the attitude towards the “other” remains a significant problem, and sadly continues to deteriorate.”

Thus, given this, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education raised “some questions, mainly regarding the council report’s methodology and the texts and quotes omitted from its analysis.” They found it “difficult to reconcile the wide gap observed between the quotes mentioned in the report and the conclusions derived from them. The report’s overall “forgiving” nature regarding the textbooks approved by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, which still teach negation of the Israeli other and history, remains a major source of concern.”

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education asserted, “According to our several studies on Israeli and Arab textbooks as well as the quotes given in the above mentioned report, it is clear that the Israeli education system and its educational world view cannot be compared with those of the Palestinian education system. While Israeli education teaches peace and recognizes the national or religious other, Palestinian textbooks emphasize a message of non-acceptance and justify fight and struggle.”

According to the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, Palestinian school textbooks routinely don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist under any borders, while several Israeli textbooks do in fact show Palestinian cities either based on the green line or based on the areas presently under Palestinian control due to the Oslo Agreements. In addition to denying Israel’s right to exist under any borders, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education claims that Palestinian school textbooks dehumanize Jews and Israel, present history in a biased manner, encourage violence, and refrains from mentioning atrocities committed against the Jewish people, such as the Holocaust, massacres where Arabs killed Jews, or the suffering of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. To the contrary, Israeli textbooks do mention Palestinian suffering.

The list of examples of Palestinian textbooks dehumanizing the other is countless. Yet, just to give one the flavor of the sort of things Palestinian youngsters learn, in an exercise given to Palestinian ninth graders, students are asked to relate to the following two sentences: “Morning of glory and red redemption, nourished by the blood of martyrs” and “hope for the liberation of Palestine.” Another Palestinian text given to eighth graders reads, “Today’s Muslim countries need urgently jihad and jihad fighters in order to liberate the robbed land and to get rid of the robbing Jews from the robbed lands in Palestine and in the Levant.” Nevertheless, despite these facts, a US State Department funded study found that dehumanizing characteristics are rare in Palestinian textbooks.

http://unitedwithisrael.org/palestinian-textbooks-do-promote-violence/

Being I did not go to school in Palestine I can't speak first hand about their textbooks. But I can say something very few people in this forum can, and that's that I went to school in Israel. And, I can tell you from first hand experience that(at least in my school) Israeli textbooks are fair and balanced.

[sandinista! 1,816]

I went to school in the US, and let me tell you, it's a whole big country that uses a whole bunch of different textbooks across the country, and my experience in Oregon schools both public and private did not magically make me an expert on textbooks in Idaho, Utah or Texas. ie, who gives a ####### about pointless anecdotes?

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

http://unitedwithisrael.org/palestinian-textbooks-do-promote-violence/

Being I did not go to school in Palestine I can't speak first hand about their textbooks. But I can say something very few people in this forum can, and that's that I went to school in Israel. And, I can tell you from first hand experience that(at least in my school) Israeli textbooks are fair and balanced.

Evidently, you also think "United With Israel" is fair and balanced

Your UWI smear campaign doesn't even specify the titles of texts it makes claims about, or the page numbers upon which the offending material allegedly appears, as did all the other studies. It doesn't even name the academics who carried out these alleged studies. Of course, this would be a handy device for liars and other frauds to avoid cross-checks.

But anyone can look this stuff up. "Israel Academia Monitor" is a subsidiary of "Campus Watch," which tries to shut down criticism of Israeli policies on US college campuses. It was founded by Daniel Pipes, as yet another subsidiary of Pipes' Middle East Forum.

"The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education" (formerly known as "The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace" or CMIP) gets its "studies" from Itamar Marcus and PMW. Sandinista has already alluded to the problems with CMIP's so-called "studies," but here is an expansion on that:

Then where had the persistent reports of incitement come from? A little digging turned up the ultimate source: an organization calling itself the “Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace” (CMIP). The organization’s publications constituted virtually the only source in English—and certainly the most widely quoted one—on the Palestinian textbooks.

As I dug a little more, I found a series of problems with the organization’s reports. Their method was to follow harsh criticisms with quotation after quotation purporting to prove a point. However, a close reading revealed that many quotations did not support the strong charges. And those that did came not from the 1994 books that I had read but from the Jordanian and Egyptian books that the PA was working to replace. Criticizing the PA for interim use of the books was certainly fair. But the CMIP neglected to mention that the Israeli government distributed the same books in East Jerusalem schools while it refused to distribute the innocuous 1994 “National Education” supplements (because they were clearly written by the PA meaning that their use might have undermined Israeli claims to sovereignty in all of the city). Nor did the report mention the dramatic changes in the supplementary 1994 books. Similarly ignored was a richly documented Palestinian project to devise its new curriculum. A 600-page official report mercilessly criticizing existing educational practices had been published in 1996. In 1997, the Palestinian legislature and cabinet approved the Ministry of Education’s plan—based partly on the 1996 report—to write the new curriculum. Neither document contained anything anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic, so the CMIP showed no interest.

In short, the CMIP reports read as if they were written by a ruthless prosecuting attorney anxious for a conviction at any cost. I realized from the research of Israeli academics (and also from my own children’s experience in an Israeli school for a year) that a hostile and highly selective report on Israeli education might produce a similarly misleading result. Israeli educators in the secular schools have begun an effort to revamp their textbooks to rid them of stereotypes and incendiary material. The fact that the effort has not been completed and that religious schools have shown far less enthusiasm for the project would have left enough selections for a Palestinian zealot to compile quite a report. Since almost all Israeli maps mark no border between the West Bank and Gaza, such a merciless critic might be able to claim (inaccurately) that Israelis are unwilling to consider territorial compromise. Thankfully, no such report has been written. (And when the CMIP finally issued its own report on Israeli textbooks, the organization showed a hitherto hidden ability stress context and be judicious and understanding, even when discovering some fairly distasteful material.)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Monitoring_the_Impact_of_Peace

All of these organizations exist for one reason: to promote right-wing Israeli government/AIPAC objectives, and to smear critics of the Israeli occupation or US foreign policy in regard to Israel. And yet you continue to brandish their garbage as if they were some kind of reputable sources.

Apparently, Israel needs all of these various and sundry organizations and operatives (which all track back to the very same small group of people) for astro-turfing and especially to "keep the money coming" - in the form of US taxpayer money funneled to various Israeli pet projects.

Once again, this is what you think is "fair and balanced."

Edited February 15, 2013 by wife_of_mahmoud