The word “occupation” has been hijacked by the
Palestinians in order to spread even more hatred of the Jews around the world
and yet if we look at their education system, surely the word can be ascribed
to the minds of Palestinian children who are motivated at every level in their
schooling to maintain a state of war with Israel for the foreseeable future.
The analysis below should be absorbed by every
member of the UN and those countries financially supporting the production of
these text books.
===========================================
The new
school year kicked off in the Palestinian Authority last month, and it was
business as usual. The authors of this year's textbooks have made sure to keep
up their long tradition of Israel hatred – without, of course, mentioning
the name "Israel" in the textbooks.
Dr. Arnon Gross, a former senior news anchor for Israel Radio in
Arabic, researched the question of what has changed in the latest
Palestinian textbooks from previous editions. He conducted his research under
the sponsorship of the Center for Near East Policy Research, headed by David
Bedein.
After examining dozens of Palestinian textbooks for 11th-
and 12th-grade students in the PA education system, Gross says there has been a
"depressing" change for the worse in the new books.
Although some pundits in Israel say the day is coming when PA
President Mahmoud Abbas will leave his post and his life's work –
which includes, among other things, perfecting the rhetoric of
incitement – he will have bequeathed a written, dark legacy, embedded in
the minds of Palestinian adults. Gross discovered that in each instance in an
earlier textbook of even the slightest hint of deviation from the lexicon of
hatred toward Israel and Jews, the book's author later took pains to correct
the "mistake" by reverting back to the desired path of hatred.
This is true even in textbooks for the exact sciences. Is there
a connection, one may ask, between mathematics and the 1967 borders? But here
is the type of question that appears in a mathematics textbook: If a settler
shoots at a number of vehicles traveling at a certain speed and hits
one vehicle at a certain distance, how many vehicles will the settler hit if he
is aiming at 10 vehicles? Trying to answer this question is crucial to
understanding the historical incitement and hatred.
For comparison, Gross also analyzed textbooks in the Israeli
education system. In these books, he says, the authors write about peace as the
only solution to the conflict, and the Israeli political-diplomatic discourse
has included endless discussions over the signing of the Oslo Accords. On the
other hand, in the Palestinian textbooks, the Oslo Accords are mentioned only
in passing, and, in their version of history, Oslo was not the beginning
of a peace process, but perpetuated the conflict.
These textbooks are published (I happen to have one) by the PA Education
Ministry in Ramallah. These textbooks are also used in Palestinian schools in
east Jerusalem.
It is clear that the Israeli authorities are doing little to ban
these textbooks, and this issue is barely a blip on the radar of the Israeli
media. This is a shame. A new generation of Palestinians is being raised on
these texts, which are extinguishing even the smallest thought or chance of
co-existence with Israel – or perhaps that should be the "Zionist
entity."
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