Art, Music & Culture
Book review: how Israeli school textbooks teach kids to hate
Asa Winstanley
London
The Electronic Intifada
11 August 2012
At the height of Israel’s brutal 2008-09 assault on the Gaza Strip, then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni claimed that “Palestinians teach their children to hate us and we teach love thy neighbor” (232).
The first part of this myth is propagated by people like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and more recently Newt Gingrich, who both spread the baseless claim that Palestinian schoolbooks teach anti-Semitism. This calumny originated with anti-Palestinian propagandandists such as Israeli settler Itamar Marcus and his “Palestinian Media Watch.”
In an important new book, Palestine in Israeli School Books, Israeli language and education professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan buries the second part of Livni’s myth once and for all.
Peled-Elhanan examines 17 Israeli school textbooks on history, geography and civic studies. Her conclusions are an indictment of the Israeli system of indoctrination and its cultivation of anti-Arab racism from an early age: “The books studied here harness the past to the benefit of the … Israeli policy of expansion, whether they were published during leftist or right-wing [education] ministries” (224).
She goes into great detail, examining and exposing the sometimes complex and subtle ways this is achieved. Her expertise in semiotics (the study of signs and symbols) comes to the fore.
Inculcation of anti-Palestinian ideology in the minds of Israel’s youth is achieved in the books through the use of exclusion and absence: “none of the textbooks studied here includes, whether verbally or visually, any positive cultural or social aspect of Palestinian life-world: neither literature nor poetry, neither history nor agriculture, neither art nor architecture, neither customs nor traditions are ever mentioned” (49).
Palestinians marginalized, demonized by Israeli textbooks
On the occasions Palestinians (including Palestinian citizens of Israel) are mentioned, it is in an overwhelmingly negative, Orientalist and demeaning light: “all [the books] represent [Palestinians] in racist icons or demeaning classificatory images such as terrorists, refugees and primitive farmers — the three ‘problems’ they constitute for Israel” (49).
“For example in MTII [Modern Times II, a 1999 history text book] there are only two photographs of Palestinians, one of face-covered Palestinian children throwing stones ‘at our forces’ … [t]he other photograph is of ‘refugees’ … placed in a nameless street” (72).
This what Peled-Elhanan terms “strategies of negative representation.” She explains that “Palestinians are often referred to as ‘the Palestinian problem.’” While this expression is even used by writers considered “progressive,” the term “was salient in the ultra-right-wing ideology and propaganda of Meir Kahane,” the late Israeli politician and rabbi who openly called for the Palestinians to be expelled. Peled-Elhanan finds this disturbing, coming as it does “only 60 years after the Jews were called ‘The Jewish Problem’ ” (65).
She reprints examples of the crude Orientalist cartoon representations of Arabs, “imported into Israeli school book [sic] from European illustrations of books such as The Arabian Nights” (74). Arab men stand, dressed in Oriental garb, often riding camels. The cartoons of Arab women show them seated submissively, dressed in traditional outfits. Meanwhile, two Israelis on the same page are “depicted as a ‘normal’ — though caricaturistic — Western couple, unmarked by any ‘Jewish’ or ‘other’ object-signs” (110-11). The message is clear: Arabs do not belong here with “us.”
Justifications for massacre
Peled-Elhanan concludes: “The books studied here present Israeli-Jewish culture as superior to the Arab-Palestinian one, Israeli-Jewish concepts of progress as superior to Palestinian-Arab way of life and Israeli-Jewish behavior as aligning with universal values” (230).
While Israeli war crimes are not entirely ignored, the textbooks do their best to downplay or justify massacres and ethnic cleansing. “[T]he Israeli version of events are stated as objective facts, while the Palestinian-Arab versions are stated as possibility, realized in openings such as ‘According to the Arab version’ … [or] ‘Dier [sic.] Yassin became a myth in the Palestinian narrative … a horrifying negative image of the Jewish conqueror in the eyes of Israel’s Arabs’ ” (50-1).
Deir Yassin was a Palestinian village where, in 1948, a notorious massacre of around 100 persons by terrorists from the Zionist militas Irgun, Lehi and Hagana took place. Yet note in the example above that is is only the negative image of Israel that is “horrifying.” The massacre of unarmed men, women and children is otherwise not a cause for concern.
Israeli education going backwards
With reference to previous studies of Israeli school textbooks, Peled-Elhanan finds that, despite some signs of improvement in the 1990s, the more recent books she examined have if anything got worse. The issue of the Nakba, the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, is for the most part not ignored, but instead justified.
For example, in all the books mentioning Deir Yassin, the massacre is justified because: “the slaughter of friendly Palestinians brought about the flight of other Palestinians which enabled the establishment of a coherent Jewish state” — a result so self-evidently good it doesn’t need explaining (178).
Contrary to the hope of previous studies “for ‘the appearance of a new narrative in [Israeli] history textbooks’ … some of the most recent school books (2003-09) regress to the ‘first generation’ [1950s] accounts — when archival information was less accessible — and are, like them ‘replete with bias, prejudice, errors, [and] misrepresentations’ ” (228).
There is some sloppy editing here, and the academic jargon at times slips into the realm of mystifying. But those quibbles aside, Peled-Elhanan’s book is the definitive account of just how Israeli schoolchildren are brainwashed by the state and society into hatred and contempt of Palestinians and Arabs, immediately before the time they are due to enter the army as young conscripts.
Asa Winstanley is a journalist from London who has lived and work in occupied Palestine. His website is: http://www.winstanleys.org.
in other words, as seen in the war on terror, often the terrorist is created by the very people who claim to be fighting against the terrorist. think about it... we have always been at war with.....
from prison planet:
The ownership of radical Islamists groups by the shadow governments in the U.S., Israel and England is similar to the ownership of the Tea Party by the Koch brothers and other right-wing oligarchs, who jumped on a fast-moving train and are leading it on a path to self-destruction.
In other words, there was an organic Islamic movement against Western imperialism in countries like Iran and Egypt that grew out of the roots of the culture without Western help, but it was small and ineffective. Over the years, the main reason why this anti-democratic movement has gained power and influence among the Muslim population is because it is getting a lot of covert funding and support from the West and Israel.
The historical record shows America and Israel have funded, armed, and used radical Islamist groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in order to counterbalance the rise of nationalist movements as well as to advance their geopolitical aims and political narrative in the Middle East.
America and Israel have even created fake transnational Islamist groups like Al-Qaeda to control the message getting out of the Middle East and direct Muslims towards supporting Islamic extremism and perpetual warfare with the West.
The channeling of the creative energies of the Middle East by America also includes the financial and diplomatic support of color revolutions and popular uprisings that pose no real threat to the new world order power structure and the Western central banking dictatorship.
This information is no secret. What I am saying is nothing new or controversial. It is a fifth grade understanding of the historical situation. The only place where this important information is suppressed is in the Western establishment media that is dominated by Zionists and anti-democratic Western intelligence agencies.
Renowned Middle East expert and former BBC presenter Alan Hart spoke about the Western media’s complicity in the cover-up of the truth about 9/11 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on September 11, 2011 in Freiburg, Germany. Hart said:
The truth of history is needed to EMPOWER the citizens of the Western nations to make their democracies work for justice for the Palestinians and peace for all. Without this empowerment there is not in my view a snowball’s chance in hell of justice for the Palestinians and peace for all; and the cancer the conflict is will eventually consume us all.
Hart emphasized the lack of credible information and analysis in the Western media about the false flag 9/11 attacks and other truths that have the potential of changing the destiny of the Middle East and the world if they are openly discussed in the media.
Hart also says that Western citizens, and, above all, Americans, “have been conditioned by Zionist propaganda to believe a version of history which simply is not true.”
This version of history states that; 1) Israel is the perpetual victim of Palestinian violence; 2) There is a powerful Islamist movement in the world that threatens America and the West with destruction; 3) Al-Qaeda, which represents one arm of the Islamist movement, was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and is planning more terrorist attacks against America; 4) There can be no peace between the Muslim nations of the Middle East, Israel, and America until all Islamic terrorists are killed and their Jihad against the West is destroyed; and 5) Iran is hell-bent on starting World War III and wiping Israel off the map.
All the five points above are big lies. Israel is not the victim, there is no Islamic Jihad against the West, 9/11 was not done by Al-Qaeda, peace can be established if the full truth is understood by all, and Iran did not say it will attack Israel with nuclear weapons.
The history of our times has been so greatly manipulated and twisted that we do not live in a real world. Our lives are lies. We live in a fantasy world, where political leaders with two faces and double tongues rule our thoughts and control our perceptions.
Our civilization is schizophrenic, and our societal conversation is driven largely by the godlike power of the mass media. This media has created a culture of madness and death. We have let dangerous psychopaths like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Benjamin Netanyahu run amok, instead of hanging them as war criminals and state terrorists.
I think Ron Paul expressed our times very poetically on the House Floor on May 19, 2009, when he said, “We have broken from reality–a psychotic Nation. Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom.” Dr. Paul started off the speech with even greater honesty and gravitas, saying:
“Could it all be a bad dream, or a nightmare? Is it my imagination, or have we lost our minds? It’s surreal; it’s just not believable. A grand absurdity; a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions; based on preposterous notions; and on ideas whose time should never have come; simplicity grossly distorted and complicated; insanity passed off as logic; grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff; evil described as virtue; ignorance pawned off as wisdom; destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism; violence, the tool of change; preventive wars used as the road to peace”
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
The only way out of this madness is through truth, clarity and understanding. We have to ask ourselves how did we get here, and demand answers from the monstrous designers of the global road map who are bringing our world to the brink of destruction.
The five facts that are highlighted below can help each of us mentally escape from history’s sickening fictions, regain clarity, and rejoin reality.
1. Israel launched the radical Hamas movement in Palestine in the 1970s “as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” according to Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies, who is quoted in Richard Sale’s June 2002 article for United Press International called, ‘Hamas history tied to Israel.’
Sale also quoted a high-level CIA officer, who said that Israel’s backing of Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative.”
Israel bankrolled Hamas for both strategic and political reasons. The most obvious benefit is international reputation and credit. A radical and uncompromising enemy in charge of Palestine’s politics allows Israel’s hardline leaders to manipulate their people and the world without appearing that they are the bad guys.
There is an undeniable logic to Israel’s longstanding support of Islamic fundamentalists. It is a twisted move to create your own monster if you desire peace, but if you desire war and you have the tools to slay your monster, why not create it?
Numerous Middle East experts, intelligence officials, journalists and intellectuals have brought attention to the crazy fact that Israeli and Western intelligence have funded the Jihadist movement as a way to prevent secular, moderate and nationalist leaders from becoming dominant in the region. Back in February, when protests in the Middle East started flaring up, Noam Chomsky wrote:
The general threat has always been independence. In the Arab world, the United States and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.
In many ways, Islamism is Zionism’s twisted sister. Both are rotten to the core and they will receive a harsh verdict from history.
2. The overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and MI6 was assisted by Iran’s leading Islamic fundamentalist at the time, Abol-Ghasem Kashani, who mentored Iran’s future leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Iran’s treacherous Mullahs suppress the fact that they collaborated with the CIA and MI6 and stabbed Iran’s popular leader in the back in 1953. One of the Islamic groups that was involved called Fadaian Islam was a known terrorist group that was responsible for many murders and failed assassination attempts, including an attempt on Mosaddeq’s life.
Read the article “Why Iranian Mullahs helped the US install the Shah and then turned against him?” by Masoud Kazemzadeh, an associate professor of Political Science at Sam Houston State University in Texas.
3. The U.S. funded the Afghan mujahideen to draw in the Soviet Union into Afghanistan and defeat it. This fact alone is not disturbing, it is official power-politics history and a smart move by the U.S. empire.
But the U.S. empire did not abandon its support for terrorist Muslim guerrillas after the fall of the Soviet Union. In fact, the U.S. expanded its training and funding of Islamic fundamentalists in the 1990s, as a way to create a new foreign enemy to scare the American people and justify the massive military budget.
It is an uncontroversial historical fact that Osama Bin Laden is a creature of the Central Intelligence Agency. And so is radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki, who was invited to the Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks for tea and brunch.
Why was the Pentagon and CIA so friendly with its bitter enemies – Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al Awlaki? The only logical answer is that they were never enemies. The CIA nurtured these guys behind the scenes but gave them pseudo-historical personalities and told them to call for violent Jihad against the West in order to justify the illegal conquest of the Middle East by the Pentagon and Israel.
4. There is no such thing as a radical Islamist group called Al-Qaeda that is hell-bent on destroying America and Western civilization. That is a grand myth that was deliberately created by the shadow governments in America, Israel and England.
Al-Qaeda does not exist as it is presented by the establishment media. In Arabic Al-Qaeda means the base, as in the base of Muslim patsies for the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies to use in covert state terror attacks against the people of the West like 9/11 and 7/7 as well as against nations in the Middle East that oppose Western domination.
I’ll put it another way. Imagine there is a big tent with several recruiting centers inside that have tables with pamphlets and signs that read “Looking For Jihadi Terrorist, Sign Up Here.” In that tent the biggest recruitment groups looking for Jihadist terrorists are not the Muslim Brotherhood or the Islamic Republic of Iran but the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and Saudi intelligence.
In other words, Western intelligence agencies have cornered the market in the terrorism trade. They own all the top assets such as Osama Bin Laden, Anwar al Awlaki, and many others who are not famous but have a lot of power and prestige with useful Muslim idiots that follow the gospel of Jihad.
Radical Islam is a global brand and the marketing gurus behind that brand are working deep inside the high-rise offices of the Mossad, CIA, and MI6.
For more information on this topic, read the following articles, “11 Reasons Why The Threat From Al-Qaeda is Not Real,” and, “Al-Qaeda 100% Pentagon Run.”
5. The 9/11 attacks, which is seen as the biggest military and propaganda victory by Radical Islam against the West, was orchestrated by the shadow governments in Washington and Tel Aviv. This is a fact of history, backed by scientific evidence, not a crazy conspiracy theory.
Al-Qaeda can claim all it wants that it was behind the 9/11 attacks and not a traitorous gang in Washington, but making claims against the force of truth and facts is preposterous. Al-Qaeda’s rejection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s UN speech in which he blamed Washington for 9/11 is laughable.
It is obvious that the CIA directs and controls Al-Qaeda’s online magazine, “Inspire,” and that Al-Qaeda is nothing more than a media front group that acts as a propaganda arm for the U.S. government.
They shake your hand and they smile
And they buy you a drink
They say we'll be your friends
We'll stick with you till the end
Ah but everybody's only
Looking out for themselves
And you say well who can you trust
I'll tell you it's just
Nobody else's money -
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