In Israeli textbooks, the Palestinians are all but invisible
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Or Kashti is the education analyst for Haaretz Newspaper.
Here he writes about a recent study which shows that the occupation barely figures in Israeli school textbooks. The Bible is used as a historical source and as a moral justification for Jewish occupation of the West bank (“Judea and Samaria”) today. But it isn’t called occupation.
In most textbooks says Prof Avner Ben-Amos of Tel-Aviv University, “the Jewish control and the Palestinians’ inferior status appear as a natural, self-evident situation that one doesn’t have to think about.”
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Fri 19 Jun 2020. Read the original here.
In Israeli textbooks, the Palestinians are all but invisible
A study by Avner Ben-Amos of Tel Aviv University shows that the occupation is rarely mentioned in history, civics or geography textbooks
Loading article text…
Institutional racism?
Looks like that to me.
These comments about the ‘non-existence’ of Palestinians in Israeli text books ties in with the fact that on roads in the occupied West Bank, there are no signposts to Palestinian towns & villages (although Palestinian cities are indicated), but the illegal settlements are all very clearly & frequently signposted. The Israeli government’s future intentions couldn’t be clearer.
As “We Believe in Israel” circulates a petition to make what little aid is still available to the Palestinians conditional on their worshipping the Israeli state – a touch of censorship here? – we also read of that selfsame state censoring its own archives, particularly in relation to the nakba (targeting even extreme Zionist historians like Benny Morris, whose gripe against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is that it didn’t go far enough).
Lots of work here for the new CEO of Index on Censorship, quite apart from combatting the McCarthyite application of the already McCarthyite IHRA ‘definition’ of antisemitism….
So get stuck in, Ms Smeeth, if you are genuinely opposed to censorship…
Jews for Justice for Palestinians has carried earlier reports on bias in Israeli textbooks. See, from 2013, Israeli textbooks also obliterate’the other’, with links to other articles.