The Real Problem with
Palestinian and Israeli Schoolbooks:
A Response to IPCRI's Statement of March 23, 2008
By Dr. Yohanan Manor
April 2008
The Israel-Palestine Center
for Research and Information (IPCRI) lately issued a statement
claiming that the main problem regarding the Palestinian
and Israeli schoolbooks "is the almost total lack of
any reference in each side's text books to the other side.
Israelis and Palestinians learn almost nothing about each
other. This intentional lack of reference is an indication
of the fact that both sides have yet to come to terms with
the political and national existence of the other."
This statement is factually incorrect since both the Palestinian and the
Israeli textbooks do actually refer to each other. The real
problem is in which terms. In this respect the Palestinian
approach is radically different from the Israeli one.
It is true that there is still much to be done in order to enhance peace
education in Israeli schoolbooks. But focusing on this sideline
issue in order to find a way to put the Palestinian schoolbooks
on a par with the Israeli ones is highly misleading.
We in the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School
Education (formerly the Center for Monitoring the Impact
of Peace – CMIP) can point to other, more crucial, problems
in the said textbooks.
The Palestinian textbooks deny any legitimacy to the Jews and their national
movement in Palestine.
They demonize them, glorify jihad and martyrdom and advocate
a violent struggle for the liberation of Palestine
which by no means is confined to the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli schoolbooks, by contrast, do actually refer to the Palestinians
and present them as a people whose national movement is in
conflict with the national movement of the Jews, a conflict
that should be solved by a territorial compromise between
the two nations.
Measuring Israeli and Palestinian school textbooks by different criteria – lenient
for Palestinian books and rigid for Israeli ones in order
to come out with similar impression – is not professional
work. The criteria should be the same for all. Having accomplished
its overall assessment of the PA seven-year schoolbook publishing
operation, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural
Tolerance in School Education is about to update its reports
on Israeli textbooks and then compare both according to the
same criteria, draw its final conclusions and submit its
recommendations regarding their improvement.
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