Palestinian textbook case closed, but more trumped-up Israeli charges expected

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://972mag.com/palestinian-textbook-case-closed-but-more-trumped-up-israeli-charges-expected/65470/

This week’s publication of a U.S.-funded study cleared the Palestinians of charges that their schoolbooks ‘demonize’ Israel. This was not, however, the first hoop they’ve been made to jump through, and it won’t be the last.

---

So it is with the Palestinian textbooks. All this supposed distress over what the Palestinians are teaching their children about Israel and the Jews, this insistence that they clean up their textbooks as a condition for “peace” - it’s another one of the old “stop Oslo” ploys of the Israeli and American Jewish right. A bunch of right-wing propagandists like Itamar Marcus and Palestinian Media Watch have been harping on all this “demonization” in Palestinian textbooks, and the intended effect, of course, has been to discredit Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, to blacken the Palestinians’ name and thus make it harder for them to get Israel off their neck. And that’s what’s happened – right-wing Zionists everywhere who of course don’t know a word of Arabic have been hammering away at the Palestinian textbooks for nearly two decades, saying there can be no peace until those books are scrubbed good and thorough. Do right-wing Zionists want peace? No, they want the Palestinians to keep scrubbing.

[oberliner]

1. The most depsicable of all the writers at 972mag

Larry Derfner - defender of Greta Berlin to the bitter end.

That anyone could publish anything this man writes after that shameful display is beyond understanding.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

3. Yeah, tis funny.

No matter what the source of criticism of Israel the person doing the criticism is usually the "most despicable&quot sp) of all humans ever created. Then the source of the article is usually attacked.

Never is the story given any measure of response with regard to what Israel does.

But what am I to expect with the crew I am dealing with?

[azurnoir]

2. Study at odds with years of research on incitement in Palestinian textbooks

A strikingly balanced report comparing prejudices in Israeli and Palestinian school textbooks was published this week, raising questions about the states of each ethnic educational system and public perceptions about the two peoples.

The study, entitled “Victims of our own Narratives” and initially funded by a grant from the U.S. State Department, concluded that both Israeli and Palestinian textbooks contain negative references toward “the other side,” despite the fact that the research itself demonstrated that negative references to “the other side” were much more prevalent in Palestinian textbooks than Israeli ones.

It is the conclusions of the study, not the research, that have been widely distributed. Those conclusions are at odds with the longtime assertion by Israelis that Palestinian textbooks are inciteful.

“The report creates a dangerous moral relativism by concluding a completely false equivalence between Israeli and Palestinian textbooks,” Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, director general of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, told JNS.org.

http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2013/2/6/study-at-odds-with-years-of-research-on-incitement-in-palest.html

interesting and rather IMO revealing that the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs would be speaking on this matter rather than the Minister of Education

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

4. I for one would actually like to see what the offending passages are

in each instance, Palestinians and Israeli, to see where the truth is.

[azurnoir]

8. I too am curious

maybe 'someone' will oblige us with a MEMRI/PalWatch translation, because those just can't be beat

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

9. Oh, behave.

Last edited Tue Feb 12, 2013, 11:32 PM - Edit history (2)

I'm presently reading the wonderful opinion piece that shira posted in response to the article.

It's so long that the author must have started writing it as soon as he heard there was going to be a study on this subject.

It's definitely full of nuts and berries: lots of roughage.

Speaking of which...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=31100

[azurnoir]

22. well as to the nuts and berries

gotta be regular ya know

[Scurrilous]

5. You could become ‘another Goldstone’ — friendly warning to Yale prof

Full title: You could become ‘another Goldstone’ — friendly warning to Yale prof whose study cleared Palestinian textbooks of demonization charge

<snip>

"An important new study funded by the State Department that exonerates Palestinian textbooks of demonizing Jews has been rejected by Israel, because it contradicts a central propaganda point. And now the State Department and the Reform Jewish leadership seem to be walking away from the study!

According to a long report in the Forward by Naomi Zeveloff and Nathan Jeffay, the study is now an "orphan." First the Israelis sandbagged the study:

The harshest criticism, however, has come from the Israeli government. In a press release issued before the study went public, the Ministry of Education attacked the very concept of examining both sides’ textbooks in tandem.

Then once the Israeli government attacked the report, the Israeli body that commissioned the study disavowed it--

it was the Israeli government’s fierce response that forced the Chief Rabbinate, a member of the council (of religious institutions that had commissioned the study), to walk away from the study.

And once the Israelis trashed the study, even the Americans associated with it seem to have backed away. In particular notice the weaseling by the Reform Jewish leadership:

The U.S. State Department, which fully funded the study, has refused to comment on it. And the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, which sent out a press release February 5 announcing that it would host a Washington rollout for the study, has now called that release’s distribution an accident.

Bruce Wexler is the Yale psychiatry professor who led the study--along with Israeli and Palestinian counterparts. And Wexler, who is Jewish, has been warned that he could be excommunicated for his role in the study, just as Richard Goldstone was."

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/02/supporters-palestinian-demonization.html

[Jefferson23]

7. Thanks.

K&R

[shira]

15. The study is so absurd, people once associated with it are backing off...

Last edited Wed Feb 13, 2013, 09:14 PM - Edit history (1)

Can't blame them.

It's indefensible.

But what the hell were they thinking before the findings were released? Appears they were all duped, useful idiots....

[shira]

6. Giving incitement the stamp of approval

Let’s leave aside the professor’s political opinions for the moment and examine the research itself. I obtained memos written by two members of the study’s Scientific Advisory Panel, Professors Amnon Groiss and Elihu Richter. While the research was still ongoing, these two scholars highlighted substantial methodological flaws and the “omission of more than forty significant texts” that appear in Palestinian school books. To be clear, the omitted texts are precisely those that contain the highest degrees of incitement (“invading snakes”; “the enemies that split open women’s bellies” etc. etc.) The demand that these texts be included was turned down with the excuse that it was not clear that the words referred to Israelis or Jews. Really, how could we not have realized that the Palestinians were referring to the Swedes? You see the response and can’t believe your eyes.

In identifying positive examples of education regarding the other, the study cites a reference in a Palestinian text to the Sabbath. The only problem is that this is actually a negative reference, meant to present the Jews as fanatics who are unwilling to heal the sick on the Sabbath (as opposed to Jesus, who is prepared to heal the sick on the Day of Rest.) Not only is this portrayal false (saving lives trumps the prohibitions against work on the Sabbath, and Jewish law evolved to include permitting violations of the Sabbath to save non-Jews as well), but it is presented as a positive reference to Judaism. The study’s conclusions follow accordingly. There is no incitement...

...And it only gets worse. When discussing negative portrayals of the “Other,” the study includes the mere mention in Israeli textbooks of the Farhud – the 1941 pogrom against Iraqi Jews – and the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics as examples of negative portrayals of the Arab side. What exactly are the study’s authors trying to say? That it is forbidden to mention these events? Or perhaps the books should be rewritten to state that “Muslim freedom fighters succeeded in striking Jewish criminals in Baghdad and Munich”? According to this logic, perhaps it should be forbidden to learn about the Nazis, since this creates a negative image of the Germans.

The Israeli textbooks, as the study notes, do mention the 1948 massacre by the Irgun militia at the Arab village of Deir Yassin (but not the majority of the pogroms that were carried out against Jews in Arab lands). In contrast, there is not a single instance of self-criticism on the Palestinian side. Not even of the Mufti Amin al-Husseini’s support for the Nazis. There is also no mention of the fact that when the Palestinian texts refer to bringing an end to the occupation, they mean, almost without exception, the occupation of ‘Greater Palestine’ from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Or to put it even more clearly: bringing an end to the State of Israel.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/giving-incitement-the-stamp-of-approval/

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

10. Thank you shira for the showcasing how ready you are to Goldstone anybody and anything

that might make the Palestinians look less evil than you want them to. My Hat is off as well to Ben-Dror Yemini who seems to have an axe to grind with the study and Professor Daniel Bar-Tal.

My only question was if Ben-Dror Yemini plans to come out with an companion hit piece on Professor Bruce Wexler...possibly on an anti-Semitic slant?


If you can dig it up that kind of crap then I am sure you will post it. Anything to help out the home team.

[oberliner]

11. "Anything to help out the home team."

Funny to see you make a remark like that.

By the way, have you read the actual report on the textbooks or just the 972mag summary?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

12. "Funny to see you make a remark like that."

There's nothing funny about it. It's truthful. It just seems like some will do anything to destroy any report painting the Palestinians not in a great or good light but just that they don't hate as much as we're told that they hate.

I don't find it funny that some have to revert to hatchet Goldstoning in order to smear a three year study...with more opinion pieces no less.

But yeah, I guess that opinion pieces trump research.


So now that you've done the usual hatchet on 972mag do you have anything wothwhile to say?

[shira]

14. What do you make of the specific examples Ben Dror Yemini cited?

Like...

1) Palestinian 'positive' depiction of the Jews' Sabbath
2) Israeli negative depiction of Iraqi pogrom and Munich athletes killed

You don't see any problems there?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

16. Ben Dror Yemini has an opinion. The question should really be

does his opinion has any real impact on a three year study, or is he just antagonistic to one of its authors?

Perhaps he could have a study funded/implemented to see if his opinion actually impacts the previous three year study.

[shira]

18. He's an actual journalist who did research of primary sources. He's not some blogger....

How's about answering my questions now?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

23. I did. He has an opinion.

Try retreading what I wrote instead of getting the vapors.

[shira]

30. What's wrong with his opinion? Here are the actual passages from the study....

Last edited Thu Feb 14, 2013, 07:47 PM - Edit history (1)

"The Jews kept Saturdays' Sanctity and they (Jews) made it a day for rest and pray, and they forbid all the work in it, even the work for good, and by healing the patients on Saturday Jesus taught us that the work of goodness is mandatory all the days even in Sunday”. Christian Education, grade 3, P. 88

That was included as a positive Palestinian portrayal of Judaism when in fact it was the opposite.

Referring to a 1941 pogrom in Iraq: “On the holiday of Shavuot, Arabs attacked Jews and murdered them, including women and children.... The slaughter of the Jews of Bagdad continued for two days without interruption” (State secular schools, National World 2 - Building a State in the Middle East .)Grade 10, Part 2, p.160, LP918 ,]עולם לאומי ב' - בונים מדינה במזרח התיכון

This was included as an Israeli negative portrayal of Arabs.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

31. The world is full of opinions, Goldstoners and cherry pickers, Shira. ;)

Perhaps, once you come down with your bushel, you might realize that sometimes it is better to accept that the Palestinians aren't necessarily the monsters that some like to make them out to be.

Now if you want to draw parallels the state of Texas has a very bad track record with editing textbooks that are used in public schools. The books are pretty much useless, and some states are starting to say no to their use.

I don't condemn all Texans over the actions of a few, nor do I believe that all Texans share the same myopic view of history that goes into these whitewashed texts.

[shira]

34. I thought you were interested in truth and facts. Those passages show the study is BS.

If you believe those passages were represented fairly in the study, make a case for it.

Or admit that it appears the study is bad. Bad for whitewashing incitement. Bad for peace...

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

35. I see you are going up the cherry tree again to collect another bushel.

Good for you.

[shira]

36. Why do you fear discussing the textbook study? n/t

[holdencaufield]

19. "Anything to help out the home team"

You have a problem with my homies?

[shira]

20. I don't have a problem with you, hometeam. n/t

[holdencaufield]

21. Chosen for a reason :-)

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

24. It would depend on if your homies

Support colonialism and apartheid in the West Bank.

[King_David]

32. Apartheid apartheid apartheid

I have noticed the extreme right and extreme left love that word and its used in there IP forums extensively on the web.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

33. I have noticed that you are short on substance while long on excuses.

Business as usual.

[shaayecanaan]

29. The study does include examples such as those cited

it also includes examples from Israeli textbooks, such as an Arab village being described as a "nest of murderers" and a reference to "a convoy of bloodthirsty Arabs", etc.

The study is linked below:-

http://d7hj1xx5r7f3h.cloudfront.net/Israeli-Palestinian_School_Book_Study_Report-English.pdf

[shira]

39. What examples were included? Palestinian self-criticism? n/t

[shira]

13. The Israeli-Palestinian Textbook Study Fraud

You think you’re a person of good will and fair minded. You are a strong and aggressive advocate for Israel against its many and varied enemies, malicious or misguided, but you are not single-minded: you support two states for two peoples – Jews and Palestinians – both with ancient historic claims to their presence on the land, and have always opposed the settlement project. Even more, however, you have committed yourself to opposing, wherever it reveals itself, the vile and unyielding hatred and rejection of Jews that disfigures Arab societies and humanity. Still you wish always to be fair and intellectually honest: this six decades long dance of aggression and defense, of control and resistance has been unavoidably a test of everyone’s empathy. Even those on your side – those of whom you are one, the Jews, those whom you support and whose greater justice and openness to resolution of the conflict is recorded on every page of the historical record – even they, for they are human, will err, will convince themselves of a falsehood, will stand defensively resistant to the evidence that disproves some dearly held conviction.

When, then, you read of a scholarly study – “Victims of our own Narratives?” it is called – the results of which appear to disprove just such a crucial conviction, that Palestinian educational materials incite hatred of Jews, you brace yourself. You have seen the videos of very young Palestinian children inculcated through song and pageantry in the murderous glorification of suicidal “martyrdom.” You have seen the parades and dedication ceremonies with the speeches in honor of people who fought no armies, but have blown up, instead, buses with civilians and children on them. (If torture of Al-Qaeda leaders was a stain on American moral distinction, what corruption of the soul is it to stand in celebration of the dismembered bodies in pizza parlors?) You could go on and on.

more...
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/08/the-israeli-palestinian-textbook-study-fraud/

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

17. You have a lot of opinion-related material to post.

Good for you.

[King_David]

25. Larry Derfner ??

LOL

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

26. Well, that was insightful of you.

Did you come up with that all on your own or did it require the help of others?

[King_David]

27. Perhaps I am drunk?

You love my posts..you reply to just about every single one.

You probably noticed I rarely reply to your insults.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

28. Thanks for the kick. ;)

[shira]

38. Why thank people for kicking your thread? The study is proven crap.

Is it the actual headline (not what is in the thread) that you like bumped up?

Is it the author, Larry Derfner, whom you like? He's an apologist for Greta Berlin's gutter antisemitism.

Why the thanks for the bump?

[shira]

37. (Youtube PowerPoint) New Data on Incitement in the PA Education System

&feature=youtu.be

[shira]

40. Examples of school book texts cited in Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land study

The Munich Massacre as example of Israeli incitement vs Palestinians:

“After the war, the ‘Palestinian Pact,’ which was composed by the
National Council of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) in 1964
was reformulated. In the spirit of the Palestinian Pact, PLO organizations
began a harsh terrorist war against Israel and Jewish institutions. Planes
were hijacked, Israelis were murdered in the streets of the Land and in the
world, and dozens of letter bombs were sent. Terror struck again and again,
and reached a climax in the period after the war with the murders of
13 students and teachers from Moshav Avivim on their way to school (May
1970) and 11 athletes at the Munich Olympics (September 1972) – Israel was
forced to cope with a new kind of war that had no decision” (State and state
religious schools, Nationality in Israel and in the Nations: Building a
State in the Middle East, Grade 11, pp.237-238, LP1692).

Israeli Incitement: Negative Portrayal of Arabs (referring to a 1941 pogrom in Iraq):

“On the holiday of Shavuot, Arabs
attacked Jews and murdered them, including women and children…. The
slaughter of the Jews of Bagdad continued for two days without interruption”
(State secular schools, National World 2 - Building a State in the Middle
East, Grade 10, Part 2, p.160, LP918).

http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=60006

Example of Palestinian positive portrayal of Jews:

"The Jews kept Saturdays' Sanctity and they (Jews) made it a day for rest and pray, and they forbid all the work in it, even the work for good, and by healing the patients on Saturday. Jesus taught us that the work of goodness is mandatory all the days even in Sunday”. Christian Education, grade 3, P. 88