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

[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/