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Palestinian
children are not taught to hate
Posted By Philippe Khan
A wrong widespread misconception alleges that the new
Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks fuel hatred and negative
sentiments towards the U.S. and the West in general, besides
Israel. Numerous reports in recent months attacked the new
schoolbooks in the Palestinian territories.
Those claims had been clearly highlighted in a biased repot
issued by the by Palestinian Media Watch and endorsed by
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The report is titled "From Nationalist Battle to
Religious Conflict: New 12th Grade Palestinian Textbooks
Present a World without Israel," and authored by PMW
director Itamar Marcus and associate director Barbara Crook.
The report alleges that the textbooks portray the U.S. and the
West in negative terms, describing the relationship as a
"clash of civilizations." It furthermore attacks the
U.S. as a human rights abuser and a violator of international
humanitarian law. (How else can you describe the U.S.'s
involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, among many other countries
now suffering from the so-called U.S. democracy).
The report also attacks the fact that children are being
taught that the U.S. supports Israel, the occupier of the
Palestinian lands, both financially and militarily. (Isn’t
that true?)
"I believe that education is one of the keys to lasting
peace in the Middle East and for this reason I am very
concerned with these findings. Ever since we first raised this
issue some years ago there still has not been an adequate
repudiation of incitement by the Palestinian Authority. It is
even more disturbing that the problem appears to have gotten
worse. These textbooks don't give Palestinian children an
education, they give them an indoctrination," Senator
Clinton said.
"Teaching Palestinian children that the conflict is
religious and not territorial will leave no possibility for
compromise and could guarantee another generation of
conflict," Marcus had been quoted as saying.
"It's very significant and disturbing that these new
books contain ideology that has been associated mainly with
Hamas - especially the unequivocal denial of Israel's right to
exist and the portrayal of the conflict with Israel as a
religious struggle, not a territorial dispute," says
co-author Crook.
Mrs. Clinton had repetitively attacked the Palestinian
schoolbooks, claiming they encourage students to be violent.
In an incendiary statement on Palestinian schoolbooks to
Itamar Marcus last month, Mrs. Clinton alleged that the
schoolbooks focus on hate and de-legitimizing Israel’s right
to exist.
Back in 2000, when Mrs. Clinton began her independent
political career by running for the seat in the New York
Senate being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, she made
similar accusations, raising skepticism over the significance
of the timing of her rhetoric. Some analysts suggested that
she was using the issue for political goals.
At that time, the expectation was that Mrs. Clinton would
begin the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination
as the front-runner.
Clinton’s farce accusations about Palestinian schoolbooks'
encouragement of violence among children were based on reports
produced by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP),
right-wing center that has offices in New York and Jerusalem,
of which Itamar Marcus was the director.
CMIP has clear political goals; it’s not merely a
peace-oriented center.
And this explains the intentions behind its 2000 report which
focused on the content of Jordanian and Egyptian school books
that were being taught to children in Palestinian schools
since the early 50s and were fully censored by Israeli
Military Commanders in charge of Palestinian education since
1967.
Despite the fact that the CMIP report’s accusations were
totally baseless, they were circulated all over the world,
resulting in a great harm to the image of the Palestinian
education system.
Following the issuance and the distribution of the report,
countries stopped funding the development of the Palestinians
school books.
In response to the disturbing report that dealt a major blow
to the Palestinian education system and its image worldwide,
scholars including Nathan Brown, IPICRI, Daniel Bar Tal, Nurit
Peled El-Khanan and Ruth Firer, among others, announced that
it contains many mistakes in its translation, selective
analysis, and they questioned its credibility.
According to those scholars’ conclusion, as stated an
editorial on Counter Punch, Palestinian school books do not
encourage violence among children and do not preach hate, on
the contrary, they are highly moderate, despite the
deteriorating situation in the occupied territories and
Israel’s continuous violations and repetitive crimes against
Palestinian civilians.
We shouldn’t expect schoolbooks being taught to Palestinian
children to be void of issues related to borders for instance.
However, while, most of maps in the Palestinian school books
show the boundaries of Palestinian authority limited to West
Bank and Gaza strip in accordance with UN resolutions 242 and
338. Israeli schoolbooks do not show the green line in their
maps, and discuss the Palestinian Occupied Territories of 1967
as Judea and Samaria and as part of Erez Israel (Promised
Land) without even mentioning the name Palestinian, whether in
reference to the population or the country.
Also while Palestinian school books are free of stereotypes,
as stated the scholars who criticised the CMIP report, Israeli
school books are full of negative stereotypes of Palestinians.
They call Arabs and not Palestinians: primitive, bloodthirsty,
backward, a problem, dirty, among many others.
Several scholars discovered grave mistakes in the CMIP's
report, which intentionally ignored the fact that Palestinian
school books preach the values of human rights and democracy,
as well as peace between nations, religious tolerance, and
pursuing peaceful means to resolve conflicts.
The very same facts were also ignored by Mrs. Clinton, who
accused Palestinian mothers of not being good mothers, and not
caring for their children.
For Mrs. Clinton, and others like Elie Wiesel, Senator Schumer
and Barbara Crook, CMIP report was nothing but a good tool to
fulfill their political goals, without even bothering to check
other sources to check its credibility.
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