[NYTr] Israel: Education Minister Under Fire for Truthful Textbook ........

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

sent by Jeff Blankfort via Ed Pearl - Jul 24, 2007


["In an unprecedented move, the ministry has approved a geography text
for third-grade children that says some Arab citizens were expelled
from their homes and became refugees because their villages were
destroyed during and after the war."

Telling the truth in an Israeli or any Jewish text about the
establishment of Israel is indeed unprecedented and if allowed to go
unchecked, may undermine the very foundations of that racist state. The
government will make sure that does not happen so that the
Israel-supporting world will be able to continue to sleep soundly and
untroubled by what it has wrought and continues to allow.-JB]

Ha'aretz - Jul 23, 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/884882.html

Likud and NRP leaders call for education minister's dismissal

By Or Kashti and Haaretz Staff

Opposition and rightwing leaders called Sunday for the dismissal of 
Education Minister Yuli Tamir over her approval of a textbook that
contained a disputed Arabic word to describe events of 1948.

The leaders of Likud and the National Religious Party Sunday called for 
Tamir to be sacked shortly after she announced her ministry had okayed
a history book for Israeli Arab schools that says the Arabs refer to
the 1948 War of Independence as "Nakba," meaning "catastrophe" or
"disaster."

In an unprecedented move, the ministry has approved a geography text
for third-grade children that says some Arab citizens were expelled
from their homes and became refugees because their villages were
destroyed during and after the war.

The textbook - "Lihyot Yahad Beyisrael" ("Living Together in Israel"),
an Arabic translation of a Hebrew text published about a year ago, is
slated to be integrated into the curriculum in the coming school year.

"Tamir is giving the Arabs the legitimacy not to recognize the State of 
Israel as the state of the Jewish people," said NRP Chairman Zevulun
Orlev, calling the decision "anti-Zionist."

"The day the education minister made the decision," he said, "is the
Nakba Day of the Israeli education system."

Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu said Tamir's decision was
unacceptable and damages Zionist values instead of strengthening Jewish
heritage.

"I can't remember a greater absurdity than this in a decision made by
an education minister in the State of Israel," said Netanyahu.

Avigdor Lieberman, the minister for strategic affairs and chairman of
the Yisrael Beiteinu party, said Tamir's decision reflects the
"political masochism" of the Israeli left.

MK Ronit Tirosh (Kadima), a former director general of the Education 
Ministry, said the "wretched" decision "is not justified from a
pedagogic standpoint and is not a matter for political intervention."
Tirosh was director general of the ministry in 2003, when the geography
curriculum on which the Hebrew and Arabic versions of the textbook are
based was approved. That curriculum also featured the word "nakba,"
said Dalia Fenig, who is in charge of geography studies in the
Education Ministry.

Arab MKs welcomed the initiative, but said it did not go far enough.

"The majority must not converge solely within the bubble of its
narrative," said MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al).

Balad chairman Jamal Zahalka called the step a positive but small one.
He called for Arab cultural autonomy, in which Arabs would set the
curriculum for all matters connected to their history and heritage.

The Education Ministry defended its decision, with Tamir saying she
thinks the narrative of Arab citizens deserves a place in the State of
Israel. "It will generate debate in the schools and will only
contribute to Israeli children's learning about the need to live with
one another," Tamir said. "The Arab public deserves having us give
expression to its feelings as well."

The textbook sets the stage for the 1948 war and describes how Arabs as
well as Jews refer to it.

"The Jewish leadership agreed to accept the United Nations' Partition
Plan, the Arab leadership opposed the decision, and then war began,"
the book states. "On May 14, 1948, the leaders of the Yishuv [the
Jewish prestate settlement] declared the establishment of an
independent Jewish state - the State of Israel. Immediately after the
state was declared, the war intensified, and armies from five Arab
countries invaded the State of Israel. ... At the end of the war, the
Jews overpowered the Arabs and cease-fire agreements were signed
between the State of Israel and its neighboring states. The Arabs call
the war 'Nakba,' that is, a war of disaster and loss, while the Jews
call it 'the War of Independence.'"

In its description of what happened to the Jews and Arabs during and
after the war, the textbook states:

"The price of the war was very high. Many Arabs and Jews were killed in
the war. Some of the Arab residents were forced to leave their homes
and some were expelled, and they became refugees in the neighboring
Arab countries. Most of the Arabs who remained in Israel continued to
live in their communities, but some of them became refugees and were
forced to move to other Arab communities in the State of Israel,
because their villages were destroyed during and after the war."

Fenig said the book does a good job of bringing together both the
Jewish and Arab narratives of Israel's independence.

"It's a mistaken pedagogic approach to teach Arab students that
everyone took to the streets in joy when the State of Israel was
established," she said. "You have to give expression to the feelings of
the other side as well, so it will be able to become connected to the
Jewish narrative and to historical facts - including those that mention
that the Arabs did not agree to a division of the land. These are
things that used to be swept under the rug in the Arab sector. This is
a brave act that needed to be done."

Fenig said the textbook was reviewed by a team of some 30 people from
across the political spectrum.

"We consulted with many people about how to sensitively bring in the 
feelings of the Arabs and the Zionist narrative," said Tzfiya Fine, who 
headed the staff at the Center for Educational Technology that
developed the textbook. "There are some who think that if you don't
write about these subjects, you don't talk about them either. I believe
that it's worthwhile for the Arab students to learn their history from
textbooks."

                                 ***

Counterpunch - Jul 17, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/miller07172007.html

Width Matters -- Displacement and Israel's Wall

By SUSAN MILLER

Width matters. Semantic disputes concerning the Israeli Palestinian
conflict have existed for years. Arguments continue over Jimmy Carter's
use of the word "apartheid" to describe the system under which
Palestinians live in Israeli administered areas. These areas are called
"Judea-Samaria" and considered "disputed" land by the Israeli camp
while others refer to them as the "West Bank" and "occupied". Finally
the term, "The Wall" , is dismissed by Israel as a misrepresentation of
the controversial structure it is building. Supporters of Israel claim
that only a small percent of the structure consists of a 25 feet high
concrete wall. The remainder is considered a simple wire "fence" that
can not be equated with a wall. In reality, neither of these
descriptors conveys the structure's essential nature.

The structure is more accurately understood by its width, not its
height. Winding its way down from the northern most point of the West
Bank it leaves in its wake a 65 to 87 yard wide swath of bulldozed land
on which trenches, barbed wire, footprint tracer paths, a two-lane
patrol road and watch towers have been placed. From edge to edge, the
structure exceeds the width of six lane segments of Interstate 95 or
half the length of a football field.

When one considers the expansive reach of the structure and that eighty
percent of it has been built on Palestinian land, the enormity of its
impact on Palestinian society is understood. Local and international
NGO's concur that the completed sections of the planned 416 mile long
structure have incurred property damage numbering in the tens of
thousands of agricultural and grazing acres destroyed, olive and fruit
trees uprooted, homes, commercial buildings, greenhouses,
infrastructure and water wells demolished.

These figures do not take into account the social deprivations caused
by the bisecting of villages in the structure's path. Thousands of
Palestinians have been dislocated or separated from families,
employment, medical services, schools, farms and water sources. Cities,
towns and villages are already separated by 250 running miles of
by-pass roads built on Palestinian land and designated for Israeli use
only. In conjunction with hundreds of checkpoints and road barriers,
Palestinians are constantly bumping up against the physical
manifestations of Israeli settlement that deny them freedom of movement
and the ability to live normal lives.

The terms "Wall" and "Fence" mistakenly evoke an image of the vertical
displacement of mere air. These terms fail to convey the permanent
displacement at ground level of enormous expanses of land, property and
people. Understanding width matters. It imparts a realistic
understanding of the structure's impact on Palestinian society and its
long term effects on the possibility of an independent state. It
affirms long standing Palestinian grievances which are commonly denied.
It illuminates Israel's extensive violations of international laws
designed to protect occupied peoples. It widens the public's
perspective on Palestinian/Israeli issues and the understanding that
for peace to succeed justice matters.

[Susan Miller is an American and Israeli citizen who lived in Jerusalem
from 1969-1980. She is active in organizations working for peace in the
Middle East. She currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.]