Israel pulls textbook with chapter on Nakba
Education Min. demanded the term 'ethnic cleansing' be redacted from section on War of Independence.
By Or Kashti Tags: Israel education Israel news NakbaThe Ministry of Education has taken the unusual step of collecting all copies of the history textbook, "Nationalism: Building a State in the Middle East" which was published about two months ago by the Zalman Shazar Center. They will be returned to the shelves only after corrections are made to the text, particularly with reference to the War of Independence.
The book had already been approved by the ministry.
"Collecting the books from the shops is an unnecessary [form of] censorship," said Dr. Tsafrir Goldberg, who wrote the controversial chapter on the war. "The process of approving the text was completed in serious fashion from both the pedagogic and the historic points of view. The fact that the education minister changed does not mean that it is possible to bypass this procedure."
On September 22, Haaretz reported that the textbook, which is meant for 11th and 12th-grades, for the first time presented the Palestinian claim that there had been ethnic cleansing in 1948.
"The Palestinians and the Arab countries contended that most of the refugees were civilians who were attacked and expelled from their homes by armed Jewish forces, which instituted a policy of ethnic cleansing, contrary to the proclamations of peace in the Declaration of Independence," states the text, which presented the Palestinian and the Israeli-Jewish versions side by side.
Criticism about the book was voiced by history teachers.
"Presenting Israel's claims as being equal to those of Arab propagandists is exactly like presenting the claims of the Nazis alongside those of the Jews," one of them said.
On the other hand, another teacher noted that the most important component in studying history is to introduce as many points of view as possible.
Following the newspaper report, Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar instructed the ministry's director general, Shimshon Shoshani, to examine the book and look into the process of approving texts in general.
Officials in the ministry said Sunday that an examination carried out by Michael Yaron, who is in charge of history studies, found "a great many mistakes, some of them serious. As a result of this examination it was decided that the original version of the textbook must be withdrawn and returned to the stores only after being corrected."
Among other things, the Shazar Center was asked to exchange the original Palestinian text that appears in the book, written by Walid Khalidi, for another that is closer to reality, said Goldberg, who finished making the changes recently.
Another demand was that the term "ethnic cleansing" be redacted. Goldberg says that he changed the phrase and spoke instead of an organized policy of expulsion.
When the corrections have been completed, the book will be reviewed again at the publishers and in the ministry, before it is given final approval.
"The state has the right to determine the contents of textbooks but this is not supposed to be done by the education minister," Goldberg said.
He noted, though, that some of the remarks were merely cosmetic and did not pose any problem. "The publishing house decided to make the corrections as a form of self censorship," Goldberg said.
Zvi Yekutiel, the executive director of the Shazar Center, said that "the book has to be aimed at the widest possible consensus and not at the fringes on the left or the right. We made a mistake and we are correcting it."
Last month, Yekutiel said that there had been no remarks about the chapter on the War of Independence during the process of approving the book.
He added that "the explicit instruction from the ministry was to include controversial points of view so that the students can confront them and make up their own minds."
Yekutiel said the ministry would pay for the collection of the books from the stores.
The ministry approved the textbook for use in the schools on July 26, after it had been sent to two external assessors - an academic and a teacher.
It was granted approval after an examination of its suitability for the curriculum and its scientific reliability.
The ministry spokesman said last week that, "from the start the book was intended to go into use as a textbook only from this coming January, so the students were not yet exposed to the relevant material. It was decided as well that the director general's circular should be corrected to make it clear that the responsibility and authority for approving textbooks is on the inspectors and coordinators who are responsible for the various subjects taught and who have to examine the books before they are approved and pass on their remarks and instructions."
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"After Walid Khalidi, Nafez Nazzal, Nur Masalha, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe we now have the latest study of researcher and writer Rosemary Esber "Under the Cover of War. The Zionist expulsion of the Palestinians" (USA 2008, 442 pages)." You Ben Alofs are free to believe any writing that suits you antisemitic agenda,but for the rest of us you are seen just as a propagandist unable to dismiss my and Mickey's posts. Talking about Walid Khalidi or Rosemary Esber won't erase quotes below from history. ("I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem." [Daily Telegraph, September 6, 19481 - Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948 "The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies." - Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949 "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down. - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah ("The Secret Behind the Disaster") by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952 " The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. . . . He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down. - Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha's successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951) Will you "dismiss" them by bringing up more Nazzals and Khalidis?
For a long time Israelis have dominated the writing of the history of what happened in Palestine in 1948 (a "spontaneous" and "natural" consequence of a bitterly fought war/alleged evacuation orders issued by Arab leaders/aggressive military measures by Arab states). Whilst writers like Morris, who admit that expulsions took place, rely exclusively on Zionist sources, other historians are including Palestinian, British, American and other contemporary sources and these show that the Palestinian version of the events is far closer to the truth. After Walid Khalidi, Nafez Nazzal, Nur Masalha, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe we now have the latest study of researcher and writer Rosemary Esber "Under the Cover of War. The Zionist expulsion of the Palestinians" (USA 2008, 442 pages). She interviewed 126 Palestinian refugees and delved through the British Archives and found that the British role was pivotal in allowing a power vacuum, enabling the Zionist forces to expel the Palestinians.
In the words of Azzam Pasha, the then secretary of the Arab League "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of the like of the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades". They therfore urged all Arabs to flee temporarily, and then reclaim their homes after all the Jews were killed. When their plan failed, and created a million refugees, not one Arab country was willing to help their fellow Arabs, and they callously left them in their refugee camps. When more than 1,000,000 Jews were expelled from the Arab countries (something that those who speak of the "Nakhba" always neglect to mention) they were welcomed into Israel, and today there are no Jews in refugee camps.
Whalid Khalidi writing Israeli Israeli history text books! Is this a joke? We are completely crazy..anways Yehukitiel must be fired at once!
Many arab notables and top politicians at the time regretted that they had circulated false rumours that women had been raped and other atrocities had taken place. When confronted with the reality that no rapes had taken place, Hussein Khaled, a Palestinian leader, said "we have to say this so that Arab armies will come to liberate us from the Jews". Hazam Nusseibi, a journalist at the time, told the BBC years later that the deliberate fabrication of the rape charge "was our biggest mistake" since it caused the Palestinians to flee in terror. Many examples along the same lines can be quoted. And don't forget that the refugee problem was created by a war initiated by the Arabs.
"The Arab Exodus ?was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by the Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews. ?For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy." -- The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun, April 9, 1953. "Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe." -- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, (quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz). "The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarterof Haifa a ghost city.... By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa." -- Time Magazine, May 3, 1948, page 25
There is a difference between representing different points of view based on fact. However, using leftist revisionist terms such as "ethnic" cleansing, which originated in the 1990s, is wholly inappropriate, as it is a propagandistic tool used by extreme leftists and Arab nationalists against Israel's identity and legitimacy to establish a soverign Jewish democractic state on ancestral jewish land. Theses texts should never have been used in the first place. Leave that sort of crude propaganda to the so called "Palestinian" authority...
Why should Israel teach the claims of its enemies to its students? Would the palestinians allow their schools to use books that said we are responsible for the nakba because we were unwilling to accept 2 states back then it was all or nothing? Just because the arabs say its the truth doesn't make it fact or obligate anybody else to agree with them Generally in most conflicts winner & looser have different versions. This is not the same as holocaust denial. Holocaust denial is recorded fact that most the world is agreed on by independent parties and is above national politcs. Deir Yassin was one of many arab villages attacked by jewish forces. Violence between jew & arab had been going on for years but after the UN voted for partition in 1947 violence turned to war Jews went after hostile arab villages. Deir Yassin had up till that point not been hostile & Haganah ordered hands off but Lehi acting independently dispbayed. The war began in Palestine before indepedence was declared.
Even thousand times repeated nonsense about forced removal of poor Palestinians won't change the history. They left because they were asked to and here I'm repeating what those who caused nakba say themselves. ?"The 15th May, 1948, arrived...On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead."-Cairo`s Akhbar el Yom, 10/12/63. ?.In listing the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948, Khaled al-Azm (Syrian Prime Minister) notes that "the fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and leave for the bordering Arab countries. Since 1948, it is we who have demanded the return of the refugees, while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon a million Arab refugees by inviting them and bringing pressure on them to leave.-Khaled el-Azm, after the 1948 War in his 1972 memoirs. Their own words against potobac words?
You remind me of the Americans who deny that we treated the Indians as badly as we did. History is there, whether you like it or not. The real shame is not being willing to admit it for political reasons.
Both the suicide bombers and the holocaust are in textbooks - why are you bringing them up? As for the Nakba - read some serious scholarship like Morris regarding it instead of simply spouting hasbara. It happened. Israel has a large part of the blame. For example: Deir Yassin happened one month before the declaration of independence and the arab armies came to protect the already uprooted Palestinians.
In response to "Realist" - The reality of the situation is that the Ministry of Education has begun teaching Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) as part of the curriculum. Interpretation of the facts or materials presented is now taught in the school system. So, why not include HOTS in history class?
The nakba myth is akin to Holocaust denial and other revisionist history. Israel defended itself from a British backed Arab force that intended to murder every last Jewish women, man and child and won. The Arabs lost and have tried to use lies to garnish sympathy since and have lied very successfully. No this time though as this chapter of hate was removed.
arabs accept they did the same thing to jews at the same time not only in palestine but all arab countries! and both side should ask excuses from the other side... same thing at the armenian ''genocide'' two side lost millions of civilian armenians and turks slaughtered! if they accept they slaughtered turks too i will accept the armenian genocide along with turkish genocide and why cant we accept our sins BOTH side and forget punishing each other and commemorate together the ones who were disappeared together! by tryin to punish we repeat the faults of our grandparents who repeated the faults of their grandparents etc. colin Wrong u can tel me that im a denier cuz im both turkish and İsraeli and i can tell u that u re a sick racist... i hope u find cure and for me ur kind of people re the real deniers people who see only one side and denies the other side!!!
Book burning and Hypocrisy
Deny their guilt? No, it's more like keeping history books factual and not presenting unsubstantiated claims. Also, think about how 6 million Jews in the Holocaust were denied their innocence, many of them women and children, not to mention the thousands of innocent Israelis who were murdered by suicide bombers. On the other hand, if you insist on being insensitive, why should we even bother?
was seen as benifical in the soviet union for the greater good but it couldn't stop the forces of history from shutting the place down.Here too its not possible to disreguard the benifits of truth for the benifits of thoes who profit on trampling on it
The Zionist Archives, the Ben-Gurion Archives, the IDF Archives all demonstrate beyond the shaddow of a doubt that an official policy of violent ethnic cleansing was implemented months before statehood was declared. Hard to swallow, but true. Check it out in Ilan pappe's book 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' ISBN 978-1-8518-555 -4. The old line used to be that Israel is too small for censorship to succeed, as too many people know too much. That is the second lie.
Your grasp of the actual historical events are ignorant at best, and willfully deluding at worst. Read some of the serious scholarship of the day - the discussion is not on whether there was expulsions (there was) but whether there was a concerted effort on the Zionist leaders to expel the arabs. You can of course continue living in your Hasbara world and ignore the words of people like Morris who have studied the issue extensively. If nothing else - remember that Deir Yassin happened before the arab armies attacked, and by then most of the palestinian population was already on foot.
'...The ministry spokesman said last week that, "from the start the book was intended to go into use as a textbook only from this coming January, so the students were not yet exposed to the relevant material...' Thank God. No contamination. Only right-thinking Israelis wanted here. It's absurd. It's as if American schools denied the internment of the Japanese, or British schools denied the bombing campaign...or German schools denied the Holocaust.
When it comes to denial, you've got so much in common.
A school history textbook needs to record the facts about what happened and not "claims" or "contentions" by war propagandists. Anyone who says that there is an Arab and an Israeli "version" of the war of independence is a liar. There is only one version of the facts about what happened although there may be different interpretations of those facts. It is not normal, though, to teach interpretations at this level of the education system. Before they are ready to study interpretations the students need to know the basic facts so that when they study interpretations later they can understand them. This textbook seems to have been a politically motivated exercise in trying to forcefeed the children Palestinian propaganda before they have the knowledge to recognise it. That is not education, that is brainwashing.
was that the Israelis did not run away from the 7 Arab armies, that whished to implement a "policy of organized expulsion" of the Jews, but succeeded only to create the myth of Israeli invinceability. So that the Pals did the running.out of fear of arab-type revenge for their own atrocities and pogroms. against the Jews.No actual expulsion was done by the Israelis, however loud the Pals try to cover up for their own behaviour
Removing any mention of the Nakba (or at least presenting it as the "Arab" point of view) is as bad as moving mention of the Holocaust. Israel is becoming less of a democracy and more of a fascist state every day.
... there will be no peace. Israel's role in the expulsion of the Palestinians is well-documented (Morris et al), and denying it is just pure Hasbara. How is this different from what Ahmedinejad is doing?