Education ministry revising textbook for being too critical of Israel
Offending book was written in the late 1990s and is used in nearly 90 percent of high schools.
By Or KashtiThe Education Ministry is rewriting the country's main civics textbook, and the chairman of the ministry's pedagogical secretariat will begin publishing updates on the ministry's Web site as early as the upcoming school year.
The main contention of the chairman - Zvi Zameret - is that the textbook dwells too much on criticism of the state, sources in the Education Ministry who took part with Zameret in discussions on the book told Haaretz.
Zameret has criticized a sentence in the book - "Being Citizens in Israel" - on Israel's Arab citizens stating that "since its establishment, the State of Israel has engaged in a policy of discrimination against its Arab citizens."
Zameret also admitted that he helped write a critical report on civics studies by the Institute for Zionist Strategies, the right-wing think tank that released a paper alleging post-Zionist bias in sociology courses in Israeli universities.
"Zameret is trying to move the emphasis in civics studies from citizenship and democracy to Judaism and Zionism," said the chairwoman of the academic forum for civics instruction, Dr. Ricki Tessler of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "The message coming down from the top is sectoral and non-pluralist."
According to a source on the civics studies committee, "What Zameret cares about today is strengthening Zionism and national patriotism. A lot of this pressure comes out in the subjects of history and civics."
In his capacity as chairman of the pedagogical secretariat, Zameret is responsible for the curricula taught in the Israeli education system.
The textbook in question was written in the late 1990s and is used in nearly 90 percent of high schools. Ministry sources told Haaretz that Zameret has said the book was focused too much on conflicts and social divisions, and that greater emphasis must be put on the history of the state, such as its establishment in 1948.
One of the first chapters to be rewritten will probably be the one on Israel's Druze community. Zameret has harshly criticized the chapter for what he called excessive attention to Druze who define themselves as Arabs.
The chapter describes two approaches on the Druze's national identity. One is based on the view that the Druze are "an inseparable part of the Palestinian people and the Arab nation." The other is that their identity is based on Israeli citizenship rather than Arab nationhood.
The book in its current form stresses that the second concept is the most popular in the Israeli Druze community.
About a year ago, the Institute for Zionist Strategies published a report criticizing civics studies in Israel. The report alleged that the current curriculum damages Zionist and patriotic education, amid flaws that have ideological, moral and social implications that might weaken Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state.
Some months after the report was released, Zameret took part in a meeting of the Knesset Education Committee in which he said that "democracy is based on the demos - the people comes first, the majority comes first, and one of our problems is that we don't hear the majority."
When the chairman of the committee recommended that Zameret read the Institute for Zionist Strategies' report, Zameret replied that he "took part in it."
"The civics studies committee, chaired by Prof. Yedidia Stern, decided to accept a proposal by the ministry's inspector of civics studies to publish a new chapter on the Druze," the Education Ministry said in a statement yesterday.
As for the report by the Institute for Zionist Strategies, the statement noted that the Education Committee meeting took place before Zameret took office as the chairman of the pedagogical secretariat.
"Zameret denies the claims in the media that he participated in the writing of the report by the Institute for Zionist Strategies," the ministry said. However, the introduction to the report lists Zameret as one of the academics who had "read all or some of the position paper, and clarified and commented on various sections."
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Children in primary school |
| Photo by: Daniel Bar On |
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The Smollanim are mentally ill selfhaters who unfortunately control the media, Bagatz and civil service. When Feiglin is PM, this will change.
...will look, say, five years from now? (And by that I mean history is constantly changing--both forward and backward--and it's getting harder and harder to predict either the future or the past.)
that the israeli hysteria over any criticism has its font in the knowledge/fear that the creation of the State was immoral, and that the proposition that Israel can be a 'jewish democracy" is untenable? I'm reminded of the self-righteous wrath of the liar caught in a lie
The ability of Israeli Jews to believe whatever they like is inexhasutable. Anyone who "disagrees" with their propaganda is simply labeled an anti-semite, invalidating any criticism of Israel that person may put forth. This is the routine, and, while it won't stand up in the world, it stands up well in Israel.
While it is true that any criticism of Israel has turned into allegations of antisemitism, the fact is an overwheming number of Israelis don't agree with this thinking. The problem is the amount of power the settler groups and ultra orthodox have in the country.
Just a question of time before the Ministry of Education will change the syllabus that will enable 2 + 2 = 5
They thing that if they do not publish that "since its establishment, the State of Israel has engaged in a policy of discrimination against its Arab citizens." nobody will not know it. The end result will be different. Each one that wants to know the hard situation, will do it, and at the matter of fact, the innocent inquisitors will advance in the old process that transforms schools in irrelevant.
It will only backfire on those who try that in Israel. As long as the internet remains free stundents will feel a sense of disillusionment when they learn the truth. Texas leads the way here in revisionist history. If the history book teaches that there was no slave trade but only a triangle of shipping it doesn't work. They can write that John Calvin was more important than Thomas Jefferson and eighth graders will belive it for awhile. Evolution is a false theory and so on. The best truth as known at the time is the way to go.
Which Zionism would that be exactly? I doubt very much that the founders of modern Zionism (Herzl, etc.) would recognize the Zionism that Zvi Zameret and his friends in the IZS and Im Tirzu are touting. I had always thought that education was all about developing the ability to think individually, not about swallowing a set narrative - hook, line, and sinker. Silly me!
What founders of Zionism are you talking about? Weizmann, Jabotinskly, Ben-Gurion? How do you know? Didn't Ben-Gurion initiate the practice of censoring the truth, eliminating the Revisionists? You clearly don't know what you are talking about. Nobody is perfect so don't hold IZS above the standards you apply to yourself or others.
at age of 15 children learn to shoot.
Should change its name to "Ministry of Truth", Minitrue for the friends. 1984 at its best.
Arabs have their own curriculum, there are some orthodox schools which have their own curriculum. We had Yuli Tamir who wanted to change the books and curriculum to include nakba but remove Jabotinskyizm and certain jewish subjects. Will you criticize her or praise her as she wanted to change the system get rid of zionist & jewish issues, include arab ones and push a left wing agenda? School curriculums and books are changed all the time and not just in Israel There isn't a country in the world where the system has been unchanging governments change and decide what they think should be taught... The children are just the pawns neither right wing or left wing governments are inocent they all change things so what the current ministry of education is no different to what previous education ministries on both the left and right have been doing for decades.
Regards, Froy
What's wrong with the quoted statements? It's undeniable fact, which everybody admits and each government pledges to fix (but never fulfill the pledges) - that the Israelis of Palestinian origin are discriminated against. As for the Druze community in Israel - there's simply nothing contradictory in being proud Arab and Palestinian and proud Israeli, and Israeli Druzes are exemplary community in this respect, they can serve as an example for all Israelis on being loyal and proud citizens of democratic and multicultural state and at the same time maintain their own communal identity, their culture, their language. Those, who try to push more "patriorism" into the schooltexts are living in the past generations, they don't understand what modern state is and what modern community is. They are simply anachronistic.
In fact describing the Druze as simply Israelis will obscure the way that their double identity could encourage more Israeli Arabs to identify with the State. Ultimately, I fear, that's the trouble: the Zionists don't really want Arabs who support Israel. Much easier to describe them all as the enemy, and hope eventually to throw them out.
I am a Zionist. Everybody who believe that Jews, just as any other nation in the world, have right for self determination on their native land, are Zionists. If this is your opinion, too, than you are as Zionist, as me.
I guess we cannot expect anything else, they have been trying to rewrite the history of WWII as well.
I'm quite curious what you mean in your comment
OK 50 years is not enough so make it 70 years. Just burn all the archives that subvert the narrative. Turkey and Israel agree on something, and that is a positive thing.
Yuli Tamir wanted to include nakba in Israeli textbooks and take certain zionist issues and jewish studies off the curriculum. You have a far left education ministry wanting to change the curriculum to make the country very pro arab anti zionism & jewish. You have a right wing education ministry wanting to make the books more pro Israel. There is no difference except which side of the fence your sitting on. Its the same wherever you go in the world politics will always influence schooling.
Shetach hefker (abandoned areas). Zionists have been asleep for too many years allowing leftist radicals to change and distort history in the the text books. It's time for these leftists to step aside. Let the truth be told with its good and its bad. At least Jews can still find pride in some of it.
Too much Hasbara sends people mad... http://wp.me/PDB7k-Y
..and unfortunately there are those who only want to criticize Israel, no matter what the other side has done. Usually these people are called revisionists, or progressives, who like to "move forward" and conveniently leave out parts of history that do not support their agenda. Textbooks that look mainly at your mistakes and not the other side, cannot present the truth. “Why upset the other side" or "why go back to the past” they will tell you. This does not work for me, sorry.
Enough deceit. Israel has borders. It ignores them in the quest for a Greater Israel. It hides the fact that it has borders with the non-state entity of Palestine. .... http://wp.me/pDB7k-tM .... It lies when it says it was attacked by five Arab Armies in 1948 ... http://wp.me/pDB7k-ki .... It lies when it says RoR is a demographic threat to Israel .... http://wp.me/pDB7k-jS ... The people of Israel deserve to know what their country has done and continues to do.