Israeli textbook under review for giving Palestinian version of 'nakba'

you played with fire and you've got burned. So much for your 'We are the victims' myth.

They have lost the state they didn't have. They have lost the land that wasn't theirs. They have lost the war that they have started. They have lost their children to Jihad. They have lost the new chance for a state. They have lost common sense to fanatism. They have lost their minds to hate. What i would call,a selfmade Nakba.

Do British textbooks tell your students about the MILLIONS of innocent civilians MURDERED by the Commonwealth forces in World War 2? French, Dutch, German, Chinese, Thai, Japanese? Bet not. Clean your own house first. By the way when is the British occupation of the Malvinas, Northern Ireland, Gibralter, Wales and Scotland going to end? Isn't 500+ years long enough?

,hundreds thousands of them ?

It depends on how the Palestinian narrative version of the Nakba is taught. Generally, students need to be taught solid facts. It would not be alright to teach the non-factual, purely mythic aspects of the Palestinian narrative as if they were factual. That would just be an exercise in propaganda. To explain the Palestinian belief in these things as part of the basis for their political positions to older students would be alright.

Actually Haifa isn't as good as an example as you seem to think. Shabtai Levi did try and get Arabs to stay in Haifa while promising that they wouldn't be harmed. Levi might have had the best of intentions but his position was not shared by those with real power who sent the Carmeli brigade in to cleanse the city with orders to 'kill any Arab you encounter and torch all imflammable objects'. Haifa's Arab population fled to the market near the port gate in hope of escaping the attack and were shelled relentlessly by the Carmeli brigade.

In some places the Jews did indeed ask the Arabs to stay. Haifa is an excellent example. In other places, Arabs were expelled, and in other places, they fled.

I wonder if the texbook also represents nazi view on Holocaust. Or is it still continue to have one-sided story?

Ha ha ha! What an outright untruth!

If you call the Palestinians your enemy, you ought to understand what impels them to be so; without that understanding you will be unable to counter their arguments. If you believe that a just and honorable peace is possible, you ought to know how to address their grievances and propose conceivably viable compromises. In either case, Sun Tzu's axiom in "The art of War", "Know your enemy.." is applicable.

Are Arabs capable of dealing with the situation as it is now?

It doesn't make a different for them how many versions they get.It doesn't make a different what the books says if home you learn the"real truth".They will only believe what serve them best,and if it is the truth or not has nothing to do with it,and that is their real"Nakba".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks There's a long list on here including bombs in cafes, on buses, in marketplaces, in cinemas etc. There's also an interesting discussion page where assorted pro-Irgun fans try to dispute the list, but apparently without much success. Judge for yourself. I imagine that the Arabs caught up in these attacks, and friends and families must have got the impression that the Jews wanted them to leave. Unless, of course, the bombs had 'Don't flee! Please stay!' written on them, perhaps with lots of love hearts.

Inserting the Nakba to humour Palestinians and leaving it at that is like teaching the Palestinian students that 6 million died in the holocaust simply because of an accident in history. If most Israelis still believe that their country did not commit anything wrong in Gaza, of what purpose will this token insertion about the Nakba serve? As to Benny Morris, today he is singing a completely different tune about the deliberate expulsion of the 48 Palestinians by Ben Gurion. He must have gotten tired of being out in the cold since he expressed his initial opinion about Ben Gurion's massive expulsions in 48 and now he is saying that expulsions were committed by a few renegade Jewish officers acting on their own and in a few areas only. It's time Israel stopped pulling PR gimmicks like this insertion story and started honestly doing something about correcting the injustices committed by the Zionist enterprise.

The decision to blow up the King David Hotel was the correct one. You British had no business occupying our country, and you had no business shutting the doors to Jewish immigration, especially during the Holocaust. Your country, although it fought the Nazis, nevertheless bears the blood of millions of Jews on its hands for (1) Not bombing the death camps when your government already knew what was going on and (2) Restricting Jewish immigration to our historic homeland when it was the only viable option for Jews to flee the Nazi death machine. Your great country, when it finally left Palestine, handed EVERYTHING over to the five invading Arab armies. In the meantime, the 600,000 Jews of Israel had to work around a total arms embargo. You're really a great, moral nation for doing this to us a mere three years after the Holocaust. I really think Jews and Israelis should pay attention to the moral preaching of a Brit.

in it to use it in such a shallow way

,a legitimate target.Got it ?

from their ancestral land in Poland,Chechoslovakia and Russia after the WW2? Cry Lefties,atone ,apologize ,restitute !

hypocrites ? you-bet-ya

It is very funny to see how the Israelis cling onto their false belief in their innocence. Of course, the formation of "the Jewish state for the jewish people" could not have benefitted from an expulsion of the non-Jewish population. The Jews are always such good, moral people, they would never ethnically cleanse anybody - especially after the holocaust - Oh! How they suffered.... How dare you even mention Jews in a bad light. Even when they bombed the King David hotel, it was a moral act - for the greater good. That was not terrorism, it was freedom fighting. Even when they mowed down defenseless U.S. sailors on the USS Liberty, oh, it was a mistake - it is such an easy mistake to make. The list goes ON AND ON AND ON!! No. It is quite clear that any proper, honest study of Israel would reveal that it is an evil nation that has done great evil - this censorship of the textbooks to propagate the Zionist viewpoint over the objective truth is a precisely fascist act.

Could we even conceive that educational adiministrations of the Palestinian entity, Gaza, or even most Arab countries would consider adopting a high school textbook written from the Israeli perspective? When that day comes, I will say we are indeed on the road to a real peace based on mutual understanding and respect.

Both sides of the story need to be promoted in both the Palestinian and Israeli class rooms. The next generation need to be able to develop an informed critical view on the issue if they are to make compramise and reconciliation. The current generation have sadly been raised on nationalist propaganda, all that has achieved is a vicious cycle of theft, muder and an army of popular support for the crimes commited by both sides.

funny how Israel get's all worked up because of the alleged bias of the Goldstone-Gaza report. Yet when it comes to teaching it's a different matter eh?

Sir-what about the forgotten jewish refugees from the Arab countries they deserve a mention in our school books Issy Hass-Ra'anana

No substantial events can reciprocate the massive immigration of the Palestinians in 1947-48.Jewish terrorist organizations,the Urgun,Hagana,the Etzel.etc., had committed atrocities to innocent Palestinain civilians.My uncle Elias Siniora was 9 years when he left school on sunny day 1947,heading his Father's shop #10 on Mamila intersection when Jewish terrorists rolled down the hill canisters filled with explosives instead of milk to explode on the intersection killing & injuring Arab civilians,my uncle Elias was severely injured & spent his sixty earthy life crippled walking on crutches his body speared with shrapnel.Look Israel! if the Jewish people want to co-exist with Palestinians with those who carry Israeli citizenship or living in Palestinian authority area, should realize that no substantial events could reciprocate the real fact that Palestinians were victims of ill willed Arab leaders and Jewish terrorists. No one can deny this fact as world can't deny the Holocaust

Telling only a selected version of the story is equivalent to propaganda. We see this in totalitarian countries and in the Arab world where children and adults are taught a stilted version of the truth. This book, together with others such as the alternative Palestinian-Israeli narrative used by Prof. Sami Adwan and the late Professor Dan Bar-On represents a ray of light that will enable both Palestinians and Israelis of the next generation to come to terms with the fact that in any conflict, neither side is completely right, and in war both sides commit injustices and atrocities. Both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism have committed grave mistakes to achieve their goals. It?s time we all came to terms with them. .

"A Jerusalem-area history teacher said that students cannot be taught the way the textbook presents the material, as they are unable to distinguish between Arab propaganda and objective analysis, adding that the "claims" of the State of Israel cannot be presented as having equal value as those of Arab propagandists." My, my. That's what teachers are for, or so I thought. But that's ok; let's live in a vacuum and pretend there is only black and white, no gray, in what ought to be a Technicolor world. It is too bad that we cannot teach our children what Palestinians believe, whether or not we need to agree with them.

"I believe one of the ways to develop historical thought is to confront the student with conflicting points of view." (Historian Tsafrir Goldberg - see above) This is an established fact also for non-historical thought. The tendency to quash points of view is an extension of the instinct to club opposition rather than reason with it. It explains the slide in Israeli school achievement documented in reports such as Pisa. From near the top to two from the bottom in three decades. "It is not extreme," he added,"in my view, to know that someone thinks differently than you do." (Tsafrir Goldberg again) Not in the enlightened world, no. But here in Israel, it is said to harm security and those decades referred to above have polished off any murmurings that survived the continued, increasingly institutionalized, suppression of conflicting points of view.

Yes, our pupils should be presented with history as seen from both sides of the coin and then formulate their own opinions. Such presentation will encourage use of higher order thinking skills. I'd also recommend additional reading of titles such as Sandy Tolan's "The Lemon Tree".

Your title for the article is very misleading. One might understand it as meaning that the entire book is written from a Palestinian point of view. Not so. Any teacher or text which ignores the very existence of a Palestinian view is distorting history and failing to educate informed thinking students. The title should read "Israeli textbook under review for also presenting Palestinian view of 'nakba'.