Scandal in the third grade
The Arabic version expands on life in Arab cities, including Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa. Jewish children are apparently not allowed to know about this, perhaps because after 67 pages of education for political correctness they are liable to identify with those urban Arabs and ask what happened to them.
By Tom SegevThe marketing people of the Center for Educational Technology (CET) tried this week to gauge whether the scandal surrounding a textbook that mentions the Nakba would help its sales. Maybe not, but let's hope it will. "Living Together in Israel," by Ophira Gal and Shira Goodman, is a very good book, perhaps a final attempt to save Israeli society from itself, beginning in third grade. The intention of the book's creators is to inculcate political awareness and social involvement, sensitivity to the fundamentals of democracy and tolerance, human and civil rights and sexual equality, and basic responsibility for the environment. The chapter about Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is less than successful, both in Hebrew and in Arabic.
The political scandal that erupted this week revolved around one sentence in the Arabic version: "The Arabs call the war 'Nakba,' that is, a war of disaster and loss, while the Jews call it the 'War of Independence.'" The true scandal lies in the fact that this sentence is not included in the version intended for Jewish students, as though the Nakba is merely part of Arab village folklore. Jewish students who use CET textbooks will come across the term for the first time in ninth grade.
Arab children learn too little about the history of Zionism from the book. They are not allowed to know that according to Israel's Declaration of Independence, the state is open to Jewish immigration, as that sentence was deleted from the Arabic version. The Holocaust is mentioned in the Arabic book only in a photo caption. On the other hand, Arab children learn about the persecution of Jews abroad as one of the reasons for the birth of the Zionist idea. That is correct. The Jews learn about Zionism only within the context of European nationalism, and while that may sit well with political correctness, it is not correct.
The Arab students learn what a homeland is. "A homeland is the place where a person is born and where he lives, or the place where his ancestors were born, or the place he feels he belongs to, which is his home. Israel is our homeland." Not, that is, Palestine. In Hebrew there is no explicit renunciation of the West Bank, but the homeland is identified with the State of Israel, not the Land of Israel. There are no territories, apart from East Jerusalem and Mount Hermon, which were annexed to Israel, and a boy named Maor who is said to live in Alon Shvut, in the West Bank, as though that settlement were like any other Israeli community. All the rest is bounded by the Green Line, as it used to be: There is no occupation, no Palestinians. Political correctness in a bubble. The Hebrew also lacks the following, which appears in the Arabic version: "The Arabs call this country Palestine and the Jews call it the Land of Israel." The Arabs must understand that "each side believed in its rightness." The Jews do not have to understand that Arab rightness also exists.
In the Hebrew book, the Zionists brought progress and even founded a theater. As for the Arabs, most are said to have lived in villages and earned their living from farming. The Arabic version expands on life in Arab cities, including Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa. Jewish children are apparently not allowed to know about this, perhaps because at the end of 67 pages of education for political correctness they are liable to identify with those urban Arabs and ask what happened to them.
The answer: "Some of the Arab residents fled or were expelled from their homes and became refugees. The Arab residents who stayed on to live in the new state became citizens of the country." That is not the whole truth, so it is worse than a lie. The "some" constituted a large majority of the Arab population, and the Arabs who remained in Israel did not become citizens with equal rights.
In Arabic, too, the refugees are described as "some" of the population: "Some of the Arab residents were compelled to leave their homes and some were expelled, and they became refugees in the neighboring Arab states. The majority of the Arabs who remained in the country stayed in their communities, but some of them became refugees and were compelled to move to other Arab communities within Israel, because their villages were destroyed during the war and afterward." That is more accurate, but it appears that Arab students, too, are not allowed to know everything - for example, that there were Arabs who were not heroes and who "fled." The Arab teachers are obviously expected to be able to explain the difference between "were compelled to leave" and "were expelled."
At this point, the Arabic version adds information about the military rule and the expropriation of land that does not appear in the Hebrew version. Such are the limitations of political correctness: Instead of telling the Jewish children the ugly truth, we send them with a kind of subversive wink to search for material on the Internet about several places, among them Kafr Kassem. So the book would benefit from some improvements, and it also contains mistakes. The Hebrew version will have to be reprinted in any event: It contains a photograph of former president Moshe Katsav - that may be suitable for the ninth grade but definitely not for the third.
Meanwhile, back in Washington
The Congressional Human Rights Caucus, headed by Representative Tom Lantos, this week heard testimony about the bitter fate of Jews in Arab states and how they were expelled from their homes after Israel's establishment. The hearing was connected to a draft law that would require the president to instruct every administration official to mention the Jewish refugees whenever they talk or write about the Arab refugees. The initiative, which is sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, is considered "pro-Israeli." In fact, it is a two-edged sword that could, theoretically, reverse the course of history: Let the Palestinian refugees return to their homes, let the Jews return to the Arab states and everything will be hunky-dory. Apparently no one today is claiming that the Jews from Arab states found a warm home in Israel.
Between Manila and Rishon Letzion
A few hundred Filipinos, most of them home health aides, recently held a benefit at a Jaffa banquet hall to create a local monument to honor efforts in their home country to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. This moving story is not widely known: Over 1,000 Jews, most of them from Germany, found refuge in the Philippines from the war. Ironically, the Holocaust pursued them all the way there, in the form of the Japanese, but they survived.
The president of the Philippines at the time, Manuel Quezon, welcomed the Jewish refugees. Like Yekkes - Jews of German origin - elsewhere, the Yekkes of Manila tried to maintain their German way of life. One of them, Max Weissman, now lives in Hod Hasharon. He was 11 when the family arrived in Manila. At home they spoke German, in the street he learned the local language, which he still speaks today. Now 77, he remains in touch with the Philippines and is involved in the monument project. It will be erected in Memorial Garden in Rishon Letzion, not far from an avenue that honors the Righteous Gentiles.
Junyee, a Filipino artist, won the design competition for the monumemt. "Open Doors" is to be an eight-meter-high work consisting of three open doors made of iron on a marble plinth. The work can also express the gratitude that so many Israelis owe to Filipino workers who take such devoted care of their parents.
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Segev...I susect you researched this? My goodness, everyone knows just how much hatred the Palestinian textbooks have... Additionally, how about the famous Farfur mouse (killed by the Israelis) and the now bee that screams of hatred and killing and martrydom. Good grief man, are you a bit nuts?
What nonsense is Tom Segev Spouting now? My family and hundreds of thousands are very happy with our lives here. We were provided with free housing, ulpan and the OPPORTUNITY to advance. Our plight has been ignored for too long. We never fought against our neighbors (as the Palestinan arabs did) but were still persecuted and expelled. For Mr. Segev to treat this as some kind of joke is unforgiveable but not surprising. If he and his trendy friends would put half the effort of looking out for the interests of Jewish refugees as opposed to Palestinians he would have a lot more credibility.
Elsas strasse. There are forces inb Germany demanding its Eastern lands back. Now,as to "self made catastrophy"-aren't the pals victims of own self-made catastrophy? They lost the war as Germans did.
Interesting to see people comparing Middle Eastern civil wars with the German "Vertreibung". Most Germans view the 2nd World War and its mass killings as an entirely self-made catastrophy, and the "Vertreibung" as a result of German crimes and the war. After the war, refugees were integrated into a strong Western Germany, some in Eastern Germany. The existence of prosperous Eastern and Western states was a critical element for the Germans of that period to take a realistic approach to things. They felt that they eventually they overcome their past and develop into a positive force in Europe. This made the disastrous events into a past catastrophy and not an ongoing "nakba". None of these conditions are met as far as the Palestinians are concerned. No state - no place to integrate the refugees - no end of border disputes - no compensation for the losses of the refugees. All parties have only to blame themselves for this state of affairs
I agree with the poster who says in the internet age, information is available everywhere. The real problem is the disgraceful state of Israeli education: turning out functional illiterates, high dropout rates, and a separate, and unequal system of Israeli, Arab and religious schools. A disaster in waiting.
what avail results from introducing the naqba in the curriculum of arab kids? it is to be supposed that anyway they are taught by parents and myriads of arab stories about 1948. instead the israel education ministry should do its mission by educating the jewish kids about naqba putting the arab side of the story aside the wellknown and bereft of credebility version of how the IDF begged the arabs to stay and not to run away .
Kids don't grow up to believe in Santa Claus all their life. At a certain age, curiosity and intelligence will kick in and each one will find his own answers about history and the facts of life.
deporting of millions after the WW2 from the E.Europe,lest his former E.European overlords would protest. So he takes his masochist trait on his own people "Repent you won,make amends for nort being wiped out!"
Maybe the Jews would prefer to write the Arab history texts and let the Arabs write the Jews history texts. I suspect that each side would learn something new.
Ibn Ishaq* or Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar, according to Guillaume (pp. xiii-xiv), was born around 704 CE in Medina , died in Baghdad about 767-770 CE according to (Robinson 2003, p. xv) . He was the grandson of Yasar, who had been captured in one of Khalid ibn al-Walid's* campaigns and taken to Medina as a slave. Yasar converted to Islam and was freed. Yasar's son Ishaq was a traditionist, who collected and recounted tales of the past. Muhammad ibn Ishaq was thus carrying on the work of his father. Guillaume, A. --The Life of Muhammad, Oxford University Press, 1955, reprinted in 2003. Robinson, Chase -- Islamic Historiography, Cambridge University Press, 2003, Khalid ibn al-Walid * (592 - 642) also known as Sayf-Allāh (Arabic: Sword of God), was one of the two renowned Arab generals (see also: Amr ibn al-A'as) during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th Century. He is noted for his military prowess commanding the forces of Muhammad and those of his immediate successors of the Rashidun Caliphate; Umar ibn al-Khattab and Abu Bakr..
of Israel under the caliph Omar in 638 CE. According to Muslim tradition, Caliph Umar occupied Jerusalem , ordered a converted to show him David's sanctuary or (mihrab Dawud), Qur'an (38:21). Umar ordered a place of prayer (musalla) to be established there. This evolved into a mosque-precursor of the later Aqsa Mosque. Thus began the Islamization of the complex that later came to be known as the Haram al-Sharif. Historical sources describe the participation of the Jews in cleaning up the refuse on the Temple Mount, and their help in identifying the location of the Rock. Initially, the Jews were responsible not only for cleaning up the Temple Mount, but also for cleaning the Al-Aqsa Mosque until caliph Umar b. Abd al-Aziz (717-720) replaced the Jews with slaves from the state treasury, accusing the Jews of praying there. Subsequently, the Jews were restricted to praying near one of the Temple Mount gates. The Qur`an exegesis,began at the end of the first century of the Hijra (seventh century CE), mentioned in the Qur`an is Al-Aqsa, literally 'the farthest'. This early exegesis of the Qur`an is in fact a corpus of traditions (Hadiths), organized according to relationship to specific verses in the Qur`an. Hadiths: Literally a conversation. The Hadiths are traditions passed on from one generation to another, explaining things said or done by the prophet Muhammad, as told by his companions. Some of the Hadiths supplement the instructions of the Qur'an or offer an explanation for them. The Hadiths served as the main source for reconstructing the story of the Prophet's life in an important composition by Ibn Ishaq* . The Hadiths were first edited during the eighth and ninth centuries CE. The praise literature of Jerusalem or Fadail al-Qudsis part of a larger corpus known as Fadail al-Buldan (Praises of Cities and Countries). This literary category includes legends and traditions that glorify the city or district. In the third year of the Hijra (ninth century CE) compositions describing different cities, such as Mecca, Al-Madina and Baghdad, were composed. Absent from this early literature is Jerusalem, whose earliest Fadail literature was composed in the fifth year of the Hijra (eleventh century CE). The Fadail literature of Jerusalem was by Abu Bakr Muhammad, son of Ahmad al-Wasiti. There are two further compositions, but only one, written by Al-Maali Al-Musharaf Ibn Al-Muraja, survived; the composition of his student, Abu al-Qasim al-Makki ibn Abd al-Salam al-Rumayli was lost following the Crusaders' conquest of Jerusalem (1099 CE). Various traditions tie Jerusalem and the Kaabe to the time of creation and the flood. It is also said that ?Adam descended in full glory and bowed down to the Rock of Jerusalem? (ibn muraja 41b, no. 134). According to a tradition mentioned by Mujir ad-Din: ?First it was built by the angels, then it was renovated by Adam, then by Shem son of Noah, then by Jacob son of Isaac, then by David and Solomon?? (Mujir ad-Din al-Hanabli, p. 9)
the morality of the arab revolts must be denounced once and forever . It was a war crime to block by violence people fleeing genocide particulary since palestine was not occupied by nazis . At least four million jews could have escaped . This is a far more horrible catastrophe though all crimes against civilians are to be fought .
sure, as children the arab and jewish kids learn only the propaganda version. but luckily in the age of the internet, every half-intelligent person can go around and look for the truth himself. maybe 30 years ago those books really shaped the view of a whole generation, today it merely is one source of information among millions.