Peace is no Textbook Exercise

Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas (a.ka.Abu Mazen) has been touted up and down theWest  -- not least notably in Israel – as the world’s gift to Palestinian “moderation.”  This, as opposed to those “really bad guys” in Hamas and Hezbollah.  Coveniently overlooked is his record as a certified Holocaust belittler (he grudgingly concedes it happened but claims the results were grossly inflated), bagman for the murderers of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Munich and Arafat loyalist par excellence.

Also conveniently overlooked is the fact that Abbas, as head of the PA, also controls the Palestinian school system, including the curriculum, the textbooks, the visuals and whatever else is fed into the heads of a million or so Palestinian Arab children every semester. If Abbas has traded in his Arafatian stripes for  polkadots, as his promoters claim, the surest place to look for supporting evidence would be the Palestinian classroom. David Bedein, who doubles as editor of Jerusalem-based Israel Resource News Agency and correspondent for the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia, recently took just such a look.  His conclusions are not comforting. “…The new school books that…Mahmoud Abbas has now introduced in the Palestinian Authority school system -- run independently of Hamas --” Bedein reported to the Bulletin, “represent a curriculum that prepares a new generation of Palestinians to destroy Israel.”

Referring to a  recent study of those Abbas-approved PA school texts commissioned by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (www.intelligence.org.il) in Herzliya, an outfit  solidly on the left-liberal side of the Israeli political spectrum, Bedein  has elucidated the following among the “pearls of wisdom” being showered on Palestinian children in their new textbooks:

*Israel does not exist on the maps of the world included in the PA texts. Israeli territory  -- all of it – is stamped PALESTINE.

*Haifa is identified as a “Palestinian seaport” (Vol. 2, p.7, “Our Beautiful Language,” 5th grade textbook p.86).

*Galilee, Nazareth and Bet She’an become “regions in Palestine” on p.7 of “Home Economy,”  10th grade textbook, pp.36-37.

*Textual references to Israel are confined to its “occupation of lands” in 1948 and 1967.

*Zionism is portrayed as an enemy ideology:  “The Palestinian people,” students are informed, “are under an oppressive siege, limiting their movement and way of life.”

*An “extremist Zionist” is accused on page 12 of “History of the New Modern World,”

a 10th grade textbook ( p. 106) of setting fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969 (totally ignoring the fact that a mentally unstable Australian tourist confessed to the crime).

*The forged anti-Semitic tract “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”  is cited as the basis for a secret decision on the part of the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland to foster the creation of a Zionist state on page 13 of “History of the New Modern World,” 10th grade textbook, pp. 60-64.

*The new PA texts declare that the only ancient inhabitants of today’s Israel were Arabs.

*They extol war, violence – especially martyrdom – as the sole path to the achievement of  Palestinian goals, paying tribute to the heroic mother “who incessantly presents one sacrifice (‘fida’) after another,”  (“Our Beautiful Language,” Vol 2, 5th grade textbook, P.31).  Victory or Martyrdom are offered as the wonderful options for those who go into battle “for the sake of Allah” (“Our Beautiful Language,” Vol 1, p.70).

*The new PA-approved Palestinian textbooks feature children with such names as “Jihad” (holy war) and “Nidal” (struggle).

*The return of “refugees” to all of “Palestine” is a concept pervading the new Palestinian school books. “The wrong must be made right by returning them to their homes,”  trumpets “Our Beautiful Language,” Vol 2, p.43).  “Returning to the homes, the plains and the mountains under the banners of glory, jihad and struggle” (“Our Beautiful Language,” Vol 1, p.88).

Bedein points out that the damage evoked by these texts is compounded by the fact that they have been incorporated into the curricula of the Arab schools in Jerusalem.  Moreover, he adds, “a movement is afoot in the Israeli Arab schools in the rest of Israel to adopt the PA curriculum in their schools.”  He reports that questions put before Prime Minister Olmert on this issue have gone unanswered. As then mayor of Jerusalem in 2001, his reaction to the incorporation of PA texts in the city’s Arab schools was “they can teach what they want and we will teach what we want.”

Is that still Mr. OImert’s mindset?  When the Evening Bulletin raised the issue anew last summer, an Olmert cabinet secretary replied that it was not on the prime minister’s agenda.