by David Collier |
It is not often I am shocked. I have been working through the
opening section of a school textbook that is used to teach 16-year olds in the
UK about the Arab Israeli conflict. It is part of the GCSE (General Certificate
of Secondary Education) curriculum.
The Zionist Federation brought this to my attention a few days ago.
The ZF provided me with the textbook along with some of their own comments and
I said I would take a look. The short downloadable report contains
a summary of what I found inside.
I can begin by saying that the fact this textbook is part of the
Pearson Library and is taught inside British schools is utterly shameful. The
central messages are those that you would find inside an anti-Israel propaganda
book. It is carefully constructed and far more subtle, but the longer you read
- the angrier you become. How many children inside state funded schools have
been exposed to this type of indoctrination? Someone somewhere needs to explain
how this can occur without someone raising an issue.
There is nothing right about this textbook. Nothing. With all the
authority of a school textbook - who would question its legitimacy?
This book has NO PLACE inside a classroom. It is poisonous - it
rewrites history - it whitewashes anti-Jewish violence - and every child who
has studied from it - has been exposed to hard-core anti-Zionist revisionist
material. Faithfully delivered to them by their teacher, their school and the
taxpayer.
First example from the book. The year is 1929.
'In August 1929, angry clashes occurred over holy sites in
Jerusalem. These grew into 4 days of bloody riots and mob violence throughout
Palestine, leaving 133 Jews and 116 Arabs dead.'
That is how the 'school' book describes the bloody massacres of
Jewish communities as Arab mobs ran riot throughout Mandatory Palestine. As
'Arab / Jew' clashes:
The comparable fatality count is more than deceptive. The reason
116 Arabs died, is because the British killed them as they tried to stop them
massacring Jews.
A second example. The book spends three pages
explaining the Oslo Peace process - and then asks the students to explain the
failure of the process - but never once mentioned the exploding buses in
Israel's streets - and only mentioned a single terror attack during this
period. How can a student possibly explain the failure of Oslo if you don't
mention the 100s of Israelis slain in Israeli streets?
A third example. It is impossible to know where
some of the text comes from. Whist the book was busy trying to tell students
that Arabs and Jews both joined the allied war effort in equal number - no
mention was made of the Palestinian leadership's alliance with the Nazis.
Summary
The book continues in similar fashion, Israel is always looking for
the 'excuse' to fight. Students are manipulated through imagery, misleading
maps and distorted statistics. The book's exercises and suggested activities
are all designed to reinforce the story the book is clearly trying to tell.
During the Arab anti-British violence, the focus is on Arab victims and the
unfair and harsh British attitude. When the Jewish people were violent,
sympathies are switched. Suddenly the focus becomes the British victims. The
book does describe the violence of the Second Intifada but never uses the word
terrorist to do so. Throughout the book, the word terrorist is (almost)
exclusively reserved for Jewish actions.
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