The New York Times reports today that a new study is attempting to downplay the role that incitement to hatred in Palestinian schools is playing in fueling the conflict. The study is the product of the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, a left-leaning ecumenical group that is partially financed by a grant from the U.S. State Department. The group claims as its goal to promote peace and understanding and their study’s conclusion purports to be as even-handed as their approach to peace.
But the report’s claim that there is a rough moral equivalence between the attitudes of the Israeli and Palestinian education systems toward the promotion of hate is so far removed from reality as to render it useless as a measure of the problem. That study, which was rejected by a number of the academics who were part of the group commissioned to analyze the issue, must therefore be considered a contribution to the propaganda war against Israel rather than an effort to pave the way for accord between the two peoples.
As the Times noted:
Arnon Groiss, another Israeli member of the advisory panel, an Arabist, and the researcher and author of many previous reports critical of the Palestinian Authority textbooks, also refused to endorse the report, saying last week that he had not seen a final version. But he insisted that the authority’s textbooks “prepare the pupils for a future armed struggle for the elimination of the state of Israel.”
To seize on two points brought up in the Times article highlights the dishonesty of such a conclusion. The report claims that both school systems publish textbooks with maps that do not always show the other side’s claims. In practice this means that some Israeli books have maps that do not show the “green line” that marks the border between the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel while all Palestinian books depict both Israel and the territories as the state of Palestine.
That sounds like the same thing but it really isn’t. Israeli books depict the reality that the Jewish state does have control over the entire area. Asking them to show maps that show a state of Palestine that doesn’t already exist is absurd. On the other hand, what the Palestinians are showing not only contradicts reality but also shows their dream of destroying Israel.
The other example is even more egregious. The Times skims over the fact that the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority honors suicide bombers and other terrorists not just in schools but also in other venues. But it then compares this to the way Israeli schools honor the memory of Josef Trumpeldor, the hero of the defense of Tel Hai. Trumpeldor famously said after being fatally wounded that “Never mind, it’s good to die for our country.” The report compares this to the ethos of suicide bombers but the difference is that Trumpeldor died fighting to defend Jews from slaughter at the hands of Arab attackers, not deliberately sacrificing his life in order to kill innocents as the terrorists do.
It needs to be understood that the research on Palestinian education and media is voluminous and has left little doubt about the fact that the PA uses the schools as well as TV and radio to promote a nationalist spirit that sees the Jews as interlopers in the land which must be cleansed of their presence. If that has changed, there needs to be evidence that is not forthcoming. By contrast, peace education has been an integral part of the curriculum in Israeli schools since the beginning of the Oslo process 20 years ago. That means any assertion that there is any comparison between what is going on in the schools seems to hinge on the idea that telling the truth about the Palestinians will undermine the tenuous hope for peace.
This kind of thinking is similar to the mistakes made by both the United States government and some Israeli leaders who spent the 1990s ignoring Palestinian violations of the peace accords because they thought holding them accountable would derail negotiations. But, as veteran peace processor Dennis Ross later admitted, this was a cardinal error that only encouraged the Palestinians to trash any hope of peace and led to the violence of the second intifada.
The point here is not just that this report is wrongheaded but that it undermines hopes for peace rather than encouraging them. True interfaith understanding rests on facing the facts about the two different cultures, not pretending they are both the same when the differences are so powerful.
as soon as they can show me the Israeli equivalent of Farfur–the jihadi mouse from who is killed by Zionists–on a children's TV show–then we'll talk. until then, moral equivalence is just a joke.
Abbas, the President for life gave a public interview not so many days ago declaring that "the Zionists" worked with the Nazis, imploring them to kill Jews to further their nationalist aspirations. So have Israeli officials made public statements that the Palestinian leadership in WWII urged the Nazi's to kill Jews to further the Palestinian na…. n noh wait, that actually did happen. n nWell, have Israelis disseminated the accusation that Palestinians urged foreign powers to kill *Palestinians* to force the agenda of a Palestinian state? Well no, who, after all, would believe that a people were so monstrous that they would kill their own men women and children en masse to achieve a political goal? n nNobody. You'ld be making the case that a community were satanically removed from human sympathies from humanity itself. In practical terms you'd be preparing to literally cut them out branch and root. You'ld be. n nOh. That's where started.
I have been saying for years that white guilt may doom Western Civilization. We are at the point that any criticism of somebody deemed a racial minority is considered racist. What about the jokes concerning Vikings, Irish drunks, or Southern trailer trash?
Nathan Hale, the great American patriot, also said "I regret but that I have one life to give for my country," shortly before the British hung him as a spy. Seems to me that those who wrote this report would equate Hale with a suicide bomber as well. n nSomething is terribly wrong with western perspective of reality. But not surprised that the US State Department funded this ridiculousness. State is an Arabists dream come true and grossly anti-Israel. (Remember State's religious freedom report stated that Saudi Arabia was religiously progressive and Israel violates people's freedom of religion.)The authors of this report must be grand contortionists to get the final analysis as politically correct as they did in order to please their masters at Foggy Bottom and friends in the absurdly anti-Israel left.
Exactly right. Trumpeldor's comment echoed Hale's. It isn't glorifying martyrdom, it's accepting it. A doomed man seeing that he's giving his life for a cause is far different from convincing others to sacrifice their lives if they don't have to. Kershner was stupid to use that example of "evenhandedness."
There is no moral equivalency. The Arabs lived on the land. The Jews stole it.
What moral equivalence? The Arabs lived on the land; the Jews stole it.
Here let us wipe the spittle from your chin. Ah, and the dentures are slipping. "The Jews"–well the tease at least is finished. "Der Juden". And "stole" my my my. From the Arabs who, of course, manufactured it. The Arabs lived on the graves of Byzantium but never mind. It isn't about the Arabs either, is it? You hate the Jews and you are waiting for the prize to be delivered The payoff. The absolution. That was in your pocket all the time and you turned it to shite.
History, archeology, comparative religion and jurisprudence all prove, from the river to the sea, the land belongs to the Jews. NO part of Israel + "West Bank" (Judea and Samaria) has EVER been an Arab/Islamic/"Palestinain" country. NO part of Jerusalem has EVER been the capital of any Arab/Islamic/"Palestinian" capital. Let us keep in mind that the first temple was built 1500 years BEFORE the advent of Islam! n nShort form articles on the above with many references for further reading : go to web site Myths and Facts. n nShort book on the history of the region and the conflict: "History Upside down, The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression" by David Meir-Levi. If you want to read further, there is a lengthy bibliography.
Defeat in two rebellions 1900-odd years ago is not a title deed. Israel exists by right of conquest. A done deal, for a century or two, but don't embellish it with silly propaganda. It's unbecoming. Thank Joe Stalin for Czech weaponry and have done with it.
The Mandate recognized Jews' right to all the land from the river to the sea, including ALL of Jerusaelm. San Remo conference, 1920, the free world voted in complete agreement – post Ottoman (Turkish) Empire desire of the free world to return lands to its rightful owners. Post Mandate Arab riots, non stop murder of Jews, pogroms ordered by the Grand Mufti, brought the Peel Commission, a rabid act of appeasement, suggestion to split the land, this eventually became the post WWII Partition – to which Israel agreed, supremacist Arabs said no. n nIn international law, land won in DEFENSIVE wars belongs to the victors. This is recognized in all cases except when it comes to the Jews. Israel fought not one but two defensive wars, 1968 and 1972. For the jurisprudence short form see Myths and Facts, long form see the writings of Prof. Louis Beres. n nHistory, archeology, comparative religion AND jurisprudence, the land from the river to the sea belongs to the Jews. Any and every attempt the Jews have made to negotiate away their Birthright has been met with rejectionism and violence. appeasement has always been, and will always be, a strategy for suicide. n n n n n
"This is recognized in all cases except when it comes to the Jews." nGrumpy is a power user of the Bensky Corollary.
"Israel exists by right of conquest. " nOh, unlike the Ottoman Empire, the last 'recognized' sovereign of the area? nAnd unlike Jordan? And the UK? And the US? Unlike the territories of the native tribes that preceded European settlement of North America? n nYeah, we get it Grumpy — whatever the Jews had, have or ever will have, they came by illegitimately. n nYou're awfully self-righteous for someone who lives on land stolen from the Ojibwa and the Minneconnjou Lakota.
If one were to accept Grumpy's premise—nobody's property rights would be secure anywhere on this planet. Who owned the land I live on some 400 years ago? I have no idea. The law also says in the vast majority of cases that it doesn't even matter.
he's a classic anti-Semite, the only little candle of hope in the wasteland of his soul is his hatred of the Jew, the rest of the spirit is sacrificed to keep that one wan vicious flame alive.
Title was given 2000 years before those "rebellions" . The only decisive argument to anti-Semites such as yourself is mortality. Until you shuffle off this sad sad world, made a little bleaker by your presence, you will cash in your disability checks, put on your lederhosen, shine up your Waffen SS medals and come here to expectorate. So keep encouraging Palestinians to try their own conquest. They'll find the weaponry has improved. Possession is maintained, day by day. And that's the title. That the Jews keep their land in the face of Nazis, ex-Nazis, could-been Nazis and their international menagerie of apt pupils.
Most peoples, except maybe the Basques and the Bushmen, live on conquered territory, and after a time, it's foolish to try to undo it. Germany is not demanding Silesia, nor the Greeks Pontus. After a time, irredentism becomes a futile approach to life and politics. n nUnfortunately for the Israelis, they decided to occupy a territory that was more densely populated than Australia or the Great Plains, and the folks the displaced have lots of friends who will give lip service to their grievances. Still, they won, there was an exchange of populations, and by most precedents of modern history, that should end the story for a while. n nWhat grates is the moralizing and the legal fictions. Why isn't "We won. Get over it" enough?
A selective and fundamental inability to even comprehend Jewish history as even being within the scope of history, encourages the implicit threat that unique among the peoples of the world, the Palestinians ought, should, and will reclaim a land whose settlement by Jews is nullified ex cathedra, as in focusing on the loss of the Second Commonwealth as if that loss defined the chronicle of the First and Second Commonwealths before that loss, a period of state sovereignty, instituted lost and renewed five hundred years longer in extent and counting than the years extending from the voyage of Columbus to the present day. n nDeed of title? could be. n nAnd yes, the modern Zionists were well aware that the Biblical period was the Biblical period. Zionism, an act of renewal, or interpretation, of reinterpretation, of will, was of its own period and time but not unanchored from the previous periods, Diaspora and pre-Diaspora. The modern Zionists, to give one example, were fully aware that they were reviving Hebrew as a lingua franca, taking it from the sacerdotal preserve and, against the wishes of some, replacing Yiddish as the daily means of communication. n nThis doesn't have the simplicity of a legend but that doesn't make it a fiction. The Tanach isn't straight-up chronicle but it isn't a fiction. And were you read, say, Judges, and the tale of the wandering levite, you would encounter a historiographical awareness which is non-moralizing and unflinching in its awareness of the pitfalls and responsibilities and failures of conquest. Sabras today, sabras then: nu05d5u05bcu05deu05b7u05d4u05be u05d6u05b6u05bcu059bu05d4 u05eau05b9u05bcu05d0u05deu05b0u05e8u05a5u05d5u05bc u05d0u05b5u05dcu05b7u0596u05d9 u05deu05b7u05d4u05be u05dcu05b8u05bcu05bdu05dau05b0u05c3 n nIt' makes a lot more sense standing where we are and looking out than it does standing outside with face pressed angrily and uncomprehending against the window looking in. For sure, from that point of view, people are gesticulating, peoples mouths are moving, but nobody is saying anything and nothing makes any sense. Well, yeah.
The statements highlighted in the Israeli books about the PLO are statements of fact that the PLO agrees are entirely true. The statements highlighted in the religious books used in the fourth grade are silly on their face. Of course a book used for 8 year olds in a religious school are going to be somewhat lyrical and biblical, that's the point.
The Mandate recognized Jews' right to all the land from the river to the sea, including ALL of Jerusaelm. San Remo conference, 1920, the free world voted in complete agreement – post Ottoman (Turkish) Empire desire of the free world to return lands to its rightful owners. Post Mandate Arab riots, non stop murder of Jews, pogroms ordered by the Grand Mufti, brought the Peel Commission, a rabid act of appeasement, suggestion to split the land, this eventually became the post WWII Partition – to which Israel agreed, supremacist Arabs said no. n nIn international law, land won in DEFENSIVE wars belongs to the victors. This is recognized in all cases except when it comes to the Jews. Israel fought not one but two defensive wars, 1968 and 1972. For the jurisprudence short form see Myths and Facts, long form see the writings of Prof. Louis Beres. n nHistory, archeology, comparative religion AND jurisprudence, the land from the river to the sea belongs to the Jews. Any and every attempt the Jews have made to negotiate away their Birthright has been met with rArab ejectionism and violence. Appeasement has always been, and will always be, a strategy for suicide
So propaganda doesn't have any negative effects? The Nazis taught the citizens of Germany to hate and look at what happened. There are well-educated highly intelligent people in our own country who grew up being educated in Arab countries and still believe as adults that Jewish people are evil and dangerous. Propaganda works. That is why lying is a sin.
"That is why lying is a sin. " nUnless of course you are lying about Jews, when the NYT applies the Bensky Corolllary so that it is not a sin. n nSimilarly, truthfully warning people that someone wants to commit genocide against them, and warning the world as well, is usually considered praiseworthy. Unless of course we are talking about genocide against Jews, in which case — well, you get the idea.
A pretty good summation, "g". Without anti-Semitism to fuel it, how could the entire world unite to demand virtual suicide from the only democratic, freedom-loving, peaceful nation in a sea of crazed, genocidal hate-mongers.