Reports on Palestinian kids hatred grossly exaggerated
by Len Traubman
"Where do persistent reports of incitement in Palestinian textbooks come from?" asks Nathan Brown, a Jewish professor of political science at George Washington University.
"Virtually all can be traced back to the work of a single organization, the 'Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace,'" founded by Israeli
Itamar Marcus. Those involved "rely on misleading and tendentious reports to support their claim of incitement," writes Brown, in a 2001 report delivered at Israel's Adam Institute for Democracy and Peace.
Link:
Reports on Palestinian kids' hatred grossly exaggerated | j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California
Itamar Marcus (just in case someone out there doesn't know) is an extremist Israeli settler who is on a mission to convince the world that Palestinians are a subhuman death cult who only produce children in order to indoctrinate them to become suicide bombers.
Marcus lives in the illegal squatter camp of Efrat (established in 1980 deep in the Palestinian West Bank between Bethlehem and Hebron.) His goal is to inflame Islamophobia in the Western world, to demonize and delegitimatize Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular.
Marcus is the hate-monger behind both "Palestinian Media Watch" and the "Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace," his personal anti-Palestinian propaganda factories. Marcus is also the featured looney-tune in such Islamophobic garbage as Obsession: Radical Islams War with the West.
Just for kicks, let's look at what Israeli textbooks teach their kids, according to Israeli scholars:
"The Arab Image in Hebrew School Textbooks" by professor Dan Bar-Tal of the Tel Aviv University makes a study of 124 textbooks used in Israeli schools and reports that "over the years, generations of Israeli Jews were taught a negative and often delegitimizing view of Arabs." The two main traits of Arabs in the textbooks are "primitiveness, inferiority in comparison to Jews" and "their violence, to characteristics like brutality, untrustworthiness, cruelty, fanaticism, treacherousness and aggressiveness."
In the 1980s and 1990s, "Geography books for the elementary and junior high schools stereotype Arabs negatively, as primitive, dirty, agitated, aggressive, and hostile to Jews
history books in the elementary schools hardly mention Arabs
history textbooks of the high schools, the majority of which cover the Arab-Jewish conflict, stereotype the Arabs negatively. Arabs are presented as intransigent and uncompromising.
"The parents and the grandparents of the present generation," says Bar-Tal, "were provided with the same negative image of the Arabs in their school textbooks as we see today, within the context of the prolonged Jewish-Arab conflict. One might add that it takes many years to rewrite school textbooks and a few generations to change the societal beliefs about the stereotyping and delegitimization of the Arabs."
Link:
Palestine - Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture
Israeli writer/researcher Adir Cohen, in his book "Ugly Face in the Mirror," examines the nature of children's upbringing in Israel.
One section of the book was based on the results of a survey taken of a group of 4th to 6th grade Jewish students at a school in Haifa. The pupils were asked five questions about their attitude toward Arabs, how they recognize them and how they relate to them. The results were as shocking as they were disturbing:
Seventy five percent of the children described the Arab as a murderer, one who kidnaps children, a criminal and a terrorist. Eighty percent said they saw the Arab as someone dirty with a terrifying face. Ninety percent of the students stated they believe that Palestinians have no rights whatsoever to the land in Israel or Palestine
Cohen also researched 1,700 Israeli childrens books published after 1967. He found that 520 of the books contained humiliating, negative descriptions of Palestinians. He also took pains to break down the descriptions:
Sixty six percent of the 520 books refer to Arabs as violent; 52 percent as evil; 37 percent as liars; 31 percent as greedy; 28 percent as two-faced; 27 percent as traitors, etc.
Cohen points out that the authors of these childrens books effectively instill hatred toward Arabs by means of stripping them of their human nature and classifying them in another category. In a sampling of 86 books, Cohen counted the following descriptions used to dehumanize Arabs: Murderer was used 21 times; snake, 6 times; dirty, 9 times; vicious animal, 17 times; bloodthirsty, 21 times; warmonger, 17 times; killer, 13 times; believer in myths, 9 times; and a camels hump, 2 times.
Cohens study concludes that such descriptions of Arabs are part and parcel of convictions and a culture rampant in Hebrew literature and history books. He writes that Israeli authors and writers confess to deliberately portraying the Arab character in this way, particularly to their younger audience, in order to influence their outlook early on so as to prepare them to deal with Arabs.
Link:
Israeli Textbooks and Childrens Literature Promote Racism and Hatred Toward Palestinians and Arabs
As far as the "cancer" quote, I'd like to see it in the original Arabic. I suspect he may have been referring to the illegal Israeli settlements, but it's hard to say without the actual quote. Even so, it wouldn't be without precedent:
"Q: There is something surprising in the fact that you see the Palestinian threat as an existential threat.
"A: The characteristics of that threat are invisible, like cancer. When you are attacked externally, you see the attack, you are wounded. Cancer, on the other hand, is something internal. Therefore, I find it more disturbing, because here the diagnosis is critical. If the diagnosis is wrong and people say it's not cancer but a headache, then the response is irrelevant. But I maintain that it is cancer. My professional diagnosis is that there is a phenomenon here that constitutes an existential threat.
"Q: Does that mean that what you are doing now, as chief of staff, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is applying chemotherapy?
A: There are all kinds of solutions to cancerous manifestations. Some will say it is necessary to amputate organs. But at the moment, I am applying chemotherapy, yes."
-Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, interview with Haaretz, The Enemy Within, August 30 2002
Link:
The enemy within - Haaretz - Israel News
And of course in 2001, Rehavam Zeevi, Israels "Minister of Tourism, referred to Palestinians working or living illegally in Israel as lice and a cancer.
(Zeevi was the founder of the extremist Moledet party, which enthusiastically advocated the expulsion of all Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza. Zeevi urged that this could be easily accomplished by such various means as military force, or cutting electricity and water to force Palestinians to leave their land... he called this volunteer transfer.)