Know your conflict: Israeli vs Palestinian textbooks
The next time someone accuses Palestinians of publishing textbooks that incite hatred against Jews and Israel, send them this article in the Forward. An exhaustive survey of the back-and-forth over school textbooks, sermons, maps, naming streets after (Jewish) terrorists, and who out there has the credibility to have the final say.
KFJ, you act like this was always the case, which is absurd. Yes, in the past two years, and not before, Fayaad has acted to remove the more egregious cases of blatant racism and incitement from school textbooks and replace propagandists with technocrats and professionals. If you spent any time following ATFP, you’d know that this is an ongoing process, that a declaration of victory over longstanding, ingrained prejudice and historical misconception is fast premature, and that external pressure focuses minds and allows Fayaad to continue his programs, in the face of considerable opposition.
Continuing an earlier thread we were having about misinformation and the settlements, remember that sheep burning story a few days ago? After being published in numerous media sources, including Haaretz (the talkbacks are priceless), the Palestinian finally admitted that he started a brush fire which went out of control. Blaming Jewish settlers seemed like a perfectly convenient way to hide his negligence and dishonor before his own family and village.
The question is, how did a a felahe go from accidentally burning his own sheep to death to getting hold of leading Israeli human rights organizations which ran with the story accusing Jewish settlers without a shred of evidence?
I guess a better question is, will Yesh Din and B’Tselem apologize and revise their approach to spreading misinformation bordering on propaganda about Jewish settlers?
Here’s the link to the follow-up story, which seems not to interest Haaretz very much, or many others in the Israeli and foreign media, including Mondoweiss.