ISRAEL PRODUCES TEXTBOOKS FOR ISRAELI-ARABS CITING PALI VERSION OF 1948 WAR

Israeli Arab schoolbooks cite Palestinian version of war
JERUSALEM (AFP) - History textbooks for Israeli Arab students this year will for the first time present the Palestinian version of Israel’s creation as a “catastrophe,” the education ministry said on Sunday.

“For these types of events, both the Israeli and Palestinian versions have to be presented,” Education Minister Yuli Tamir said in a statement.

Alongside presenting the Israeli interpretation of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the books will also present the version “that is generally accepted among the Arabs, according to which Israel’s War of Independence is perceived as a catastrophe (Naqba) by the Palestinians,” Tamir said.

Another Catastrophe by Emanuele Ottolenghi (Contentions)
School textbooks used by Israeli Arabs will henceforth embrace the new historians’ version of history: the 1948 Israeli War of Independence is now officially “al-Naqba” (the Catastrophe), in books vetted by Israel’s Education Ministry. Education Minister Yuli Tamir defended her decision by saying that “the Arab public deserves to be allowed to express their feelings.” The Minister is entitled to believe, of course, that textbooks are the natural conduit for the expression of collective feelings—rather than the preferred instrument of instruction in history. But the real question is not whether Israeli Arabs—or a guilt-ridden minister—should be allowed to “express their feelings.” They are, and they do (as anyone who has spent any time in Israel can tell you). The real question is: should the discipline of history be the victim of those feelings? (Hillel Halkin’s 1999 COMMENTARY article “Was Zionism Unjust?” suggests an answer.)