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From the Australian Jewish Democratic Society website
An article, written by Ethan Bronner, describes how new Israeli
Grade School History text books are replacing the myths of early
Israel.
http://www.ajds.org.au/myths.htm
============================================
JERUSALEM -- Few ideas are as deeply ingrained in Israeli culture as
the one summed up by the Hebrew phrase, "me'atim mul rabim," or "the
few against the many." Schoolchildren have long been taught that the
Jews have always been surrounded by enemies and that their victory
over five Arab states in the 1948 War of Independence was a near
miracle of David-and-Goliath proportions.
But the start of this school year marks a quiet revolution in the
teaching of Israeli history to most Israeli pupils. New, officially
approved textbooks make plain that many of the most common Israeli
beliefs are as much myth as fact.
The new books say, for example, that it was the Israelis who had the
military edge in the War of Independence. They say that many
Palestinians left their land not -- as has traditionally been taught -
- because they smugly expected the Arab states to sweep back in
victoriously but because they were afraid and, in some cases,
expelled by Israeli soldiers.
The books freely use the term "Palestinian" to refer to a people and
a nationalist movement, unheard of in the previous texts. They refer
to the Arabic name for the 1948 war -- the Naqba, or catastrophe --
and they ask the pupils to put themselves in the Arabs' shoes and
consider how they would have felt about Zionism.
Finally, the books no longer separate Jewish and Israeli history from
events around the world but weave them into a single tapestry.
"Only 10 years ago much of this was taboo," reflected Eyal Naveh, a
history professor at Tel Aviv University and the author of one of the
new ninth-grade textbooks on the 20th century. "We were not mature
enough to look at these controversial problems. Now we can deal with
this the way Americans deal with the Indians and black enslavement.
We are getting rid of certain myths."
The "new history" approach that Naveh and other new textbook authors
are using in their descriptions of the Israeli-Arab conflict is 10 or
15 years old. It has gained a growing following among academic
scholars and then with a somewhat larger public after the 1993 Oslo
peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.
But while the publication of such revisionism by scholars is one
thing, the inclusion of their perspective in school books is clearly
something else. In all states, but especially new ones, school is
typically viewed as a place not only to learn but to be imbued with
civic and patriotic spirit.
The fact that these new books are currently being assigned and bought
without advance publicity about the changes says something about
Israel's sense of its own maturity. But it seems nonetheless likely
that when, in the coming months, the books' contents become known,
controversy will ensue.
"Why not just translate the Palestinian books for our children and be
done with it?" fumed Aharon Megged, a novelist and outspoken critic
of the new history, when he was read a passage from a new
textbook. "This is an act of moral suicide that deprives our children
of everything that makes people proud of Israel."
The passage to which Megged was reacting was from Naveh's book, on
the War of Independence:
"On nearly every front and in nearly every battle, the Jewish side
had the advantage over the Arabs in terms of planning, organization,
operation of equipment and also in the number of trained fighters who
participated in the battle."
The approach of earlier textbooks is typified by the following from a
1984 Education Ministry book on the years 1939 to 1949: "The
numerical standoff between the two sides in the conflict was
horrifyingly unbalanced. The Jewish community numbered 650,000. The
Arab states together came to 40 million. The chances of success were
doubtful and the Jewish community had to draft every possible fighter
for the defense of the community."
This shift in perspective is common to the work of the new historians
who are relying on newly opened state archives and the emotional
distance of a young generation.
Instead of portraying the early Zionists as pure, peace-loving
pioneers who fell victim to Arab hatred, the new historians focus on
the early leaders' machinations to build an iron-walled Jewish state
regardless of the consequences for non-Jews living here.
The controversy that this narrative has generated mirrors the wider
dispute in Israel between those who favor more concessions to the
Arabs and those who fear that such concessions place Israel's
legitimacy and its very existence at risk.
But the arrival of the new textbooks also mirrors the growing
acceptance of some new history by Israelis. Last year, when the
country marked its 50th birthday, a television series known as Tkuma,
or rebirth, offered a more complex and less varnished version of
Israeli history than had been typically shown. And a new military
history book of Israel by a group of mainstream military historians
has just been published that explodes several key myths about Israeli
military feats.
Michael Yaron, who is in charge of the history curriculum at the
Ministry of Education, says the issue is one of historical accuracy;
he calls the changes salutary. He took up his post five years ago,
during the liberal administration of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,
and quietly continued his work after Benjamin Netanyahu, a
conservative, was elected in 1996, finishing approval of the new
books just as Ehud Barak, who is in Rabin's mold, was elected in the
spring.
"We are beginning a new era in history teaching where, for the first
time in Israeli textbooks, the picture is not black and white," Yaron
said. "That was an important goal of mine when I came, to make sure
the Palestinian perspective was included.
"My second goal was to end the practice of separately teaching Jewish
and Israeli history on the one hand and world history on the other.
It was absurd. We used to spend one year teaching the Holocaust and
the next teaching World War II. Now we will teach Jewish history in
the larger context of other events. This doesn't minimize Zionism. It
puts it in context."
Yaron's department began integrating Jewish and world history for
middle school in its sixth grade textbooks several years ago and is
finishing this project with the new ninth grade books that have just
been printed.
Since ninth grade history class is devoted to the 20th century, when
Israel was formed, this is the year when controversy may be expected.
Israel has a number of state-approved school systems and the new
books will only be used in the mainstream secular system that serves
about 60 percent of the population. The religious state system and
the strictly-observant systems that operate with state approval and
funds will not use the new books, meaning that the divisions between
the various sectors may now be aggravated further.
There are three new competing ninth-grade history books for the
secular system, one from the ministry's own publishing division and
two produced privately with ministry approval. All three take a much
broader, more textured approach to Israeli history than textbooks
have in the past.
New books for the 10th through 12th grades are due out in the coming
year and all take the new approach of integrating Jewish history with
world history.
One ninth-grade book is "Passage to the Past" by Kezia Tabibyan,
which not only mentions the 1948 massacre carried out by radical
Zionist forces in the village of Deir Yassin, something Ms. Tabibyan
says had never been done in a ninth-grade text before, but also
engages in a kind of historiography by asking students to reflect on
the use of myths in nation-building.
"If I want to educate the citizens of Israel after 2000 they must
know that there is another point of view about things like our War of
Independence," Ms. Tabibyan said. "They must deal with Deir Yassin.
They must know that there was another people that had their life
here."
The ministry book, edited by Danny Jacoby, is in some ways the most
radical of the three. Its discussion of why the Palestinians became
refugees includes the sentence, "There were also localities in which
the Jewish fighting forces conducted expulsion actions." The book
also frankly discusses how Jews from North Africa and the Arab world
felt mistreated by European Jews when they came here.
Clearly, part of what is driving the change in history texts is the
ongoing Middle East peace effort.
The accords between the Israelis and Palestinians call on each side
to fight racism and provocation and instruct their populations in
coexistence.
Yet one of the issues that has most troubled Israeli commentators is
the fact that the Palestinians are still using old Jordanian and
Egyptian texts which never mention Israel and often portray Jews as
evil and bloodthirsty.
An Israeli group called "Palestinian Media Watch" recently published
the findings of its study of Palestinian textbooks. In one textbook
on Arab history, the group noted, is the sentence, "The best examples
of racism and discrimination in the world are Nazism and Zionism."
Another book, for sixth graders, says, "One must be careful around
Jews because they are lying traitors."
Khalil Mahshi, director of international relations at the Palestinian
education ministry, said he is troubled by the anti-Semitism that
appears in the books used by Palestinians but noted that new books
are being written.
"We are not rewriting our school history books," he said. "We are
writing them for the first time. It will take a few more years
because we are just forming committees to set up the guidelines."
Asked if the new books would include Israeli perspectives on the
dispute, Mahshi begged for indulgence, saying that while the
Palestinians want to be treated as equals, their historical
development has not been equal to that of the Jews.
"We are attempting to be as objective as possible," he said. "We
should be living a new reality, taking a more mature view, but to do
that means overcoming pain. To see the Zionist movement as having an
equal right to our land as we do is to embark on a personal journey
to history which is more complicated than most people realize.
"It took me a long time and even then I am not there. Israelis are
changing because they can afford it. They are now so rich and
powerful that they can afford to be magnanimous and say, 'OK, there
are people here we haven't treated well.' But when you are still
dealing with daily difficulties and view them as the fault of the
people next door, can you afford to be so magnanimous?"
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