The portrayal of Arabs in textbooks in the Jewish school system in Israel.

• Author: Abu-Saad, Ismael

INTRODUCTION

THREE DOMINATING INFLUENCES IN the portrayal of Arabs in the Ministry of Education-approved textbooks of the Jewish school system in Israel are: 1) orientalism, 2) the Zionist mission to build a Jewish nation-state in Palestine, out of which the on-going Israeli-Arab conflict emerged, and 3) an Israeli-Jewish frame of mind determined by a victim or siege mentality.

"Orientalism" is based on the concept developed by the late Professor Edward Said (1978) that refers to the way in which Eastern cultures were viewed, described and represented by Western academic scholarship, politics, and literature. Said's main critique was aimed at how the Western economic, political and academic powers developed a dichotomized discourse in which an inherently superior West was juxtaposed with an Eastern "Other" according to terms and definitions determined by the West itself. Orientalism created an image of the Orient as separate, backward, silently different, irrational and passive. It was characterized by despotism and resistance to progress; and since the Orient's value was judged in terms of, and in comparison to the West, it was always the "Other", the conquerable and the inferior. Orientalism emerged during the era of European colonialism, and lent crucial support to the colonial endeavor of a 'superior' Europe conquering and bringing enlightenment, progress and civilization to the inferior, unenlightened inhabitants of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and Australia. When the question of the potential injustice of displacing the Palestinians in order to establish a Jewish state in Palestine was raised, Winston Churchill responded:

I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time.... I do not admit that a wrong has been done these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or at any rate, a more world-wise race ... has come in and taken their place (quoted in Prior 1999, 192). European orientalist discourse perceived and depicted Palestinian Arabs as less than fully or equally human, and this same perspective shaped the approach and attitudes of the European fathers of the Zionist movement, toward the indigenous Arab population in Palestine. For example, when the head of the colonization department of the Jewish Agency asked Chaim Weizman what he thought about the indigenous Palestinians, Weizman was quoted as saying: "The British told us that there are some hundred thousand Negros ['kushim'] and for those there is no value" (Masalha 1997, 62). These attitudes permeated the early Zionist settlement movement in Palestine, and went on to color the way in which Palestinian Arabs were depicted in the textbooks of the pre-state schools of the Jewish Zionist settlements.

The second and closely related influence to have a dominant and longstanding effect on the portrayal of Arabs in Israeli Jewish school textbooks is the mission of the Zionist movement. This nationalist movement was developed by a group of the Jewish intelligentsia in Europe in the late 1800s with the goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionism was based on the premise that Palestine was a territory which belonged exclusively to the Jewish people due to their presence on the land during biblical times. The Jewish settlement of Palestine was presented as an ideological and moral project that also provided a solution to the anti-Semitism that had plagued the Jews in their European diaspora communities (Yiftachel 2003). The Zionist movement, portrayed Palestine as a "land without a people, for a people without a land," and the Zionist immigrants to Palestine as pioneers coming to conquer an inhospitable environment, and make the barren desert bloom (Masalha 1997). With the rise of the nation-state in Europe in the 19th century, textbooks--and history textbooks in particular--were used by the state to glorify the nation, consolidate a national identity, and justify the state's social and political systems. As such, ethnocentric views, myths, stereotypes and prejudices pervaded (Apple 1990, Berghan and Schissler 1988, Jacobmeyer 1990). According to Podeh (2000), the case of Israel is no exception, and a clear distinction was "made between the 'we' (Israelis) and the 'they' (Arabs), a division ... essential for maintaining a distinct Jewish-Israeli identity and for sustaining the ability to compete successfully with the Arabs" (68). The textbooks were developed for the purpose of consolidating the national collective memory. Thus they excluded anything that might mar the image of Israel or undermine the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise (Podeh 2000). This phenomenon has had an immense impact upon how Arabs were portrayed, and what type of information was included in--and excluded from--textbooks in the Israeli Jewish school system.

The third influence relates to what Podeh (2000) describes as "a tradition of depicting Jewish history as an uninterrupted record of anti-Semitism and persecution" (76). The conflict that erupted between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish Zionist settlers coming to transform Palestine into a Jewish state was also interpreted by the settlers as baseless persecution, and therefore, the corresponding Jewish Israeli tendency was to dehumanize the Arab enemy. The ways in which the Palestinians were victimized by the Zionist mission were unacknowledged and thus, their seemingly one-sided violence against the Jews served to legitimize the proliferation of negative images of Arabs as well as the Israeli use of force against them (Podeh 2000, Shapira 1992).

THE POWER AND ROLE OF SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS

School textbooks are widely recognized as important agents of socialization that transmit and disseminate societal knowledge, including representations of one's own and other groups (Bar-Tal and Teichman 2005). According to Luke (1988), school textbooks "act as the interface between the officially state-adopted and sanctioned knowledge of the culture, and the learner. Like all texts, school textbooks remain potentially agents of mass enlightenment and/or social control," (69). Apple and Christian-Smith (1991) assert that:

Texts are really messages about the future. As part of a curriculum they participate in no less than the organized knowledge system of society. They participate in creating what a society has recognized as legitimate and truthful. They help set the cannons of truthfulness and, as such, also help recreate a major reference point for what knowledge, culture, belief, and morality really are (4). Thus, textbooks tend to dominate what students learn at school they set the curriculum, as well as the facts learned, in most subjects. In addition, the public tends to regard textbooks as essential, authoritative, and accurate knowledge. In most school systems, teachers rely on them to organize lessons and structure subject matter (Down 1988). This is particularly true in Israel since teachers are obliged to base their instruction upon Ministry of Education-approved textbooks. According to Bar-Tal and Teichman (2005):

Due to the centralized structure of the educational system in Israel, the Ministry of Education sets the guidelines for curricula development and has the authority to approve the school textbooks. Thus, the ministry outlines the didactic, scholastic and social objectives to be achieved (Eden, 1971), and the textbooks' contents reflect the knowledge that the dominant group of society is trying to impart to its members. (p. 159)

As such, textbooks are recognized as tools for developing a nation's collective memory. In this capacity they may manipulate what is included and omitted from the nation's historical narrative, in addition to using stereotypes and prejudice in describing the "other" or the national enemy (Podeh 2000, Schissler 1989-1990).

TEXTBOOK PORTRAYAL OF ARABS IN THE JEWISH SCHOOL SYSTEM

A number of researchers have studied the development of textbooks in the Jewish school system in Israel with a focus on their depiction of Arabs and the Israeli-Arab conflict. Bar-Tal and Teichman (2005) summarized the major studies done on textbooks in Jewish schools and the history of their reforms. Podeh (2000) specifically focused upon how the Israeli-Arab conflict was portrayed in textbooks for Jewish schools from 1948 to 2000. Firer's (1985) study examined history textbooks between 1900 and 1984, and their role in promoting Zionist socialization. Firer found that all of the history books in the pre-state period (1900-1948) stressed the exclusive rights of the Jewish people to ownership of Palestine. Arabs, in typical European orientalist fashion, were portrayed as a backward, primitive people with no similar ownership rights in the "neglected" land that was awaiting "Jewish redemption." As violent conflict began to erupt due to the opposing nationalisms of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs and the Zionist settlers, Jewish history textbooks also began to refer to Arabs undifferentiatedly as easily agitated robbers and vandals. Bar-Gal's (1993, 1994) study of geography textbooks in the same period produced similar findings.

The earliest geography textbooks, produced by Zionist authors who lived in Europe endorsed the view of "a land without a people for a people without a land," and tended to completely ignore the presence of the indigenous Arab population in Palestine. Later, the textbooks by authors living in Palestine continued to be characterized by orientalist attitudes of ethnocentrism and superiority toward Arab society. As violent conflict with Palestinian Arabs erupted, they began to be represented as "the enemy," and according to Bar-Gal (1993), were described as a:

... negative homogeneous mob that threatens, assaults, destroys, eradicates, burns and shoots, being agitated by haters of Israel, who strive to annihilate the most precious symbols of Zionism: vineyards, orange...