While the IDF is Destroying Schools and Shooting Children ...
A Good Article
By SAMI ADWAN (Professor of Education Bethlehem University)
CounterPunch
"On February 8, 2007 Mrs. Clinton made an incendiary statement on Palestinian schoolbooks to Itamar Marcus. This is not the first time Mrs. Clinton accused the Palestinian schoolbooks of inciting violent, teaching to hate and de-legitimizing Israel existence.....
She depended mainly on reports produced by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), of which Itamar Marcus was the director. CMIP is a right-wing center that has offices in New York and Jerusalem and is well funded, though if you read the goals of the center one can easily be deceived that it is a peace-oriented center.....
The Palestinian Authority by that time only published school books for grades one and six. Even so, CMIP's baseless accusations and allegations were presented as if they are from the newly produced Palestinian school books. The first CMIP report was circulated all over the world causing serious problems for the Palestinian education system because many countries stopped funding the development of the Palestinians school books.
The report was criticized by many scholars like, Nathan Brown, IPICRI, Daniel Bar Tal, Nurit Peled El-Khanan and Ruth Firer and others. All disagreed with CMIP's findings and found many mistakes in its translation, selective analysis, taking phrases out of context and drawing false conclusions.
Most of them concluded that Palestinian school books do not teach hate nor instigate violence, are free from stereotypes and praised them for being highly moderate, even though they were produced in extremely difficult situation-the Occupation. (See Akiva Eldar's articles in Ha'aretz. ).....
Still, Israeli school books include negative stereotypes of Palestinians. Of course they are called Arab and not Palestinians: primitive, bloodthirsty, backward, a problem, dirty, etc (For more details see Daniel Bat Tal and Nurit Peled's analysis)......
The best resource of knowledge and experience Palestinian children learn is their reality, where they are forbidden to go to schools and stopped, harassed and humiliated at Israeli military check points, their schools destroyed and sometimes used as military posts. Many pupils are shot while going to their schools or playing in streets; others are jailed. They are daily terrorized and traumatized, seeing their parents humiliated in front of them. Their books were torn apart and their childhoods spoiled. These are facts Mrs. Clinton could not or dared not include in her statements......
Most scholars agreed the analysis of the CMIP was not professionally done and is motivated by a political agenda. Mainly, the purposes of the report are to fight the development and crystallization of the Palestinians identity, to keep the public from sympathizing with the Palestinians' suffering during forty years of continual Israeli Occupation and to cut funds to Palestinian education in general and to the development of the Palestinian school books in particular.....
Who is this Itamar Marcus? Itamar Marcus is originally from New York, moved to live in an illegal Efrata settlement/colony that was built south of Bethlehem in 1982 on the 1967 Occupied Palestinian land. He physically attacked Prof. Siri Nussauba, the President of Al-Quds University while the later tried to enter a building to give a talk in the US......
Itamar Marcus (and his followers) will not be satisfied until he himself writes the Palestinian school books."
No comments:
Post a Comment