Israelis Censor Arab Textbooks

By ED BLANCHE / Associated Press Writer

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Transcribed from the clipping

TEL AVIV (AP) — Some 235,000 children whose Arab schools were closed by the Middle East war go back to school today under Israeli supervision, and with books carefully rewritten to eliminate anti-Zionist propaganda. The educational experiment in Arab territories occupied by Israel is being watched by Israelis, Arabs and the world beyond the Middle East.

Some of the children will have no books. Israeli authorities still are printing thousands of new texts on history, geography and literature. And some will have no teachers. Most of the more than 7,000 Arab teachers have indicated they will work under the Israelis, but many have refused. No Israeli teachers will work in the Arab schools.

"If teachers don't have books, they'll just have to teach without texts or on the subjects for which we have cleared books," an Israeli Education Ministry spokesman said. Arab books were scrutinized by Israeli educators for weeks. Of 134 types of books seized in the Israeli-occupied west bank territory, only 56 were found acceptable.

Only 39 of 129 from the Gaza Strip were cleared as free of anti-Zionist material. Israeli officials said most of the objectionable material was found in history, geography and Arab literature books.

But officials said in one arithmetic book they found 8-year-olds were given the following problem: "If our defense forces killed three Zionist terrorists and captured another when seven attacked our town, how many were left?" In such a case the entire book has to be reprinted under the Israeli rule.

"We have to reprint even if there is only one sentence we find objectionable," said Ya'acov Sarid, director-general of the Israeli Education Ministry. "If we just crossed it out or snipped it out the children would ask questions." The new textbooks are printed in Arabic and generally the Israelis say they have not changed the Arab curricula.

Israel does, however, intend to introduce Hebrew gradually into Old Jerusalem, the sector of the holy city seized from Jordan. Israeli officials said Hebrew will be introduced in other occupied areas "if the parents request it." The 200,000 Arab children on the west bank of the Jordan River and the 100,000 in the Gaza Strip will receive free schooling.

But in Old Jerusalem, parents will have to pay fees based on size of family and amount of family income.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

THE HEADLINE THAT NAMES IT. Three American desks took the same Ed Blanche AP dispatch: s112_1 'Israel Opens Schools For Arab Children' (kicker: 'Some Books Rewritten') s104_2 'Israel Revises Slanted Arab Textbooks' s105_1 'Israelis Censor Arab Textbooks' <- this one The first headlines the schools opening.

The second adds a word the wire never uses — 'Slanted' — and makes the books the guilty party. The third says plainly who is doing what to whom: Israelis, censor, Arab textbooks. Three verbs for one programme: opens, revises, censors. That is worth putting in front of Maria beside the AP UNESCO set, because it runs the other way.

On the UNESCO dispatch, four of six desks sharpened the copy against Palestinians. Here, one desk out of three sharpened it against the occupying authority — and did it in two words, with no editorialising anywhere in the body.

Only two clippings in this entire batch use the word 'censorship' or 'censor' in the paper's own voice: this headline, and the three-paragraph UNESCO brief on slide 98 ('a dispute about Israeli censorship of textbooks in schools for Arab refugee children').

Everywhere else the thread runs on the censoring authority's vocabulary — cleared, edited, revised, expurgated, decontaminated, rewritten, book surgery.

And this is the fullest text of the dispatch, with the rule stated outright by the official who made it: a single objectionable sentence means the whole book is reprinted, because a visible cut would make the children ask questions. Is any Palestinian quoted: no. The 7,000 Arab teachers, the 200,000 west bank children and the 100,000 Gaza children are counted and never heard.

Cite this clipping

"Israelis Censor Arab Textbooks," The Grand Island Independent, 4 September 1967. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-071. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-071