Arabs Learn ABCs With the Hatred Left Out

Miami Herald-Los Angeles Times Wire [the reporter is David Larsen of the Los Angeles Times — named in the Grand Rapids printing of the same dispatch, s104_3; this paper printed no byline]

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, Israel — "There were 14 Israeli soldiers. Six were killed and three were captured. How many got away?" Pupils attending elementary schools in the Gaza Strip this fall will no longer learn their arithmetic in that manner. "I hate Israel and the Jews. The whole Arab people hate Israel. We shall chase out the enemy. The day of victory is near.

It will be a day of rejoicing for all Arabs." The pupils will no longer recite such sentences in their reading classes. "The homeland has been stolen. The Arabs will not rest until their paradise is returned to them. Holy war is a duty." Pupils on the west bank of Jordan will find other phrases in their grammar books.

There are nearly 300,000 school-age children in the areas of Egypt, Jordan and Syria which Israel now controls as a result of the June war. When they start school this month, they will find a new format to their textbooks — no propaganda. It might have been a temptation for the conquering Jews to substitute such phrasing in the readers as "Look, look. See the Arabs run.

Israel wins again." But instead the Israelis have undertaken an intensive and somewhat expensive program of editing the Arab textbooks — of "decontaminating" them, as one education official put it. The decision was not without controversy. For one thing, the teachers, particularly those on the west bank, made noises for a while about not returning to their jobs.

But the Israelis have paid their wages ever since the war, have given assurances that children will be allowed to learn the Koran and will have the holy day of Friday off, and have announced that they will not force the teaching of Hebrew, all of which has alleviated the pain over the book surgery.

The chore of reading through all the textbooks used in the Gaza Strip, along the west bank of the Jordan River, and in Syria's Golan Heights, fell to Israel's inspectors for Arab education. On the west bank they found 56 textbooks acceptable, 78 unacceptable. In the Gaza Strip they found 39 satisfactory, 90 unsatisfactory.

The proportion of the Syrian books was similar to the Egyptian. Israel has budgeted $1.2 million for the reprinting of textbooks. There was no alternative. "We couldn't just snip out a page," said Yaakov Sarid, director-general of the Ministry of Education. "The pupils would notice and ask questions." The new versions are not yet off the presses.

Until they are, the teachers will stick to subjects for which the books have been approved, or else will lecture without texts. And there will be no propaganda in their lectures. "All teaching of the hatred of peoples and the destruction of states must be eliminated," said Yosef Gadish of the Ministry of Education.

"Those teachers who cannot accept this principle will be asked to leave." While Israel is concerned that its young Arab residents be educated, it has made it clear that the teachers have a responsibility also. "If they don't show up, there will be no classes," said a spokesman from the Ministry of Education. "We just don't have enough Israeli teachers to replace them."

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. Filed under the archive’s spelling; the page prints “Miami Herald”. Legibility fair; any passage that could not be read is omitted rather than reconstructed.

Context added by this archive

SCHOOLBOOKS THREAD — the longest and most self-aware piece in the batch, and the one whose language is sharpest. Who is censoring: 'Israel's inspectors for Arab education', the Ministry of Education; two officials named, Yaakov Sarid (director-general) and Yosef Gadish.

What was removed: west bank, 56 books acceptable and 78 unacceptable; Gaza, 39 satisfactory and 90 unsatisfactory; $1.2 million budgeted for reprinting. Whose voice: this is where it gets interesting. The paper does not merely attribute — it adopts.

The headline 'Arabs Learn ABCs With the Hatred Left Out' is the paper's own and treats the censorship as a benign subtraction. 'It might have been a temptation for the conquering Jews to substitute such phrasing in the readers as "Look, look. See the Arabs run.

Israel wins again." But instead the Israelis have undertaken an intensive and somewhat expensive program of editing' — that sentence, in the paper's own voice, frames censorship as the restrained alternative to something worse, and invents the worse thing itself. 'Book surgery' and 'the conquering Jews' are the writer's phrases, not quotations.

The closing paragraphs go further: 'But he might have added that this war has created an opportunity — an opportunity for Israel to communicate with a future generation of Arabs as it has not been able to do with the present one,' followed by the Prophet Mohammed quoted as the kicker: 'The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.' The piece ends by using a Moslem scripture to bless the rewriting of Moslem children's books.

Is any Palestinian quoted: NO. Not one, in roughly 1,100 words. The Palestinians present in the piece are the voices IN the confiscated textbooks — 'I hate Israel and the Jews', 'The homeland has been stolen' — reproduced only as specimens of what is being removed.

That is the whole finding, and it is a sharp one: the only Palestinian speech the paper prints is speech it is reporting as deleted. ON MARIA'S SLIDE-109 NOTE: yes, there is a pattern, and this clipping is the spine of it. 'Decontaminating' is the word to lead with.

Cite this clipping

"Arabs Learn ABCs With the Hatred Left Out," The Miami Herald, 7 September 1967. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-076. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-076