Israeli Censors Purge Hate In Arab Textbooks

By Eric Gottgetreu

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JERUSALEM (AP)—A team of 30 Arabic-speaking Isareli educators is working its way through a roomful of Arab school books, closely reading every word, hunting for propaganda. The books, nearly 400, were seized by the Israelis when they occupied the west bank region of Jordan, Syria's Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip last June.

The team's job is to cut out every word of what the education ministry calls "objectionable material." So far, 79 of 134 Jordanian textbooks have been cut. One hundred of the 139 books found in Egyptian desks and two-thirds of those taken from Syria have been expurgated.

Were Shocked An education ministry spokesman commented: "We were shocked at the amount of hate and incitement we found. We knew it was going on, but didn't realize it was to such an extent." Reprinting the thousands of textbooks is costing the Israelis nearly $1 million.

One woman scrutinizer, a mother of two, said bitterly: "It makes my blood run cold to see the horrible things the Arabs allowed their children to be taught." So far, only one Jordanian book has been banned outright—"The Palestine Problem," for high school students, written by Doukan Al-Handawi, a former Jordanian education minister.

It closed with this appeal: "You, the Arab student, are called upon to save your homeland, with all your strength and resources." Mohammed Plot "Arabs and Moslems," a fourth-grade Jordanian history book, declared the ancient Jews plotted to "get rid of Mohammed," the prophet of Islam, and were expelled by him from Medina when he discovered their plan.

How this transcription was made

Published at reduced precision. The slide label gave 1967-09-07; the page does not support a day, so the record carries only what can be shown. Adjudicated against the printed page: Running head across the top of the page: 'Page A' at the left and 'THE SACRAMEN' at the right, the line truncated by the right edge of the scan. Clear at 14x. Headline below reads 'Israeli Censors Purge Hate In Arab Textbooks'; the adjacent column carries an u Paper corrected but NOT certain: what is printed is 'THE SACRAMEN', truncated. That is enough to exclude the Guam Daily News absolutely, and the overwhelmingly likely completion is 'THE SACRAMENTO BEE' — but the Sacramento Union also published in 1967, and the archive already carries both 'The Sacramento Bee' (9 record Legibility fair; any passage that could not be read is omitted rather than reconstructed.

Context added by this archive

SCHOOLBOOKS THREAD — the fullest account of the screening operation anywhere in the batch, and the only one that names a banned book. Who is censoring: 'A team of 30 Arabic-speaking Israeli educators … closely reading every word, hunting for propaganda.' The paper's own verbs are 'seized', 'cut out', 'expurgated', 'banned outright', and the headline's word is 'Censors'.

That is the second headline in the batch to use it (with s105_1, 'Israelis Censor Arab Textbooks'). What was removed: 79 of 134 Jordanian books, 100 of 139 Egyptian, two-thirds of the Syrian, at a reprinting cost of nearly $1 million. THE FINDING THAT MATTERS FOR MARIA'S SLIDE-112 NOTE is the banned book.

One book in the whole operation was banned outright rather than cut: 'The Palestine Problem', a high-school text by Doukan Al-Handawi, a former Jordanian education minister.

The AP tells us what it closed with: 'You, the Arab student, are called upon to save your homeland, with all your strength and resources.' That is the evidence the wire chose to print for the single most severe act of censorship it is reporting — and it is a sentence about saving a homeland. No Jew, no Israel, no slur, no weapon.

It sits four paragraphs above a genuine piece of religious antisemitism from a fourth-grade history book ('the ancient Jews plotted to get rid of Mohammed'), and the piece makes no distinction between them.

Set this beside the UNESCO bullet — 'the duty . . . to liberate Palestine' — and the pattern is the same operation performed twice, two years apart, by two different wires: a Palestinian statement of attachment to the land is filed as an instance of hatred of Jews. Is any Palestinian quoted: only Al-Handawi, and only through the one sentence of his that got his book banned.

He is not asked about it. Nobody is. The only ordinary person in the thread is on the other side: 'One woman scrutinizer, a mother of two' who finds it horrible what the Arabs allowed their children to be taught. The Arab mothers whose children's books she is cutting are not in the piece.

Cite this clipping

"Israeli Censors Purge Hate In Arab Textbooks," The Sacramento Bee, September 1967, p. Page A. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-078. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-078