Occupied Schools Remain Closed

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NABULUS, Israeli-Occupied Jordan (AP)-Every school in this troubled West Bank town remained closed and embittered Arab teachers owed schools would remain shut until Israel "stopped distorting history." They referred to the Israeli cutting of alleged anti-Jewish hate material from Arab textbooks. "They can stay shut a year or ten years," said one teacher.

"But we're not going to give in." The town's 40 schools had been scheduled to open Monday along with the rest of the West Bank. But teachers refused to report for duty and parents to send their children to use the expurgated books. An estimated 40 per cent of the 950 schools, mostly in the area north of the Jordan's West Bank, were still shuttered Tuesday.

But the protest also was political. Leaflets signed by the "West Bank Teachers Union" were distributed here calling on parents to resist "attempts by the occupation forces to impose new systems of education by unfair means." Israeli educators said they had edited 78 of 134 "objectionable" Arab school books. Nabulus teachers said, however, the books were being rewritten.

They claimed the Israeli aim was to "weaken our national feelings and obliterate our religion and Arabic language." "We will resist until death the occupation, the annexation of Jerusalem and the books," said Municipal Councilor Abdul Aziz Setir, father of ten.

He claimed the teachers had received the shutdown orders from Amman "and no teacher will go back to work until Amman says so."

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, and nothing on it contradicts the label. Adjudicated against the printed page: Nothing printed identifies the paper or the date. Checked head and foot at 5x: the top carries a boxed kicker 'In Israeli Too' above the headline; the foot ends '...so.' above a decorative dotted rule. No masthead, folio, running head, page number or date line Unresolvable from print, and the label is left standing. The internal dating is the strongest in the batch for a label-only record — '40 per cent of the 950 schools were still shuttered Tuesday' (5 September 1967) and the schools 'had been scheduled to open Monday' (4 September) — so a Wednesday 6 September 1967 paper

Context added by this archive

THE MOST IMPORTANT CLIPPING IN THE BATCH, and the one I would put in front of Maria first. Across roughly twenty clippings on the textbook censorship, Palestinians are counted, arrested, instigated, boycotting, refusing, 'embittered', 'fanatical', punching a pillow — and almost never quoted.

Here, in eleven paragraphs of Associated Press copy in a small Pennsylvania daily, they speak six times: — a teacher: 'They can stay shut a year or ten years.

But we're not going to give in.' — the teachers collectively: Israel must stop 'distorting history' — the West Bank Teachers Union, from its own leaflet: resist 'attempts by the occupation forces to impose new systems of education by unfair means' — the Nablus teachers on the purpose of it: to 'weaken our national feelings and obliterate our religion and Arabic language' — and Abdul Aziz Setir, municipal councillor, father of ten, named: 'We will resist until death the occupation, the annexation of Jerusalem and the books.' That last sentence is the whole argument of the archive in one line, said by a Palestinian in 1967 and printed in an American newspaper: the schoolbooks are not a separate question from the occupation and the annexation.

They are the same thing, and he lists them in one breath. Also note what this paper does that the others do not. Its headline is 'Occupied Schools Remain Closed' — occupation in the headline, in the paper's own voice. Its dateline is 'NABULUS, Israeli-Occupied Jordan'. It keeps the word 'alleged' in front of 'anti-Jewish hate material'.

It reports both counts — the Israeli educators' claim that books were 'edited' and the Nablus teachers' answer that they were being 'rewritten' — and does not adjudicate. And it gives the Palestinian side the last four paragraphs. PAIR THIS WITH s109_2 (the Los Angeles Times 'decontaminating' feature) AND s110_2 (the Sacramento 'Israeli Censors Purge Hate' piece).

Three papers, the same autumn, the same programme: one calls it decontamination, one calls it purging hate, and this one lets the people whose books they are say that it is an attempt to obliterate their religion and their language. None of the three printed the other two's version.

Cite this clipping

"Occupied Schools Remain Closed," The Gazette and Daily, 6 September 1967. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-079. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-079