Arab Schoolbooks Advocate War, Anti-Semitism

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Transcribed from the clipping

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. — (AP) — Some Arab textbooks advocate war on Israel and show contempt for Jews and should be banned for U.N.-operated schools for the children of Palestine refugees, an U.N. agency suggested yesterday. Fourteen of the 127 books used in the schools fell into that category in a survey conducted by the U.N.

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—UNESCO. They are printed in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt and are used by Arab refugees' children in Lebanon, Jordan and two Israeli-occupied areas — Jordan's West Bank and the Gaza Strip in Egypt.

American, French and Turkish experts named by UNESCO read the 127 books and recommended that 48 of them be kept, 14 withdrawn and 65 modified for future use.

Some of their findings: —Contemptuous terms such as liar, cheat, usurer and idiot were applied to Jews in some passages. —Some Arabic readers referred to "the duty . . . to liberate Palestine" and some Arabic grammars contained sentences such as: "The Palestine army was created as the vanguard of the Arab armies which are struggling to evict Israel." —Many history textbooks contained "appeals to violence" in their treatment of Palestine. —In some geography books, "the term Israel is never used and is never featured on any map to designate a state entity."

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (eva-folio). Adjudicated corrected against the printed page: Folio flag set in two lines at the bottom right corner of the clipping, below a hairline rule: 'Seattle Post-Intelligencer' on the first line and 'Mon., May 1?, 19?9 S 21' on the second. The paper nam. Legibility fair; any passage that could not be read is omitted rather than reconstructed.

Context added by this archive

THE THIRD HEADLINE.

This is the same Associated Press dispatch as s099_1 and s112_2, and the three desks gave it three different headlines over identical copy: s099_1 'Arab Textbooks Advocate Waging War with Israel' s099_2 'Arab Schoolbooks Advocate War, Anti-Semitism' <- this one s112_2 'UNESCO Would Withdraw 14 Anti-Jewish Textbooks' The wire itself attributes everything: 'a U.N. agency suggested', 'Some of their findings:', every characterisation inside quotation marks and sourced to a three-man expert panel.

None of the three headlines attributes anything. Each converts a finding about 14 of 127 books into a flat statement about 'Arab Textbooks' or 'Arab Schoolbooks' as a class, and two of the three attach the charge of anti-Jewishness or anti-Semitism to a list on which 'the duty . . . to liberate Palestine' is one of four items.

That is Maria's slide-112 note, demonstrated three times on one piece of copy, with one of the three masthead-dated. It is much stronger evidence than any single clipping, because the variable is isolated: the text is constant and only the headline moves. No Palestinian is quoted; nobody is quoted at all except the expert panel and the Universal Declaration.

Cite this clipping

"Arab Schoolbooks Advocate War, Anti-Semitism," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 19 May 1969, p. S 21. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1969-028. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1969-028