Some Arab Textbooks Advocate War On Israel, Contempt Toward Jews

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UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. (AP) — Some Arab textbooks advocate war on Israel and show contempt for Jews and should be banned for U.S.-operated schools for the children of Palestine refugees, a U.N. agency suggested Sunday. 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.

The books are used in schools operated jointly by UNESCO and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency—UNRWA. 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American, French and Turkish experts named by UNESCO read the 127 books and recommended that 48 of them be kept, 14 withdrawn and 65 modified for future use. The UNESCO executive board ordered the study in June and has it on its agenda for consideration in September.

Report On Studies Meanwhile, UNESCO Director General Rene Maheu said in a report on the study that he had asked Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Laurence V. Michelmore, an American who is UNRWA's commissioner-general in Beirut, to comply with its recommendations.

The experts who conducted the study were professors Sevkiye Inalcik of the Ankara Faculty of Letters, Henri Laoust of the College of France in Paris, and R.B. Winder of New York University.

They measured the books against provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that say education should promote respect for human rights, human development, and "understanding, tolerance and friendship." —The Israeli-Arab conflict was implicit in virtually all the textbooks studied,"except for a few science or English conversation textbooks." —Contemptuous terms such as liar, cheat, usurer and idiot were applied to Jews in some passages and, as "part of the deplorabel language of international anti-Semitism, cannot be tolerated." —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 treamtent of Palestine, and some purported "to show that the Arabs, after having been the victims of the Crusaders, the Moslems and the Ottoman despotism, are now the victims of international imperialism and Zionism." —In some geography books, "the term Israel is never used and is never featured on any map to designate a state entity." —Moslem religious textbooks "usually (but not always) emphasize the religious significance of Jerusalem to Christians and Moslems, but make no mention of its symbolic importance to Jews—a regrettable omission." —Some civics textbooks were primarily concerned "with political indoctrination," a subject not "likely to foster the proper intellectual and moral education" of the children entrusted to the U.N.'s charge.

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THE EIGHTH HEADLINE, and the completion of the set. The Lexington desk wrote a two-line headline that simply restates the wire's lede: 'Some Arab Textbooks Advocate War On Israel, Contempt Toward Jews'.

It keeps 'Some' and it keeps both charges in the wire's own order — but it drops the attribution ('a U.N. agency suggested') that the lede carries, so it still asserts in the paper's own voice. THE COMPLETE HEADLINE SET for the AP UNESCO dispatch of 18-19 May 1969, eight printings found in this batch: ATTRIBUTES THE CLAIM (2 of 8) s102_1 The Times-Picayune, New Orleans — 'U.N.

Agency Suggests Ban of Arab Textbooks' + deck 'Being Used in Refugee Schools of Unit' s103_2 (labelled Southwest Times Record) — 'Agency Says Arab Textbooks Advocate War, Show Contempt' ASSERTS IT (6 of 8) s113_1 Lexington, Ky. — 'Some Arab Textbooks Advocate War On Israel, Contempt Toward Jews' <- this one s103_1 (labelled Sarasota Herald Tribune) — 'Banning Of Some Arab Textbooks Urged' + kicker "'WAR ADVOCATION' CITED BY U.N." s099_1 (labelled Seattle P-I) — 'Arab Textbooks Advocate Waging War with Israel' s099_2 Seattle Post-Intelligencer — 'Arab Schoolbooks Advocate War, Anti-Semitism' s108_1 (labelled The Plain Dealer) — "'Some Arab Books Unkind to Jews'" s112_2 (labelled The Albuquerque Times) — 'UNESCO Would Withdraw 14 Anti-Jewish Textbooks' One dispatch, eight desks, eight different headlines.

Two held the attribution; six dropped it.

Two — s099_2 and s112_2 — attached anti-Semitism or anti-Jewishness to a bulleted list on which 'the duty . . . to liberate Palestine' is one item among seven, the others being slurs against Jews, an omission from Moslem religious books, 'political indoctrination' in civics books, the absence of Israel from maps, and an Arab account of Arab history.

That fusion is what Maria read on slide 112, and this batch now documents it eight times over on identical copy, with the denominator attached.

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"Some Arab Textbooks Advocate War On Israel, Contempt Toward Jews," The Lexington Herald, 19 May 1969. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1969-037. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1969-037