<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Israeli Racism: Death Camps and Text&nbsp;Books]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<table border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1" width="100%" align="center">
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<td class="normal_text" style="padding-left:15px;" align="right">14:34 01/19/2011</td>
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<td class="caption_text" align="center">Palestinian enmity stems from occupation harshness, including denial of peace.</td>
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<td class="normal_text" style="padding-top:10px;"><strong>By Stephen Lendman</strong>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Merriam-Webster  defines racism as &#8216;a belief that race is the primary determinant of  human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an  inherent superiority of a particular race.&#8217; It was the basis of South  African apartheid and Nazi &#8216;master race&#8217; superiority above others,  especially Jews.</p>
<p>Israel has no constitution. Basic Laws  substitute, including statutes affirming exclusive rights for Jews. One  is the right of return, granting them automatic citizenship. Goyim are  denigrated and not wanted, especially Arabs. David Ben-Gurion once said,  &#8220;this is not only a Jewish state, where the majority of the inhabitants  are Jews, but a state for all Jews, wherever they are, and for every  Jew who wants to be here&#8230;.This right is inherent in being a Jew.&#8221; It  applies to no one else.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s Law of Citizenship or Nationality  Law establishes rules so stringent against non-Jews that many  Palestinians in 1948 were denied citizenship, despite family roots going  back generations or longer. On May 5, 2007, Professor Joseph Maddad&#8217;s  Palestine Remembered.com article headlined, &#8220;Israel&#8217;s Right to Be  Racist,&#8221; discussed a &#8220;New anti-Semitism.&#8221;</p>
<p>He wrote:  &#8220;Anti-Semitism is no longer the hatred of and discrimination against  Jews as a religious or ethnic group; in the age of Zionism, we are told,  anti-Semitism has metamorphosed into something that is more insidious.  Today, Israel and its Western defenders insist genocidal anti-Semitism  consists mainly of any attempt to take away and to refuse to uphold the  absolute right of Israel to be a Jewish racist state.&#8221;</p>
<p>Israel will  do anything to convince Arabs why it deserves to be racist, he said. It  also makes peace provisional on &#8220;Palestinians &#8216;recogniz(ing) its right  to exist&#8217; as a racist state,&#8221; meaning, at best, they&#8217;ll be tolerated as  lesser beings provided they accept inferiority and remain submissive,  relinquishing all rights in return for nothing.</p>
<p>By any standard,  racism, xenophobia, and supremacism notions are abhorrent. They have no  place in civil societies, especially ones claiming democratic  credentials. Tolerance is the very essence of democracy, accepting  beliefs other than our own.</p>
<p>Gandhi once said: &#8220;A democracy  prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious, will land itself in chaos and may  be self-destroyed&#8230;.The truest test of democracy is in the ability of  anyone to act as he likes, so long as he does not injure the life or  property of anyone else&#8230;.If we want to cultivate a true spirit of  democracy, we cannot afford to be intolerant. Intolerance betrays want  of faith in one&#8217;s cause.&#8221; Democracy is &#8220;impossible until power is shared  by all.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Teaching Racism</strong></p>
<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve Got To Be  Carefully Taught&#8221; was a memorable Rogers and Hammerstein song from  their 1949 musical, &#8220;South Pacific.&#8221; The lyrics read in part:</p>
<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve  got to be taught to hate and fear. From year to year, it&#8217;s got to be  drummed in your dear little ear&#8230;. You&#8217;ve got to be taught to be afraid  of people whose eyes are oddly made, and people whose skin is a  different shade. You&#8217;ve got to be carefully taught. You&#8217;ve got to be  taught before it&#8217;s too late. Before you are six or seven or eight. To  hate all the people your relatives hate. You&#8217;ve got to be carefully  taught!&#8221;</p>
<p>Tel Aviv University&#8217;s Professor Daniel Bar-Tal studied  dozens of elementary, middle, and high school texts on grammar, Hebrew  literature, history, geography and citizenship. They justify Israel&#8217;s  right to wage humanitarian wars against Arabs who won&#8217;t accept or  acknowledge exclusive Jewish rights.</p>
<p>&#8220;The early textbooks tended  to describe acts of Arabs as hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair,  with the intention to hurt Jews and to annihilate the State of Israel.  Within this frame of reference, Arabs were delegitimized by the use of  such labels as &#8216;robbers,&#8217; &#8216;bloodthirsty,&#8217; and &#8216;killers,&#8217; adding that  little positive revision occurred through the years with  mischaracterizations like tribal, vengeful, exotic, poor, sick, dirty,  noisy, colored, and &#8220;they burn, murder, destroy, and are easily  inflamed.&#8221;</p>
<p>At the same time, Jews are called industrious, brave,  and determined to handle difficulties of &#8220;improving the country in ways  they believe the Arabs are incapable of.&#8221; Moreover, &#8220;(t)his attitude  served to justify the return of the Jews, implying that they care enough  about the country to turn the swamps and deserts into blossoming  farmland; this effectively delegitimizes the Arab claim to the same  land.&#8221;</p>
<p>Israeli children are well taught. In the Arab Studies  Quarterly (ASQ) winter 2007 edition, Ismael Abu-Saad headlined his  article, &#8220;The portrayal of Arabs in textbooks in the Jewish school  system in Israel,&#8221; saying:</p>
<p>Approved Jewish textbooks use three primary themes to portray them:</p>
<p>&#8212;  orientalism as a politically loaded, derogatory characterization of  eastern as opposed to a superior Western (occidental) culture;</p>
<p>&#8212; &#8220;the Zionist mission to build a Jewish nation-state in Palestine&#8230;.; and</p>
<p>&#8212; &#8220;an Israeli-Jewish frame of mind determined by a victim or siege mentality.&#8221;</p>
<p>Zionists  believe Palestine belongs exclusively to Jews, based on biblical  notions of being its original inhabitants despite the illogic and  falseness of that premise. Nonetheless, Israeli textbooks teach about a  &#8220;land without people for a people without land,&#8221; that Jews arrived and  made the desert bloom, and God promised Israel solely to Jews.</p>
<p>Hebrew  University&#8217;s Eli Podeh describes &#8220;a tradition of depicting Jewish  history as an uninterrupted record of anti-Semitism and persecution.&#8221;  Moreover, Arabs are portrayed as violent. As a result, dehumanization,  denigration, and Israeli force against them are legitimized. So is  teaching children hate in textbooks, starting when they&#8217;re too young to  understand how their minds are being manipulated.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s  Ministry of Education sets curricula guidelines and content, reflecting  Jewish ethnocentrism and superiority toward Arab society and culture. As  conflicts erupted, they were called the enemy the way Yoram Bar-Gal  described as a &#8220;negative homogeneous mob that threatens, assaults,  destroys, eradicates, burns and shoots. (They&#8217;re) haters of Israel, who  strive to annihilate the most precious symbols of Zionism: vineyards,  orange groves, orchards and forests. Arabs (are) viewed as ungrateful.  (Zionism) brought progress to the area and helped to overcome the  desolation, and thus helped to advance&#8221; Arabs as well as Jews. Instead  of being thankful, &#8220;they respond with destruction and ruin.&#8221;</p>
<p>From  establishment in 1948, Jewish textbooks taught these notions, portraying  Arabs negatively, saying they&#8217;re illegal intruders having no place on  Jewish land. &#8220;The &#8216;mythologizing&#8217; of the historical curriculum  perpetuates the image of the Arab, and the Palestinian Arab in  particular, as an ahistorical, irrational enemy.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been  &#8220;instrumental in explicitly and implicitly constructing racist and  threatening stereotypes and a one-sided historical narrative that  (through education) is internalized in the Jewish Israeli psyche&#8221; from a  very young age.</p>
<p>Truth and balance are totally absent. Arabs are  vilified for not being Jews, a superior people. Logic and tolerance  aren&#8217;t parts of the equation. In November 2001, an unnamed Netanya  Jewish newspaper wrote about an elementary school celebration under the  headline, &#8220;Arabs are used to killing.&#8221; Textbooks and children&#8217;s  literature are filled with stories about violent, dirty, cruel, and  ignorant Arabs wanting to harm Jews. They vilify and dehumanize them as  thieves, murderers, robbers, spies, arsonists, criminals, terrorists,  kidnappers, and the &#8220;cruel enemy.&#8221;</p>
<p>Dozens of books use  delegitimizing labels, including inhuman, war lovers, monsters,  bloodthirsty, dogs, wolves of prey and vipers. Kids are taught this. How  can they know it&#8217;s hateful and false, so they internalize and act on  these ideas later as adults.</p>
<p>One characterization portrayed  Bedouins as &#8220;primitive being(s), at home in the untamed natural setting  of the fearsome desert. (They&#8217;re) exotic figure(s), full of mystery,  intrigue, impulsive violence and instinctive survival.&#8221;</p>
<p>Noted  Israeli literary figures, like Amos Oz, write this way. In his 1965  &#8220;Nomads and the Viper,&#8221; he described how Bedouin nomads brought  devastation to a kibbutz, including foot-and-mouth disease, destruction  of cultivated fields, and theft. He dramatized the chasm separating  lawful agricultural settlers and primitive Bedouins, and that trying to  cross it would be dangerous or fatal. In other words, associating with  Arabs risks contaminating Jews.</p>
<p>Abu-Saad concluded: &#8220;One can only  question whether the currently delegitimizing, discriminatory and  antagonistic stance of the state of Israel vis-a-vis its Palestinian  Arab citizens is indeed, in the long-term interest of the State, whose  ideology and mythology notwithstanding, is in fact a multi-ethnic state,  with an indigenous minority that makes up nearly one-fifth of the  population.&#8221;</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s curriculum must change. Hate must be  expunged. Arabs must be allowed to represent themselves and their  culture rather than accept false dehumanization and vilification  characterizations for not being Jews.</p>
<p><strong>Palestinian Textbooks</strong></p>
<p>In  November 2001, Professor Nathan J. Brown&#8217;s Adam Institute &#8220;Democracy,  History, and the Contest over the Palestinian Curriculum,&#8221; explained:  &#8220;(T)he Palestinian curriculum is not a war curriculum; while highly  nationalistic, it does not incite hatred, violence, and anti-Semitism.  It cannot be described as a &#8216;peace curriculum&#8217; either, but the charges  against it are often wildly exaggerated or inaccurate&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>First  generation 1994 National Education textbooks said practically nothing  about Israel, and, with few exceptions, weren&#8217;t pejorative. Beginning in  2000, second generation books touched sensitive areas but not with the  stridency that critics claim.</p>
<p>Virtually all incitement charges  stem from the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, claiming to  &#8220;encourage the development and fostering of peaceful relations&#8221; through  tolerance and mutual respect. In fact, its real purpose is attacking the  Palestinian Authority (PA) while ignoring incendiary Israeli texts.  It&#8217;s also linked to extremist, racist Israeli groups, advocating  settlement expansions, land theft, dispossessions, hate-mongering, and  violence.</p>
<p>A June 2004 Israel/Palestinian Center for Research and  Information (IPCRI) report titled, &#8220;Analysis and Evaluation of the New  Palestinian Curriculum&#8221; concluded that &#8220;there is&#8230;.no indication of  hatred of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition or the values associated  with it.&#8221; In fact, &#8220;the textbooks promote an environment of  open-mindedness, rational thinking, modernization, critical reflection  and dialogue.&#8221; They also &#8220;promote civil activity, commitment,  responsibility, solidarity, respecting others&#8217; feelings, respecting and  helping people with disabilities, and&#8230;.reinforce students&#8217;  understanding of the values of civil society such as respecting human  dignity; religious, social, cultural, racial, ethnic, and political  pluralism; personal, social and moral responsibility; transparency and  accountability.&#8221;</p>
<p>Palestinian enmity stems from occupation  harshness, including denial of peace, self-determination, freedom,  equity and justice, and other basic rights. Yet textbook-expressed anger  is moderate compared to Palestinian suffering and vilification  teachings. The differences are stark.</p>
<p><strong>A Final Comment</strong></p>
<p>It&#8217;s  a short leap from demonizing to calls for extermination. Yet extremist  pro-settler rabbis advocate it, according to a January 2011 article in  the Orthodox Fountains of Salvation. It suggests Israel will create  death camps to solve its Palestinian problem, eliminating them like  Amalek or Amalekites, code for Palestinians and other perceived Jewish  enemies.</p>
<p>The offending paragraph states: &#8220;It will be interesting  to see whether (the politically correct rabbis) leave the assembly of  the Amalekites in extermination camps to others, or whether they will  declare that wiping (them out) is no longer (historically) relevant.  Only time will tell&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>Right-wing Orthodox rabbis are behind  this publication, founded by the former Safed chief rabbi, whose son  currently holds the position and who circulated the above material. Also  involved is Ramat Gan&#8217;s chief rabbi as well as Rabbi Avinar, suspected  of abusing a woman who sought his spiritual advice. Each holds paid  government sinecures, showing the link between official zealotry and  their own, extremist enough to call for genocide.</p>
<p><em>&#8211; Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: </em><a href="mailto:lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net"><em>lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net</em></a><em> and visit his blog at: sjlendman.blogspot.com.</em></td>
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<p><a href="http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16564">Israeli Racism: Death Camps and Text Books</a>.</p>
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