Source: Israel Hayom
By Dror Eydar
The Education Ministry banned a civics textbook earlier this week, and the Israeli Left was abuzz. "This is political persecution" the authors of the book told Haaretz. Here are the facts: three experts who evaluated the textbook were shocked to find a long list of errors – in the data, in historical facts and in basic civics terms. Hundreds of mistakes. That alone should justify banning the book, especially since many of the mistakes that were purported to have been corrected, had not actually been corrected. Professor Asher Cohen, the chairman of the Education Ministry committee for civics studies, has provided plenty of examples.
But the book is not only rife with factual errors, it also indoctrinates students in regard to the fundamental issues that face Israeli society. In this book, the basic issues are addressed from a particular political point of view. There are so many examples of this that it is hard to choose just one. They have a cumulative effect on the students.
Throughout the book, the writers direct students to examine the contradiction between Israel's status as a Jewish state and as a democracy. It is not stated explicitly, but this attitude is woven into examples and statements, leaving no doubt as to the spirit of the text. This runs contrary to one of the education system's express goals – to teach students that there is actually no such contradiction.
"Contradiction," said one of the book's evaluators, "is a strong word that implies that there is no possible resolution unless one of the factors that stand in contradiction is eliminated. And indeed, the book keeps going back to the argument that the only way to resolve this contradiction is to change the character of the State of Israel."
Under the heading "the clash between the civil rights … and the goals of the State of Israel as a Jewish state," the book states that the Law of Return "which allows every Jew to immigrate to Israel … does not permit Arabs to immigrate." This creates the impression that the Law of Return is a contradiction, but what do civil rights have to do with selective immigration laws? And on the flipside: Isn't a violation of civil rights possible even in the absence of selective immigration laws?
The book states that Israel's Arab citizens express their Palestinian identity, among other ways, in their support for a two-state solution. The book doesn't mention "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel" - a joint document put together by the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee and the Committee of Arab Local Council Heads (which represent most Israeli Arabs) in Dec. 2006, which calls for the State of Israel to shed its Jewish identity and become "a state of all its citizens" or, in other words, a bi-national state.
The historical background included in the textbook states that "two central processes (at the end of the 19th century) led to the perception that Judaism is not just a religion but also a nationality." This precise wording is repeated later in the book, in the chapter dealing with the First Zionist Congress, stating that the most important aspect of the congress was the "recognition … that Judaism is not just a religion but also a nationality." Later in the book, it is stated that "there is no argument as to the fact that originally the meaning of Judaism was limited to religion."
All this implies that until the 19th century, Judaism was seen as a religion, and that the concept of Jewish nationalism is entirely new. This is an iteration of the radical claim that nationalism is a modern "invention," especially Jewish nationalism. It is also the anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist argument that has been used against Israel for years. The (anti-Semitic) perception held by Arabs, along with the radical Western Left, is that the Jews are not a people, they merely subscribe to a particular faith, and therefore have no right to national self-determination.
For the sake of comparison, here is a quote from the Palestinian National Charter (article 20): "Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood … Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with its own identity; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."
There are many arguments that counter the assertion made by this book - which are not presented in it – attesting to an ancient Jewish nationalism, from the time when we settled this land as a nation and for hundreds of years. Zionism's most notable figures all subscribed to this view. Did they think that they were inventing a nation? No. It was clear to them that they were resurrecting an existing nation. Furthermore, even those who don't subscribe to the idea of Biblical Jewish nationalism still accept the fact that the Jewish religion incorporates within it obvious nationalist aspects such as an attachment to a specific territory, the sanctity of a specific language, the return to the homeland, independence and more. Where is all this in the book? What are our children supposed to be learning?
So who was responsible for the approval of this textbook in the first place? The Education Ministry's chief supervisor of civics education, Adar Cohen, who was appointed back when Yuli Tamir was minister of education. Cohen replaced the former supervisor, whom Tamir's camp felt was too right-wing. On July 31, 2011, Cohen wrote a letter to the director of the ministry's textbooks department, saying "my examination of the book revealed that as a whole, it complies with all the standards of civics textbooks and with the curriculum." He attached ten pages of corrections, adding that the book would get final approval once the corrections had been made. The corrections didn't even begin to address all the embarrassing errors in the book.
In any case, a mere day later, on Aug. 1, Adar Cohen rushed to approve the book – meaning that the entire long process of checking the corrections, correcting them and checking again, was done in a single day. For the sake of comparison – the process of approving Professor Avraham Diskin's civics textbook lasted many months. By the way, two of the members of the civics committee claim to possess proof that Cohen revised the protocols of the civics committee in a politically biased manner.
This professional scandal, which naturally should compel the ministry to dismiss Cohen from his supervisory post, hasn't prevented left-wing members of academia and the media from defending him. The irony is that they charged critics of the book with political persecution. As the saying goes, it takes one to know one. This gang doesn't care about the errors, or the facts, as long as their ideology is being propagated by this book.
Members of the civics committee reported that Professor Dan Avnon, head of the Gilo Center for Citizenship, Democracy and Civic Education, a hothouse for the concepts promoted in this book (one of the supporters of the Gilo Center was, fittingly, the New Israel Fund), was livid at Dr. Efraim Podoksik for pointing out the book's many professional and factual omission and for assigning the blame to Cohen. Avnon was seen yelling a Podoksik "I hope that one day you will be persecuted the way you are persecuting him (Cohen)." Podoksik was shocked. We are all familiar with this kind of language. In all likelihood, in academic speak what he actually said was "you are a senior lecturer. Next time you are up for professorship, I will sit on the promotions committee and I will make sure that you are not promoted."
One of the loudest proponents of the book, in typical over-simplicity, described the debate as being "between the two approaches – teaching patriotic-nationalist civics with a sprinkling of formal democracy, or teaching the civics of a country that is Jewish, democratic and pluralistic at its core." Where do I even begin tearing apart this condescending intellectual insipidness? By the same token, one could argue that the difference is between teaching Zionism and recognition of Israel as a Jewish democracy and teaching post-Zionism, which seeks to change the character of the State of Israel to “a state of all its citizens.”
It is fascinating to see that those who crucified Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner (who was recently filmed smashing his rifle into the face of a Danish ISM activist during a demonstration) were quick to defend Adar Cohen. The truth is that Cohen and his buddies have caused Israel far greater and deeper damage than what Eisner supposedly did. Regardless of the professional failure, this was a failure of values because Cohen tried to indoctrinate extreme political perceptions under the guise of civics studies.
