“It is not enough to mention the Palestinian Nakbah in the curriculum of Arab schools in Israel, the subject should also be included in the Hebrew text books studied by Jewish pupils" wrote the Gush Shalom movement to Education Minister Yuli Tamir. “The Arab citizens of Israel need no school textbooks in order to know that the creation of the state of Israel has caused their people a grave injustice and and a terrible tragedy, that hundreds of villages and dozens of towns were destroyed and their inhabitants became refugees, and that those who were left were subjected to massive land confiscation and to two decades of harsh military rule. Every Arab pupil in israel knows all these things from parents, family members and neighbours, who often speak from their own painful personal experience. Even of the Arabic textbooks were filled with nothing but Zionist cliches and government propaganda, it would change nothing. It is precisely the Jewish pupils in Israel who vitally need to learn about how the events of 1948 left a still-unhealed scar. Without understanding the source of the other people’s pain there is no chance of overcoming that pain and putting an end to hostility and conflict.

Enclosed with the Gush Shalom letter was a copy of the brochure “Truth against Truth” which Gush Shalom published in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and other languages, and which surveys the history of the conflict from its origins in the late Nineteenth Century, with an effort to bridge the Jewish-Zionist and the Arab-Palestinian historical narratives – a kind of preliminary draft for a common textbook which both sides could study and identify with.

Contact: Adam Keller adam@gush-shalom.org