Israeli - Palestinian relations redux
| June 13th, 2003Given the news of the week, it occurs to me that Hamas is a major area of agreement between left and right: I don’t know anyone, left or right, who wouldn’t dance with delight if a mouth to hell opened up and permanently sucked every member of Hamas off the face of the Earth. (The big disagreement is that the left feels the same way about the folks running the Israeli government).
The Watch and The Mad Prophet Blog posts some disturbing news: Israeli children are being raised to hate Arabs, and in particular Palestinians. The article (which obviously has an anti-Israel bias, by the way) quotes from Israeli schoolchildren’s letters to Palestinians:
I don’t entirely trust the article’s source, but unfortunately I think the above quotes are actually pretty plausible. (And I don’t doubt that similar quotes could be found going in the other direction, of course.)
On the other hand, there is reason to hope. Check out Unmedia, where it’s “hug a Jew” day.
June 13th, 2003 at 11:10 am
Perhaps if your Israeli allies would end their illegal occupation, end the murder, torture and illegal assassinations, tear down all their illegal settlements, stop bulldozing Palestinian homes, olive trees, and stop stealing Palestinian land and water, there would be no Hamas or the need for any other freedom fighting Palestinian organization. Israel was offered a peace treaty by the Arab world if they would merely end their illegal occupation and they refused. There can be no peace with those who commit such acts. Israel was founded by terrorism, murder, oppression, and ethnic cleansing.
This comment was written by Mike.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 1:18 pm
The only context I have ever heard of such statements coming from Israeli children en masse are psychotherapeutic groups — the exact opposite of teaching children anything.
This comment was written by Miranda.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 1:20 pm
Barry - not to be a downer, but the existence of an Indian-ethnic Texan muslim who isn’t an anti-Semite has absolutely no relevance to the despair of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict :(
I’m pretty pessimistic these days. I don’t think the Hamas policy will have any effect other than ingrain formly the grassroots support for Hamas’ violent wing (there is a political wing as well, which actually does do important relief work in the terroriitories for Palestinians sufferring under occupation).
Overall its possible to see all-out war on Hamas as a jump-the-shark moment. Expect Israel’s security to worsen, cost to rise, economy to further weaken, US aid to increase, settlers to be more extreme, and public opinion to harden.
This comment was written by Aziz.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 2:11 pm
For balance, here’s a World Net Daily response to the Arab News article. As expected, they call the original article a great big lie. They also bring up the “palestinian textbooks,” saying the article was a response to charges of anti-semetisim in the books, but that allegation is years old and has been refuted many times, most often by Professor Nathan Brown.
This comment was written by madprophet.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 4:00 pm
I’m not a fan of World Net Daily, but it seems that they actually spoke to the researcher (who the Arab News doesn’t even name). A site search of the London School of Economics also doesn’t reveal anything like what the Arab News article describes.
The article doesn’t pass the smell test. The results are entirely too pat - all 84 of the kids hate Arabs? - and I can’t imagine a competent social scientist making the blanket conclusions that the article attributed to the researcher. I also can’t imagine a social scientist conducting his interviews after a suicide bombing rather than spacing them out over time (or at least using a control group). If it isn’t a fabrication, it’s bad research.
The World Net Daily article mentions that Asi Sharabi’s research was published in an Israeli newspaper in 2001. If anyone has a citation, maybe that will resolve the issue. Sharabi’s e-mail address is asi@mail.jct.ac.il
For the record, here’s an article on an Israeli children’s television network that concentrates on attacking stereotypes, including stereotypes of Arabs. And on the textbook issue, here’s a summary of a report, authored jointly by an Israeli and a Palestinian professor, finding that both sides have improved but both still have a long way to go.
This comment was written by Jonathan Edelstein.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 7:30 pm
Hey Jon,
Thanks for the links.
You might also like this Washington Report article. It’s a little old (1999,) but informative. You can also read a rundown of it on my blog.
This comment was written by madprophet.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 8:01 pm
Well Barry, you’ve just found one American who wouldn’t dance if every member of Hamas was swallowed up by the earth. I might do a little jig if most of them were tried and imprisoned, if convicted (as many surely deserve to be), and I think I might stretch to a dance if the earth swallowed up Osama bin Laden, though others have killed more. OTOH, the only figure in Israeli government I’ve heard specifically described as a criminal (both for the house deal and for Sabra and Chatila) is Sharon. I wouldn’t mind seeing him tried, but I’ve got no beef with his cabinet.
This comment was written by John Isbell.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 8:02 pm
Others? Saddam Hussein, by several orders of magnitude. But fewer Americans.
This comment was written by John Isbell.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 8:12 pm
I lean toward “tried and imprisoned” in all cases. “Swallowed up by the earth” sounds too much like “fire lots of missiles at them” to me. And we’ve all seen how well that works.
This comment was written by madprophet.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 9:10 pm
Miranda: I was thinking exactly the same thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Arab News quotes did come from therapy records.
Mad Prophet: I’ve seen the Washington Report article. It suffers from the same problem as the allegations about Palestinian textbooks - i.e., it largely fails to take into account the changes that have taken place in Israeli education during and after the Rabin administration. Some of the textbooks introduced in Israel during the 1990s are described here. The Washington Report article, to a great extent, treats the period since 1967 as a single era and ignores the various sea changes in Israeli society since then.
I have no doubt that there are some Israeli children who hate Arabs, as there are Arab children who hate Israelis. 55 years of conflict is not without brutalizing effects on both sides. Anyone who believes that a majority of Israeli parents are systematically turning their kids into hate machines, however, is laboring under a very stereotypical view of Israelis. There are plenty of Israeli parents on the net if you’re interested in what they’re really thinking. I’d recommend this one to start - she’s a working mother of two and not a lefty by any means, but her views on Arabs will surprise anyone with stereotypical expectations. Her articles about Arabs are often regretful but never hateful and sometimes very sensitive. Her daughters won’t grow up to hate Arabs, and she’s a lot more typical in that regard than you probably think.
This comment was written by Jonathan Edelstein.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 9:11 pm
Another thing I noticed: the Arab News article is self-contradictory. Specifically, the children allegedly asked whether they should “write the letter to a good or bad Palestinian.” Seems to me that if they were as full of pathological hatred as the article indicates, the idea of “good Palestinians” would never have crossed their minds. (For that matter, the article doesn’t say what answer they were given. Maybe they were told to write to a bad Palestinian.)
This comment was written by Jonathan Edelstein.Report this comment to the moderators
June 13th, 2003 at 10:00 pm
Are you sure your Asi Sharabi is not just a namesake, Jonathan? He sounds like some kind of university sysadmin ;)
This comment was written by Miranda.Report this comment to the moderators
June 14th, 2003 at 5:17 am
There’s also an Assaf Sharabi with a London School of Economics e-mail address (a.sharabi@lse.ac.uk). That’s definitely him, but it may be an old address.
This comment was written by Jonathan Edelstein.Report this comment to the moderators
June 14th, 2003 at 8:42 am
Getting closer to the bottom of the story: This article appeared in the Argentine newspaper La Voz del Interior on 26 August 2001. It seems to be a reprint of an El Pais article from 25 August which is searchable in the El Pais archives (use “Sharabi” as a search term) but only available to subscribers.
Apparently, the study did take place, and the “ugly with torn clothes” and “disgusting Muhammad, I want you to die” quotes are real. The La Voz article also mentions one child who wanted Arabs to die and not enjoy eternal life, and one who wrote “stop throwing stones or Sharon will kill you all.”
The other quotes listed in the Arab News article, however, are not mentioned. Nor does Sharabi make the conclusion (attributed to him by the Arab News) that “all Israeli children believe that Arabs are bad and Israelis are good.” Instead, he says that some Israeli children hate Arabs and others don’t, that urban children (i.e., those who live in greatest fear of terror attacks) are more likely to hate Arabs while more kibbutz children seek dialogue, and that the source of the hatred is fear rather than “Zionist thought develop[ing] day by day.” There is no mention of an Arab girl who wants Israelis to be her friends.
The La Voz article, at least to my mind, rings much truer than the Arab News piece, and the World Net Daily allegations of fabrication and alteration seem credible. The La Voz story also indicates that results of the study were published in Ma’ariv “the previous Friday” which would be 24 August 2001. The Ma’ariv article will probably have the most complete information; I’ll look for it the next time I’m at the library.
This comment was written by Jonathan Edelstein.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2003 at 4:32 pm
It is horrible that kids from both sides are full of hatred, the hope of ending this conflict in the future, seems impossible.
This comment was written by Dafna.Report this comment to the moderators
October 4th, 2004 at 5:31 am
I am not surprised. I certainly felt a lot of animosity from Israelis and children even while traveling through Israel. Surprise, surprise. Surprisingly enough, I never heard one bad thing said about Jews from among my large extended family while traveling through the Occupied Territories. Only overwhelming sadness, anger and frustration at how their lives are controlled by the Sharon Gov’t.
This comment was written by Farid.Report this comment to the moderators
January 16th, 2006 at 4:57 am
[…] In an earlier post, despite writing that I didn’t “entirely trust the article’s source,” I posted quotes from a disturbing Arab News article claiming to quote racist statements from Israeli children. […]
This comment was written by Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Article about Israeli children (partly) debunked.Report this comment to the moderators