Does thinking make it so?
News
August 9, 2007






Washington Jewish Week

LETTERS
August 9, 2007

Your editorial welcoming the “nuances and varied perspectives” of the new textbook for Israeli Arab schools that regurgitates the Palestinian claim that Israel produced disaster for Arabs (makba) shows a misunderstanding of the issues involved (“Symbol of democratic values,” July 26).


It is important that students know what Arabs think. But that is different from teaching what they think as tough it were fact. That is what the textbook does. In fact, Arab rejection of partition, invasion of Israel and a chiefly self-induced exodus brought about Arab suffering.


Simply reproducing the Arab narrative that Israel’s founding, not Arab violent opposition to it, caused Arab suffering, helps entrench a politically motivated falsehood — something a textbook should not be doing.


MORTON A. KLEIN
National president,
Zionist Organization of America
New York, N.Y.




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