Israel bans textbook branded ‘anti-Zionist’ by right wing

ISRAEL has banned a high school textbook for being “unbalanced”.

Critics of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government claim the move is political and part of a larger effort to undermine proponents of equality between Jewish and Arab citizens.

The book, Taking the Civil Road, approved for use in November, is notable for its sensitivity to Israel’s Arab minority.

It places much of the blame for the frayed relations between Jewish and Arab citizens on the state, citing its expropriating Arab land and excluding Arabs from state symbols. It advocates a constitution to protect minority rights and Arab-Jewish civil society dialogue.

The book recently came under attack in a right-wing newspaper and the head of parliament’s education committee, Alex Miller, of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party coalition partner, called an emergency session on Tuesday to discuss it. Mr Miller maintained that a section of the book is disparaging to the million strong Russian immigrant community, something its author, educator Bina Gildai denies.

Education ministry director-general Dalit Stauber, who approved the book, announced that it was being excluded from the curriculum because “it is replete with many errors, substantial, professional, factual and academic”.

She stressed that the book “suffers from imbalance in its treatment of the fissures in Israeli society-between religious and secular, Jews and Arabs and right and left.”

As an example of the factual errors, ministry officials noted that it says the Scottish Government has power over all matters except foreign affairs and defence.

The book’s cancellation reinforces the sense among Israeli liberals that their standing is eroding with the increasing assertiveness of the more nationalistic right-wing.

In one excercise, the book places the idea of Israel being a Jewish state and the non-Zionist alternative, a “state of all its citizens” on an equal footing, asking students to debate the topic.

In another section, the author quotes from Yisrael Beiteinu’s bill last year to link citizenship to a loyalty oath, a veiled move to disenfranchise Arabs.

In the section on media and democracy, the book suggests students analyze the role the media played in forcing a state inquiry into the 1982 massacre by Lebanese Christian militiamen dispatched by Israel into the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut.

“The trends in this book are anti-Zionist,” says Danny Danon, an MP from Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party. “Its spirit is instead of strengthening our rights, to call them into question.”

Dr Gildai said: “The book sanctifies two things: firstly, the state of Israel as a Jewish state and secondly the state of Israel as a democratic state.

“What is happening now is that the political establishment is trying to impose a right-wing agenda and values on the educational programme,” she said.

“There is an attempt to impose a single viewpoint by the state and not to recognize the existing pluralism.”

Yossi Sarid, who served as education minister under the assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, termed the book’s cancellation “a terrible act.”

“If there are factual mistakes, the proper way is to correct them, not to throw the book into the basket.” he said.