Internalization of Negative Palestinian Stereotypes

In the Oslo Peace Accords Israelis and Palestinians agreed to avoid inciting their people against the other via textbooks and teaching materials. To date, however, only the Palestinians have taken measures in this regard. By Joseph Croitoru

In comparison, the stereotypes and prejudices shaping the image of Arabs in Israeli textbooks have received little attention. The Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany has made a significant contribution by promoting a scientific assessment of both Palestinian and Israeli curriculum.

Results of a recent examination of the content of Israeli textbooks, carried out by Israeli professor of education Ruth Firer on behalf of the institute, are quite disturbing. According to Firer, instruction in Israeli schools today is downright reactionary.

Values such as love of country are given precedence over peace education, which is hardly addressed at all. Israeli schools rarely make an effort to understand the Palestinian perspective.

Palestinian territory demarcated as part of Israel

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a professor of education in Jerusalem, also deplores this trend. She found something alarming in a few new geography and history textbooks now being used in Israeli schools: In several of the books she examined, the so-called old green border line on the West Bank had disappeared.

Israeli settlements in the midst of the Palestinian territories are depicted here as Israeli territory. The biblical terms "Judea and Samaria" often replace the correct name "Palestinian Autonomous Territories." Professor Peled-Elhanan sees this as a clear sign that the stealthy annexation of parts of the Palestinian territories has already seeped deeply into Israeli consciousness.

Nor have the attitudes and beliefs of Israeli schoolchildren been investigated much in recent years. Presently creating a stir in Israel is a study conducted by the social psychologist Assaf Sharabi, who wrote his dissertation at the prestigious London School of Economics on the image of Arabs held by Israel schoolchildren.

A mixture of hatred, fear, estrangement

In 2003 Sharabi asked over one hundred Israel six-graders at various schools to imagine themselves to be Palestinian children and to record what they imagine in writing and then in pictures.

The result: Israeli children have starkly internalized the negative stereotypes prevalent among Israel's Jews with regard to Arabs. A mixture of hatred, fear, estrangement, and despair characterizes their attitude to the Palestinians – although it must be noted that when the study was conducted suicide attacks were a cruel routine in Israel's heartland.

For instance, a twelve-year-old Israeli boy gives a most appalling account of how he imagines the thoughts of a Palestinian peer:

"When I grow up I want to blow up Jews. My hero is Hitler. Jews are a dirty race. At school they teach us how to defuse bombs. In my art class I painted a hanging Jew. In physical education we learned how to cross a mine field. The conflict with the Israelis is good for us because we don't care when an Arab dies, because when an Arab dies five or six Jews die with him. Even at home they encourage us to kill Jews. Good-bye, see you in the grave!"

No less shocking is the fantasy of another pupil who described the dream of a Palestinian child: "In my dream I invade Israel and kill Jews. This is good because, except for the suicide bombers, who I admire, we have few victims, while many Jews are killed and injured.

The suicide bomber – a widespread stereotype

The study shows that the figure of the suicide bomber has become a stereotype that provides Israeli children – and adults – with a simple explanation of his motivation.

"I want to become a martyr," wrote one child, "because in heaven I will be happy every day and have seventy-two virgins."

Assaf Sharabi was not much surprised by the stereotypical thinking of the Israeli children. He attaches far more significance to the fact that Israeli children also sympathize with the living conditions of Palestinians.

They feel guilty about the behavior of their compatriots in Palestinian territories, but also consider Israeli acts of revenge as a necessity; they long for peace and quiet, but also doubt that this will ever be attained; they disqualify the Palestinians as violent, but also empathize with them because they are oppressed by the Israelis.

That Israeli children see the violation of Palestinians' basic civil rights as one of the main causes of Palestinian violence gives cause for hope, especially since Sharabi's study has meanwhile attracted the attention of the Palestinian press.

Joseph Croitoru

Translation from German: Nancy Joyce

Qantara.de article on the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research: De-Saddamification through School Books Website Georg Eckert Institute