Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman’s op-ed, “Why Jewish educators need to teach the Palestinian perspective” (Jan. 15, camps and education supplement), proposes that the American Jewish community has a “moral obligation” to teach our children about Palestinian suffering and oppression under “occupation” by Israel, to help bring an end to the conflict. However, Zimmerman’s intention is not just to teach empathy for those who suffer. According to a Jan. 10 article in Arutz Sheva (Israel National News), Zimmerman is promoting a K-12 educational curriculum called “Reframing Israel” for Hebrew schools that promotes the Palestinian narrative of the Middle East conflict with all of its bias and historical inaccuracies, holding Israel solely responsible for the lack of peace. Teaching this narrative is harmful to Israelis and Palestinians, and to Jews around the world, and only serves to perpetuate the conflict.
Zimmerman stated that she wants Jewish children to be able to think critically about the Middle East conflict. Teaching a false narrative does not promote critical thinking.
Before 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza, there was no Palestinian narrative or Palestinian national movement. While Arab nationalism in Palestine began in the 1920s as a reaction to growing Jewish immigration from Europe, a distinctly Palestinian national identity did not emerge until the 1960s as a fabrication by Yasser Arafat and the Soviet KGB to wage political warfare against the State of Israel when the Soviets realized their proxies could not defeat Israel militarily. It casts Arabs living in Palestine as the indigenous population and as victims of white European imperialism whose land was stolen from them by invading Zionist colonialists. It includes factually incorrect allegations of massacres of Arabs in Deir Yassin and Lod during the 1948 war to create impressions of Palestinians as victims of Zionist wanton aggression, and it labels Israel’s independence as “the nakba,” the great tragedy.
Over time the narrative morphed. In 2000, following the Muhammad al-Dura farce (which erroneously blamed Israeli troops for shooting a 12-year-old), it adopted the medieval European blood libel that Jews enjoy murdering children: that Jews shoot Palestinian children for sport and use checkpoints to prevent Palestinian mothers from reaching hospitals to give birth or get treatment for their children. The powerfully emotional imagery of mothers and dead children is by design.
The narrative denies the history of Arab immigration into Palestine between 1850 and 1940 in response to the growing Jewish economy, 850,000 Jewish refugees expelled by Arab governments, and inconvenient facts including that no Palestinian or Arab state has ever existed in the region of Israel.
Today, the narrative includes absurd assertions such as those by Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian Authority spokesperson, that the Palestinian people have existed for 14,000 years and are the direct descendants of the Canaanites, Jesus was a Palestinian, and there never was an Israelite state or Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The narrative holds that the security barrier was built only to steal Palestinian land, checkpoints were imposed solely to dehumanize Palestinians, Israel withholds water from the Palestinians, and most recently, that Jews are planning to destroy the al-Aksa mosque.
The Palestinian narrative is used by Palestinian leaders to incite hatred against Jews and Israel, delegitimize the state, invalidate Jewish claims to the land and bring maximum political pressure against Israel’s ability to defend itself. Its ultimate aim is the elimination of the State of Israel.
While Zimmerman calls for Jews to teach the Palestinian perspective, she never asks what the Palestinians are teaching their own children. On YouTube, enter “What Palestinians are teaching their children” and learn that “The Jews came to steal our land and kill us; therefore, we are justified in killing them to ‘resist’ the occupation and take back our land.”
Not all Palestinians share this perspective. Those who want to coexist deserve our support. Many can be found in Haifa, Ramla and Abu Ghosh, and working side-by-side with Jews in the Ariel Industrial Complex in the West Bank, one of the ventures targeted by the BDS movement. Ending boycott, divestment and sanctions and promoting economic development will help those Palestinians.
Zimmerman does not recognize that the Palestinian perspective is harmful also for Palestinians. It presents them as passive victims with no ability to shape their future. It places full blame for the conflict and Palestinian suffering on Israel, and absolves the Palestinians of any responsibility for violence and for failing to work for peace. It does not call for mutual acceptance and coexistence; it calls for the removal of all Jews “from the River to the Sea”. Teaching this perspective will not bring peace; it will prolong the conflict and the suffering of both Palestinians and Israelis.
I trust Zimmerman’s sincerity in wanting to promote peace. I propose she work toward that goal by teaching a Progressive Zionist perspective to our children and to the Palestinians: a narrative that promotes personal and communal accountability, respect for human rights, cultural tolerance, peaceful coexistence, innovation and environmental sustainability.
Larry Feinstein is a clinical psychologist in Redwood City who has been involved in formal and informal Jewish education since 1972 in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Recently he co-developed the Pride In Our People program (www.PrideInOurPeople.com) for the Peninsula Jewish community.