StandWithUs

High school curriculum spreads lies about Israel

Posted: 1/17/2012 7:04:00 PM
Author: Amichai Farkas

A Boston-area newspaper, the Newton Tab, recently reported that local parent Tony Pagliuso
was horrified when his daughter, a freshman at Newton South High School, brought home an
article on women in the Middle East that claims Several hundred [Palestinian women] have
been imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Israeli occupation forces since the latest uprising,
Intifada, in the Israeli occupied territories.
The article, which was distributed to Pagliusos daughters class by her world history teacher,
makes it sound like Israel arbitrarily imprisons innocent Palestinian women. What it fails to
mention is that Palestinian women have been responsible for carrying out some of the most
horrific terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. For example, Dalal Mugrahbi, a member of
the Palestine Liberation Organization, carried out the 1978 coastal road massacre in which
38 civilians were murdered, including 13 children.
On top of this, the accusation that Israel tortures female prisoners is simply false. Palestinian
female prisoners serving in Israeli jails enjoy full prisoner rights as stipulated by the Third
Geneva Convention. In Israeli jails, Palestinian prisoners male and female are given
decent living quarters, food, clothing, medical care, religious and physical activities,
newspapers, phone calls, visits from friends and family, and a canteen where relatives and
friends deposit money for their use inside the prison.
The article refuting these truths was taken from a controversial textbook called The Arab
World Studies Notebook. In 2005, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) prompted many
schools across the U.S. to ban the book from their high-school curriculum. In its critique, the
AJC said that the book is replete with factual errors, inaccuracies and misrepresentations
about Middle East history. The textbook goes so far as to suggest that students repeat
Arabic phrases that are confessions of belief and proposes that Muslim faith statements be
transmitted to others, concludes the AJC report. The textbook even makes the claim that
Muslims discovered America prior to Columbus. Unbelievable!
This textbook is not about genuine learning its a propaganda tool meant to shape the
minds of American high school students to adopt false and radical views of the Middle East.
No school in the U.S. should allow impressionable young people to be subject to this
propaganda. Find out if The Arab World Studies Notebook is part a high-school curriculum
near you and, if it is, follow Tony Pagliusos lead and protest directly to school officials.