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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (18986)	4/29/2004 1:02:42 AM
From: Amots	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

"(1) Brown claims that "Critics charge that the Center's real purpose is to launch attacks on the Palestinian National Authority, and it would be difficult to contest such a conclusion. They point to the identity of the Center's first director, Itamar Marcus to support their suspicions" (Brown p. 3, emphasis added). CMIP has not only reviewed PNA textbooks, but also Israeli and Syrian textbooks and has applied the same criteria and methodology in these endeavors. An ad hominem argument based on the identity of a researcher employed by an NGO is flimsy, irrelevant and dishonest as a means to infer its "real goal". CMIP's sole purpose is the elimination of incitement and anti-peace teaching in the curricula and textbooks of conflicting parties. (2) Brown affirms that "the Center generally ignores any historical context in a way that renders some of its claims sharply misleading. In its 1998 report, the Center adduced numerous incendiary statements about Israel and the Jews from books in use in the Palestinian schools. The statements quoted were accurate. Some indeed were highly offensive to the Jews and sharply anti-Israeli. Yet they came not from books authored by Palestinians but from Egyptian and Jordanian books used in Gaza and the West Bank, respectively. The books were distributed by the PNA, to be sure, but they antedated its establishment. (The Center report does hold the PNA responsible for distributing the Egyptian and Jordanian books and therefore holds Palestinian responsible for the content. Here it displays an odd double standard: it does not note that Israel has distributed the exact same books in East Jerusalem, removing only the cover..." (Brown p. 4, emphases added). Brown's reproach about CMIP's ignorance of historical context and its so-called display of "an odd double standard" is totally unfounded. In its 1998 report CMIP mentioned explicitly that "there were two types [of textbooks reviewed]: original PA publications and texts based on books published in Jordan and Egypt". (Introduction, p2). In addition it was stressed that Israel "during the period when Israel was responsible for education in the areas now under the PA rule... republished Jordanian and Egyptian, books omitting offensive and anti-Semitic material" ( ibid.). Moreover, and in contradiction of Professor Brown's claim (Brown p.4), Israel did not distribute" the exact same books in East Jerusalem, removing only the cover", but their censored version. There is no "odd double standard" on the part of CMIP, but since this fact is well-known amongst researchers, it is puzzling that the information has eluded Professor Brown. Professor Brown mentions, between parentheses (ibid.), CMIP's view that it "holds the PNA responsible for the content" of the Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks that it is reprinting and using. But he does not mention the reasons for this view. The PNA had three possible options rather than to mechanically reprint the Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks. a) It could have reprinted the versions censored by Israel, but was reluctant to do so since it was perceived as humiliating. b) It could have adopted the recommendations implemented by a UN Committee between 1968 and 1995, according to which the Director General of UNESCO published a list of acceptable textbooks each year to be used in the territories administered by Israel. The PNA could have used this mechanism for the interim period of replacement of the various textbooks. Instead this device was abolished by UNESCO General Conference in October 1995 at the demand of the PLO and the Arab League. c) The PNA could have accepted the US proposal to fund the reprinting of all the textbooks, free of their offensive expressions against Jews and Israel. But as already mentioned, the PNA rejected this option. " edume.org