“Strong together, we love Israel and trust the army” banner in Jerusalem. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Aug 7 2014 (IPS)

“Strong together, we love Israel and trust the army” – while a tentative truce takes root, banners adorned with the national colours still dominate cities and highways across the country.

Calling for unquestioned patriotism and solidarity, the embrace is a bear hug in the minds of those who question the merits and morality of Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza.

It is tough to subscribe to the credo of peace when nationalist emotions are exacerbated by plaintive sirens and the deafening sound of Iron Dome missiles slamming incoming rockets, when rational judgment is mobilised for the war effort and crushes rational assessment of the effect of war.

War is the antithesis of peace is a tautology. Challenged by war, Israeli peace activists grapple with dilemma.... ordinary Israelis took refuge in the safety net of their emotions, seeking comfort in national anxiety, pronouncing moral judgment on the “sanctimonious” critics at home who contest the axiomatic assertion proclaimed time and again that “the Israel Defence Forces is the world’s most moral army”

A war, when launched, must be won. Yet this war results neither in victory nor defeat, is not a war to end all wars, but a war to avoid the next war by means of deterrence, maybe. In war, there is only loss, and losers, peace activists reckon.

If war will not have solved the conflict – it contains the seeds of the next round of violence – peace will, they assert.

But when the cannons roar, peace is silenced.

Stressing that there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Peace NGO Forum called for a ceasefire and a resumption of the negotiations towards a two-state solution on Day 22 of the operation.

The Peace NGO Forum is an umbrella platform for Jewish and Palestinian civil society organisations dedicated to peace within a two-state solution to the conflict. The partner organisations, which include the women’s peace coalition Bat Shalom and the Combatants for Peace movement, partake in networking, capacity-building and joint demonstrations,

The belated statement generated by the Israeli wing of the forum exposed the dilemma: “Israelis reserve the right to self-defence and deserve to live in security and peace, without the threat of rockets fired at them and enemy tunnels dug into their midst.”

And so, at its height, the war was justified, enjoying quasi-consensual approval ratings among Jewish Israelis. Social media brimmed with racist, intimidating, “Kill Arabs”, “Kill leftists” comments.

“No more deaths!” On Day 19 of the operation, 5,000 Israelis joined a rally organised by pro-peace civil society organisations. The emblematic Peace Now movement was absent, as was the liberal Meretz party. The protestors dispersed after rockets were fired at the Tel Aviv metropolis.

Succumbing willingly to the 24 hours a day news coverage on TV, ordinary Israelis took refuge in the safety net of their emotions, seeking comfort in national anxiety, pronouncing moral judgment on the “sanctimonious” critics at home who contest the axiomatic assertion proclaimed time and again that “the Israel Defence Forces is the world’s most moral army”.

Left-wing Israelis counter that self-righteousness is intrinsic in such proclamation.

“How can you not identify with our national pain when we’re under threat” is a blame often levelled by right-wingers against fellow Israeli peace activists.

The Israeli public which, in its overwhelming majority, is at the centre and right of the political spectrum, charges that the country is falling victim to ‘victimology’, the victim-focused coverage of the conflict.

Supporters of the peace movement see respect for “human rights as our last line of defence”, as Amnesty International director Yonatan Gher put it in the liberal daily Haaretz on Wednesday. They object to the disproportionate reaction of the military. Israel must understand the weakness inherent in its own military might, they suggest.

The mainstream’s assumption is that peace activists too often give in to ‘the mother of all tautologies’ – that “war is hell” and “evil” and, in essence, a war crime. Any sign of soul searching that this war is not just is resented as vacillation and unwanted self-flagellation.

Peace activists hold Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories as the source of evil.

The 47-year occupation, most Israelis argue, reduces their predicament to a simplistic imagery, because the occupation does not justify the hatred of Israel professed by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, and the repetitive cycle of violence. The occupation continues because peace is unattainable, they stress.

“Try,” retort peace activists, “We’ve proven enough that we’re strong enough to take a risk for peace.”

Israelis have been stuck in this perennial debate for 14 years.

During this time, they have experienced a flurry of conflicts with no end in sight: the 2000-2005 Palestinian Intifadah uprising, the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah, onslaughts on Hamas in Gaza in 2006 (“Summer Rains”), 2008-2009 (“Cast Lead”), in 2012 (“Pillar of Defence”), and now.

Disillusion and despair are all the more potent that, during the years of the Oslo_Accords, a process of mutual reconciliation engaged both Israelis and Palestinians towards tentative recognition of the other’s pain.

With the ensuing confrontations, both people quickly backpedalled to the existential, elemental, dimension of their conflict.

In adversity, it has become necessary for both Israelis and Palestinians not only to exclude any identification with the other’s pain but also to inflict pain on the other as the sole way to assuage one’s pain and deter the other from inflicting pain.

What, however, unifies the overwhelming camp of war supporters and the dedicated ranks of peace supporters is the acknowledgement that the reality is complex.

Mainstream Israelis realise that their argument that an assessment of the situation requires not being focused solely on the body count in Gaza is a lost cause.

Peace activists understand that the threat that triggered Israel’s operation is tangible, but also the direction in which its outcome might be leading, its consequences and implications for Israel, and, by correlation, for the Palestinians and for peace between the two peoples.

Their ideal of co-existence grinded by years of wars, peace activists reject the focus on suffering if it only serves the hackneyed precept that, on one hand, in war, the end justifies (almost) all means, or, on the other, that war cannot be justified.

They draw fine lines between exercising a legitimate right of self-defence against an unwarranted act of aggression and ever greater use of force, and between the morality, rights and laws of war and the wrongs of the Occupation.

And now that the war seems over, they hang their hope on the realisation by their national leaders that they will urgently initiate a bold diplomatic move towards peace with the Palestinians, and will not let the same amount of time since the previous operation be wasted lest the same, recurring, reality blows up in both peoples’ faces.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Palestinian youth in the Old City of Jerusalem are taught a different version of historic events than their Israeli counterparts. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Apr 12 2013 (IPS)

At Dar el-Eitam Islamic Orphanage, a secondary school under Waqf (Islamic trust) supervision located in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, Palestinian twelfth graders prepare their Tawjihi (A-Level) in history. On the wall behind the teacher are two portraits of “martyrs” killed during the Second Intifadah uprising (2000-2005).

Simultaneously, Israeli sixth graders from the Eshkol communal villages adjacent to the border with Gaza are in Tel Aviv on a tour of Independence Hall, a national shrine where, on May 14, 1948, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion read the declaration of independence of the state of Israel.

“The U.N. voted for the Partition Plan but because the Arabs didn’t accept it, the plan didn’t materialise and, the following day, the Independence War broke out,” declaims Israeli guide Lili Ben-Yehuda to the children.

Back in the Islamic school in Jerusalem, history teacher Iyad el-Malki tells his class, “The Jews wanted two states — the Palestinian state and the Israeli state. Didn’t they take over the West Bank twenty years later, in 1967, and settle on our land?” he asks his class rhetorically.

"Textbooks play a crucial role in educating children and forging their ideology as adults"
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of the termination of the British Mandate of Palestine and for the partition of the land into two independent states – one Jewish, one Arab.

For Israelis, the vote portended the creation of their state six months later; for Palestinians it meant the “Nakba”, meaning catastrophe, when the Palestinians went from being a majority on their land to a minority in what would become Israel.

Observing how two classes – one Israeli, one Palestinian – are taught an elemental moment of their common history proves that “historical events, while not false or fabricated, are selectively presented to reinforce each community’s national narrative”, says a recently published study on Palestinian and Israeli textbooks.

Entitled “Victims of Our Own Narratives? Portrayal of the ‘other’ in Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks”, the study found, “Both sides are locked into self-national narratives inherited from the conflict.”

“Each side negatively pigeonholes the other,” Sami Adwan, associate professor of education at Bethlehem University and co-author of the study, told IPS. “And both fail to include information about the other’s culture, religion, daily life.”

In the Oslo Accord (1993), both parties agreed to “recognise their mutual legitimate and political rights” and negotiate a two-state solution to their conflict. Yet almost twenty years on, mutual recognition – let alone a two-state solution – is not on the map, literally.

And it will continue to evade the map while textbooks, which “play a crucial role in educating children and forging their ideology as adults”, according to Adwan, do not acknowledge the existence of the “other”.

Analysing more than 3,000 texts in 94 Palestinian and 74 Israeli books over a period of three years (2009-2012), the study identified maps as vivid evidence of each side’s attempt to erase borders and, thus, historic claims.

“Children grow up on both sides with the representation that the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is really their homeland,” Daniel Bar-Tal, professor of research in child development and education at Tel Aviv University and the study’s co-author, told IPS.

And whereas schoolbooks “consistently describe the other community as acting to destroy or dominate its own community, it depicts its own actions as peaceful and acting in self-defence”, explains the study.

Educational systems on both sides are different.

In existence since 1948, the Israeli system is heterogeneous, comprised of secular and religious state schools, and of unaffiliated ultra-orthodox schools. All use different textbooks.

Created in the early 2000s, the nascent Palestinian system is more homogenous, with pupils learning the same textbooks.

For Adwan, textbooks reflect the reality experienced by both people: “Israelis see the Palestinians as only waiting for the opportunity to attack them. Still under occupation, Palestinians see their land being taken away from them,” he says.

The study also compared teachings referring to glorification of martyrdom and self-sacrifice.

Palestinian sixth graders can read in a language book, “Death before submission, forward!” — an injunction reminiscent, Israeli critics say, of past suicide bombings.

Israeli second graders, on the other hand, are taught the story of Joseph Trumpeldor, an early Zionist whose last words while defending a Jewish settlement against Arab attackers reportedly were: “It’s good to die for our country.”

Implications for peace-building

During the Oslo peace years, as Israelis and Palestinians were cautiously reaching out towards each other, Bar-Tal was in charge of preparing Israeli state textbooks for a new peace age.

For him, “The purpose of national narratives is first to mobilise people, prepare them to fight for the cause.”

But they can also, equally, be used to prepare people for peace.

In the 1990s, Israel started to come to terms with the issue of Palestinian refugees. For the first time, textbooks acknowledged that Palestinians did not choose to flee during Israel’s war of independence but were, in many instances, forced to do so.

In 2007, Yuli Tamir, a liberal education minister, introduced the term “Nakba”, which refers to the forced Palestinian exodus, into Israeli Arabic-language textbooks destined for Israeli pupils of Palestinian descent.

Two years later, the ‘N’ word was expunged; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then justified the decision by saying that the term was “propaganda against Israel”.

Against this backdrop, the study appears to have deep implications for peace-building, suggesting that the textbooks made up by adults are not yet engaged in preparing children for an ethos of peace.

As a result, the research report is emerging as a microcosm of the conflict and its divergent narratives, with Israeli government officials who have long criticised the content of Palestinian textbooks rejecting the study’s findings altogether.

“Our children are taught to love peace; theirs to hate us,” Yossi Kuperwasser, director-general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry and a former senior military intelligence officer who monitors Palestinian statements deemed “inflammatory” by Israel, tells IPS.

Even before the study’s publication last month, Israel’s Ministry of Education issued a pre-emptive statement dismissing the research as “biased, unprofessional and significantly lacking in objectivity” and the findings as “predetermined”.

“It’s not an academic study,” accuses Kuperwasser, “but rather, a political report used for besmirching Israel and its education system.”

The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, has expressed “openness” to the findings, according to Adwan.

Though he would “like to see textbooks present the other side in a more human perspective” Adwan believes “daily reality must also reflect that move”.

Tens of Israeli children visit the shrine of statehood each day, re-enacting the historic moment of their state’s declaration of independence.

Meanwhile within the walls of the Old City where the Islamic orphanage and secondary school holds classes, Palestinian students sing their national anthem, most without much anticipation, as if statehood for them was a forlorn dream.