israeli-racism-in-theory-and-practice

RaCIST INDOCTRINaTION THROUgH THe
eDUCaTION SySTem
“I pray for you to come back home safe and to kill
at least ten for me”; “Disobey orders and annihilate
them. And remember that the good Arab is the dead
Arab.”; “Let Palestinians, may God blacken their
name, rot in fire. Make holes in them with your M16
and shell them with bombs.” 30
Text books used as part of the official curricula in Israel
are designed to systematically indoctrinate school children
and to instill hatred in them toward Arabs by effectively
dehumanising them; by nurturing notions of ‘otherness’
and difference and through the creation of negative
stereotypes. Photographs, literature and history are all
too often manipulated to serve dubious political goals and
to etch a form of racism into the psyche of successive
generations that leads to the worst extremism.
Caricatures in school books depict Arabs, among other
things, as being uncivilised, untrustworthy, pusillanimous,
grovelling, evil, violent and treacherous; as lowlifes who
have contributed nothing to humanity. In a story entitled
“Dust of the Edge”, one Jew advises another; Arabs are
like dogs. If they see you confused, don’t react to their
provocation so as to avoid being attacked by them. But if
you decide to beat them, they will run away like dogs! 31
The subsequent stereotyping of Arabs and racist moulding
of many Jewish children happens at an early stage in
their development and is an issue of unanimity among
Israeli researchers in this area. In a survey cited in Adir
Cohen’s ‘An Ugly Face in the Mirror’, 75% of the 4 th
Israeli Racism in Theory and Practice
26 Middle East Monitor | A Report | October 2009