Jerusalem
Fouad Moughrabi’s “Battle of the Books in Palestine” [Oct. 1] incorrectly states that UNICEF evacuated its staff from the West Bank and Gaza at the outset of the intifada one year ago. In fact, staff were not evacuated but remained on the job in order to insure UNICEF’s longstanding support to Palestinian children. Only relatives of some staff members, a volunteer and a consultant at the end of her assignment were sent home. The article also gives the mistaken impression that international agencies like UNICEF have not extended any help to Palestinian children suffering psychologically as a result of this most recent period of conflict. This is not true. UNICEF promptly mobilized up to $480,000 at the outset of the current situation to assist children suffering from stress and other psychological problems, in cooperation with our Palestinian partners. We continue to do so. Our most recent effort is to help others working to help children reach a consensus on practices and ethics for this important work. Rather than being left to “cope on their own,” as Moughrabi states, children in the West Bank and Gaza can continue to rely on UNICEF’s support during this difficult period.
PIERRE POUPARD Jerusalem
Professor Fouad Moughrabi’s article is, in fact, a reprint of a piece to which the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP) has already responded. We invited Professor Moughrabi to “openly and honestly examine and discuss the content of the textbooks themselves.” To date we have received no response from him.
Moughrabi is disturbed that CMIP has placed the issue of the educational policies inherent in Palestinian and Israeli school texts on the public agenda. Textbooks are not simply another educational device but a clear expression of what governments instill in the minds of the young to further their long-term agenda.
Nothing in Moughrabi’s article does anything but reinforce the conclusion that he has no real answer to the analysis put forward in the CMIP report. The objective reader is still left with the conclusion reached in the report that Palestinian textbooks incite against Jews, against Israel’s very existence and coexistence with its neighbors. Certain Palestinian textbooks still depict Jews as greedy, treacherous, racist liars and thieves. They are the “enemies of the Arabs,” of “the prophets and believers” and even of God. They aspire to rule and control the world, and they view the “non-Jews as pigs just fit for servicing them.”
With regard to the work by Mustafa Dabbagh, CMIP would like to clarify the following points: (1) Our Country Palestine was not originally printed in 1947. In 1947 there existed a manuscript, which was lost at sea during Dabbagh’s flight from Jaffa to Egypt. This volume was first printed in 1965 by the Dar al-Taliah printing house in Beirut. The same house printed Volume 2 in 1966. (2) Our Country Palestine is not “merely mentioned” in the chapter of the Palestinian Authority’s sixth-grade textbook Our Beautiful Language, devoted to Mustafa Murad Dabbagh. Most of this chapter is actually a long quote from the introduction that Dabbagh wrote in 1964 for the first edition of his work. Moreover, in the eighth lesson, for example, the pupils are asked to write a detailed account of the importance of their cities or villages. The lesson suggests using Dabbagh’s book to perform this task. So, the pupils have to use Dabbagh’s work, which provides a detailed account of each town and village in Palestine from the archeological, historical, geographical, geological, botanical and economic point of view.
(3) Our Country Palestine was reprinted by the University Graduates Union of the province of Hebron, Volume 1 in 1973 and Volume 2 in 1985. Also, one of the copies of Our Country Palestine that was used by CMIP during its research came from the library of one of the intermediate schools of Hebron. (4) The quote “There is no alternative to destroying Israel” appears in the 1965 edition. In the 1973 edition this sentence was changed to “There is no alternative to the complete destruction of Israel.” In spite of the Oslo accords, the State of Israel still does not appear on any map in any of the Palestinian textbooks or teachers’ guides. One cannot find the slightest hint of recognition of the State of Israel, within its borders of 1948 or even within the framework of the 1947 UN Palestine partition plan. There is no reference to the peace process or to the content of the Oslo accords, to the mutual recognition between Palestinians and Israelis, or to their mutual commitment at Oslo to solve their conflict exclusively by negotiation. Unfortunately, certain Palestinian educational materials advocate the opposite approach–the obligation to liberate Palestine by jihad.
One can find numerous quotes propagating this indoctrination, including excerpts from Palestinian textbooks on the CMIP website (www.edume.org).
DR. YOHANAN MANOR
Ramallah, West Bank
In October 2000 most international agencies in the West Bank and Gaza evacuated what they call their “nonessential” staff. In those grim days, UNICEF in particular was not answering our phone calls or responding to our e-mail requests. More significant, however, is the fact that UNICEF’s intervention here was minimal, mostly geared to increasing general awareness about the psychological effects of trauma on Palestinian children, by placing ads in newspapers and by distributing a useful booklet designed to help teachers and parents recognize the symptoms and try to deal with them. Pierre Poupard recently sent us a letter in which he claims that UNICEF has also done a limited amount of training of teachers. In other crises throughout the world, UNICEF intervened immediately by conducting large-scale screening and by devising intervention strategies, thereby gaining a wealth of experience in responding to children who suffer the effects of trauma. Excellent and useful work was carried out in neighboring Lebanon with the help of Dr. Mouna Macksoud, who translated screening measures to Arabic and adapted them to local needs. This was not done here, despite the nearly half-million dollars allocated to the task. Palestinian children and their parents continue to cope on their own.
Dr. Manor’s response is consistent with a pattern of lies that permeates the entire work of CMIP. He claims that CMIP responded to me and invited me to “openly and honestly examine and discuss the content of the textbooks themselves” and that I have not answered. This is another lie. I never heard from them.
A much longer version of my Nation article is forthcoming in the Journal of Palestine Studies. It will contain even more proof, on the basis of text analysis, of CMIP lies and distortions.
If textbooks are indeed a “clear expression of what governments instill in the minds of the young,” as Manor suggests, then I invite him to take a look at Israeli school textbooks, which to this day view Arabs as thieves, killers and marauders; present a map of Israel that includes the entire area from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River as the eternal Land of Israel; and describe the occupied Palestinian West Bank as Judea and Samaria, where no Arabs are said to exist. His obfuscatory remarks about Our Country Palestine notwithstanding, the fact is that CMIP deliberately misquotes and badly translates in order to force a point about a book that various scholars consider to be a classic reference work on the history of Palestine during the British Mandate.
I am more than happy to enter into an honest and open debate on the issue of Palestinian and Israeli school textbooks with knowledgeable and professional Israeli colleagues, but not with extremists whose political agenda is to show that peace and coexistence with the Palestinians are impossible.
FOUAD MOUGHRABI
Washington, D.C.
I don’t think it was fair for Katha Pollitt to object to my observation that embryonic stem cell research, “‘rightly or wrongly’ summons up visions of Dr. Mengele’s Auschwitz experiments” [“Subject to Debate,” Aug. 20]. That’s exactly how many people feel, and for those debating the issue it’s important to know what motivates all sides. Nevertheless, I must say Pollitt made some good points in illuminating the inconsistencies of some of those favoring funding for embryonic stem cell research.
She correctly summarizes Orrin Hatch’s position as: It’s “OK to destroy a frozen embryo because the embryo is only a person if it’s in a woman.” Dubbing this the “location theory of personhood,” she notes that by this logic, “You put the cells in the woman, it’s a person, you take them out, it’s not a person, you put them back in, voilà!–it’s a person again. You might as well say Orrin Hatch is a person in his office but not in his car.” Well put. But it would be nice if Pollitt would apply her wit and reasoning to the “convenience theory of personhood.” If the mother wants it, it’s called a “baby,” cards are sent out, the empty bedroom is decorated with stuffed animals and a crib is installed. If the mother doesn’t want it, it’s called a fetus and aborted.
MICHAEL FUMENTO Ames, Iowa
Katha Pollitt suggests that antichoice women be recruited to gestate the 100,000 frozen embryo children in need of homes. But how responsible is this? If half of all fertilized eggs fail to implant, we would be condemning 50,000 embryo children to death. Really, the safest place for an embryo child is the freezer. In fact, we might require all fertilized embryos to be removed and frozen for their own safety. What responsible parent would want an embryo child to be faced with the perils of gestation and birth–and ultimate death? Besides solving the problem of death, freezing all embryo children would save money spent on education, medical care and other things that we are too prone to provide for unruly children. Frozen embryos are certainly the best behaved, least troublesome children we will ever get.
DEBORAH FINK
UNICEF AND TEXTBOOKS IN PALESTINE
Special representative
UNICEF West Bank and Gaza
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Vice chairman,
Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace
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The Hudson Institute
