Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Lines Are Being Drawn

Education Minister: Put the Green Line back in textbooks

Education Minister Yuli Tamir issued instructions to reinstate the Green Line in all the new editions of study books featuring maps of Israel.

Tamir said Israel could not demand of its Arab neighbors to mark the June 4, 1967 borders, while the Israeli education system erased them from its textbooks and from children's awareness.

Professor Yoram Bar-Gal, head of Geography and Environmental Studies at Haifa University, said Tamir's directive to bring the Green Line back to the maps would be hard to follow. He said that most study books were issued by private publishers, who would not be keen on changing the plates at their expense.

Two years ago Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a lecturer in language and education at Hebrew University, published research on six study books that had been published after the Oslo agreement. Some of these books were officially endorsed by the Education Ministry. Many teachers adopted other books even without the ministry's approval.

Her main findings included the disappearance of the Green Line and Arab cities in Israel from the maps in these books, and their presentation of sites and settlements in "Judea and Samaria," rather than in the "West Bank," as an integral part of Israel.


Yuli Tamir should not begin mopping up operations quite yet. Her Peace Now origins philosophy has not become the dominant ideology of the state. Next she'll be wiping out other extended borders throughout history. I think she should better work on getting Arab acquaintances to stop publishing maps wherein Israel doesn't even appear.

1 comment:

Jameel @ The Muqata said...

She's a true student of Shimon Peres, "Nothing should be learned from history."

By Julie trying to restore the Green line and only call Yehuda vShomron, "The West Bank," she's trying not only to forget history, but actively ignore it as well.

What better person to be our Education Minister.