Israelis and Palestinians obviously have competing “historical truths” or narratives, but if we are to cultivate a next generation on both sides that can tolerate each other, shouldn’t we be teaching the conflicting narratives as a bridge towards reconciliation, and not as a weapon with which to crush the other?
Speaking at an education conference in Tel Aviv on Sunday, Israel Minister of Education Gideon Saar addressed the question (Hebrew) of teaching the Palestinian narrative in Israeli schools for the first time explicitly. He asserted (predictably) that Israel’s Ministry of Education will never permit the instruction of the Nakba or anything related to the Palestinian narrative in Israeli schools since “Israeli Independence shall not be treated like the Holocaust.”
His statements were made in direct response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ op-ed in the New York Times last week, in which he reiterated the call for Palestinian statehood and its recognition by the United Nations. Saar claimed that Abbas distorted the “historical truth” of the region when he argued that following the 1947 Partition Plan:
“Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued. Indeed, it was the descendants of these expelled Palestinians who were shot and wounded by Israeli forces on Sunday as they tried to symbolically exercise their right to return to their families’ homes.”
Certainly this is not how Zionist historians would tell the story, and Abbas’ account may have switched or altered the order of events a bit, however the point is that this is his “historical truth” as he constructs it. Although Abbas is actually an academically trained historian, his “historical truth” is not disconnected from his being a politician competing for the legitimacy of the narrative of the nation he represents – just as Gideon Saar represents what he sees as the proper Jewish, Zionist narrative, which he also calls “historical truth.”
Any good critical thinker should know that “historical truth” is neither history nor truth, but rather the collective memory of a people, at best, and propaganda, at worst. But what is at issue here is not the philosophy behind “historical truths,” but rather the Minister of Education’s vision for the educational curriculum in Israel.
During an Israeli radio show discussing Minister Saar’s speech, two professors were invited to discuss the question of teaching the Palestinian narrative – one to ostensibly represent the “lefty” position that the Nakba should be taught, the other, arguing that there is no room for the state to fund a competing narrative in schools that have an obligation to teach Zionist, Jewish identity.
The professor that argued the “pro-Nakba” position reasoned that it was necessary because the only way to criticize – and refute – the Palestinian narrative is to first present it, to make students aware of it. This is logical enough. Yes, to oppose propagating ignorance in schools. He did, however, insist that there is an ultimate “historical truth” for Israelis but that it simply has not been reached yet, essentially arguing that grappling with conflicting narratives is the only way to credibly insist on one’s own.
He went on to assert that this will help Israel justify to the world its claim to be a democracy, since all proper democracies make room for the “Other’s” narrative – as if admitting that Israel’s democratic mechanisms are activated, not out of a genuine dedication to cultivate a democratic society that actually breeds social equality and tolerance, but rather to merely appear as one in the international arena.
This is a very practical approach: Let’s teach the Nakba in some shape or form in the schools, so that we can better prepare our students to delegitimize and disregard it with impunity. There is no sense, even among those publicly in favor of teaching the Palestinian narrative in schools, that there is room for both narratives – rather the notion is that there should be education for the sake of credible rejection of another narrative.
Knowledge is indeed the key to independent and responsible decision-making, however it would be better if the means (teaching the Nakba) weren’t so blatantly justifying the end (refuting the Nakba). In an ideal world, education, openness and tolerance are NOT tools to be taught in school for the sake of propagating a specific, exclusivist nationalist goal, but rather should simply be provided as tools in and of themselves, for the purpose of endowing each and every Israeli in the next generation with the ability to responsibly scrutinize the world.