Review of Arabs and Palestinians in Israeli Textbooks

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May 30, 2023

This IMPACT-se report offers an insight into major themes relating to Arabs and Palestinians in government-approved, Hebrew-language Israeli school textbooks covering civics, geography, Hebrew studies, history, homeland, society and civics, Israel studies, Jewish thought, and Jewish-Israeli culture. The research explores how specific lessons, images and exercises portray and shape attitudes toward Palestinians and Arabs from various backgrounds within Israeli society and the greater region. It evaluates the presentation of the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, the peace process, and Arab and Palestinian Other—living either as citizens of Israel, in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and elsewhere. This analysis looks at 107 textbooks taught at state and state-religious schools approved by the Israeli Ministry of Education for the 2022–23 academic year. These include the entire corpus of the eight state-approved civics textbooks (from which schools could choose), as well as the majority of history textbooks dealing with the periods of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In doing so, this report focuses on six thematic categories: “Peace Education”, “The Palestinian Experience”, “Diversity and Democratic Values”, “Self-Reflection, Violence and Injustice”, “Har Bracha: Perspective from the West Bank,” and “Cartography.”

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