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Source: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-textbook-study-flawed-and-wrong/
The Palestinian-Israeli Textbook Study: Flawed and Wrong
(Times of Israel) Elihu D. Richter - Last month, press reports on the joint U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian study, "Victims of their Own Narratives," conveyed the impression of a symmetric prevalence of incitement in Palestinian and Israeli textbooks. This impression is wrong. I was one of four Israeli members of the Scientific Advisory Panel who withheld our endorsements of the final report. The study had major limitations. It was narrowly confined to textual excerpts alone, and did not include homework assignments, guidebooks for teachers, and the larger educational environment of children. It therefore did not capture much of the explicitly horrendous incitement in the public square, summer camps, children's TV programs, and print media. The study did not look at Hamas-run schools. Contrary to most press reports, the hard data in the study in fact showed substantial differences between Palestinian and Israeli state textbooks. Negative images of Israelis were far higher in Palestinian texts than were negative images of Palestinians in Israeli texts. The most striking contrasts had to do with Palestinian delegitimization: ignoring the existence of the other. 97% of Palestinian maps omitted Israeli cities or Jewish holy places as compared to 12% of Israeli maps that did not list Muslim sites or holy places. Another problem with the study is that it scored historical facts which are painful truths as negative depictions of the other. For example, Israeli excerpts describing the horrors of the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes are defined as conveying a negative message. Prof. Elihu D. Richter MD MPH is head of the Genocide Prevention Program and Injury Prevention Center and Director of the Jerusalem Center for Genocide Prevention. He is the retired head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and the Injury Prevention Center at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine.