NOVANEWS
Everyone has the right to preserve his or her identity, heritage and history. All people have the right to receive proper education at schools they attend; no one deserves to receive censored, politicized propaganda that aims to control the minds of young people in any way. We will not be forced to forget nor will we be forced into ignorance about our own identity.[ Jalal Abukhater, item 2 Israel imposes censored Palestinian textbooks on schools in East Jerusalem ]
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Dear All,
As time passes, the situation for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories especially, but also for Bedouin citizens of Israel in Israel , worsen. Clearly the fault lies with Israel , but not only. There is no reason that the Security Council and individual countries do not place sanctions on Israel . They certainly are free and easy with such pressure on other countries.
Today’s collection focuses mainly on certain of Israel’s immoral and atrocious acts and their results—beginning with the lack of water in Gaza, then to censoring Palestinian textbooks and imposing their use on Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem (as if censorship will alter history!), to Richard Falk’s damning report to the UN, in which he particularly gives attention to Palestinian children and how the occupation impacts on them.
Following these 3 is a report on a gender issue. Female soldiers left a religious rite after they were separated from the males—they can fight together but not pray together!
Last but by no means least is Today in Palestine , whose first section continues in the spirit of the first 3 items—that is to say, revealing Israel ’s immoral and unhappy conduct towards Palestinians.
Israel’s behavior does not bode well for the future, to put it mildly
Dorothy.
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1. From Mondoweiss
Struggling for water in Gaza
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/10/struggling-for-water-in-gaza.html
by Leila al-Najar and Ishraq Othman on October 22, 2011
The Beach camp “Al-shate” is located to the west of Gaza City . Small houses are crowded together with an unbearable smell springing from the wastewater running through the alleys. As volunteers in Youth for the Right of Water and Sanitation project (YRWS) we occasionally visit homes there randomly for our case study on water problems. Residents suffer enormously from serious water problems caused by the Israeli occupation which for years has undertaken exploiting and withdrawing all our pure water resources; groundwater, the Jordan River, the Gaza valley and Lake Tiberius . Thus, all aquifers start to run out and the problem of salty water is increasingly appearing in most houses in Gaza .
We visited the home of Haider Saed Abu-Jazya, a 51 year old carpenter and a father of 14 children whose family has a long miserable history with water. “We have been suffering from water shortage and unfair distribution for 10 years. It’s only available for two days a week beginning at midnight only to run out again in the morning. Along with the problem of polluted insufficient supply another problem has emerged, salty water” said Haider who looks older than his age.
The tone of Haider’s voice tells us he is extremely worried about his family’s life. He is likely to pass on the misery he inherited from his refugee parents to his children. “Can you drink a cup of tea melted with three spoons of salt? Absolutely you cannot” he stresses. He describes how salty and polluted water negatively affects his family. For this, he is obliged to buy a 500-liter gallon supply of water which costs 15 NIS 4 US dollars a day. Sometimes he borrows from a neighbor or friend to pay for it , other times his friends have no money to offer.
Not only is pure water used for drinking but also for ordinary daily use. Haider has a big family, yet he earns a low income to cover the simplest and most important needs of life like water which must be affordable to all people as a matter of human rights.
“A house without water as quiet as a desert”, he concludes.
Once, he ran out of water for two weeks in a row, so his wife couldn’t do the house chores like cooking, washing and laundering. Thus, they had to throw their dirty clothes away, which were not laundered for days and could not be used again.
How can a human being survive in such conditions?! How can not one be infected by diseases of salty water?
“The low quality of water causes allergies and red pimples arising on my children’s skin” his wife whispers.
WHAT TO DO?!
“All dwellers of the neighborhood gathered and headed to the municipality to complain about the water problems we all face, there were promises made but never fulfilled” he said.
Haider speaks on behalf of the Palestinian nation, hoping this voice will be heard all over the planet.
To those who read this article, imagine that you cannot get a drop of pure water while your baby is strongly crying because his milk is his only food.
Palestine suffers from severe lack of water and Gaza ’s water in particular is going to run out by 2020. As long as the world commits absolute silence, Gaza will turn into a wasteland. Gaza needs your help, don’t hesitate to help our people.
2. Independent commentary from Israel & the Palestinian territories
Saturday, October 22 2011|+972blog
Israel imposes censored Palestinian textbooks in East Jerusalem
Israeli authorities are attempting to impose new censored textbooks in Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem . Jalal Abukhater provides a sample of the changes and argues that censorship of Palestinian heritage and history is illegal, ineffective and dangerous. Students and parents are mounting protests.
Censored E. Jerusalem textbook (Photo: Jalal Abukhater)
http://972mag.com/israeli-authorities-impose-censored-palestinian-textbooks-in-east-jerusalem/26137/
By Jalal Abukhater
While the mainstream media has been dominated by big stories, others are not getting enough attention. For example, Israel ’ s Jerusalem Education Administration (JEA) recently decided to enforce the use of new, censored textbooks in all private schools in East Jerusalem . The JEA is a joint body of the Jerusalem municipality and the Israeli Ministry of Education. At present, public Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem administrated by the JEA are already forced to use Israel-issued censored textbooks, and the JEA is trying to force private schools to use them too, despite the fact that it has no authority over them.
The decision was an initiative of Knesset Member Alex Miller from Yisrael Beiteinu, who is also head of the Knesset’s education committee. Miller stated (Hebrew) that in East Jerusalem “the whole curriculum should and must be Israeli.”
At the start of the 2011-2012 academic year, students and parents protested against the decision to impose the new censored curricula upon their schools. Students and parents have threatened to escalate their protests if the JEA keeps up its pressure and have said they will not attend the schools if the school administrations comply with the JEA decision. This action by the Israeli Education Ministry is completely illegal under international law, which considers East Jerusalem to be occupied territory; as such the move is yet another direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, specifically Article 13 of the ICESCR. The move aims to deform Palestinian identity; the changes in the textbooks are dangerous and cannot be ignored.
I have obtained a copy of a report that highlights the modifications made by the JEA to the Palestinian textbooks that have been used since the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993. The report lists most of the changes made to textbooks used from first to tenth grade.
1. The logo of the Palestinian Authority that has been printed on all book covers has been removed and replaced with the logo of Jerusalem Municipality .
2. In the censored textbooks, every mention and picture of a Palestinian flag has been removed, even in the coloring books for six-year olds.
3. Also in the first grade textbooks, a story about a female prisoner returning home, and a poem about the “dawn of freedom” were deleted from the censored versions.
4. All mention of the terms Nakba (meaning “catastrophe,” referring to Palestinian dispersion/exodus in 1948) and Palestinian right of return have been removed, including poems by exiled Palestinian poets expressing their longing for their beautiful homeland. Poems and songs about the beauty of Palestinian landscapes or poems that mention Israeli checkpoints have also been deleted.
5. Earlier history – from hundreds of years ago – is being equally censored. In the fourth-grade textbook, a story about Saladin and the Battle of Hattin was deleted from existence for no apparent reason. Similarly a story about the Siege of Acre during the Napoleonic invasion has been deleted.
6. In fact, all mentions of the city of Acre have been removed including a poem which calls Acre “the bride of the sea” and a story about students visiting the city for the first time. Additionally, all mentions of Jerusalem as “Al Quds” have been removed; a story in the second-grade textbook about a field trip to the Old City of Jerusalem has also been removed.
7. Any mention of Israel as an occupying force or East Jerusalem as an occupied city have been removed. This aims to assert Israeli control over occupied Palestinian lands behind the 1967 armistice lines. Furthermore, Palestinians inside Israel are not referred to as Palestinians anymore, anywhere.
8. Stories, songs, and poems about of the first and second Palestinian uprisings have all been deleted. Here is a sample the report cites from a deleted song that the JEA accuses of inciting to violence, translated: “ Jerusalem is waiting for the dark occupation to wither away and for the bright day of freedom to arrive.” This is the only part of the song cited in the report.
9. In the geography textbooks of eight-grade students, the issue of pollution in the Palestinian environment addresses the waste sewage water dumped by settlements in the West Bank onto Palestinian villages; this whole lesson has been deleted. Also in all geography textbooks, facts about the Palestinian water crisis – such as in the Jordan Valley where roughly 8,000 settlers receive 20 times more water than almost 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank – are entirely deleted, in the newly censored textbooks.
10. In ninth and tenth grade history textbooks, almost the whole book has been deleted. Whole units that address the Palestinian issue from the time of the Balfour declaration (1917) until the Nakba (1948) have been deleted, leaving blank white pages for students to stare at.
Pages of Censored E. Jerusalem textbooks (Photo: Jalal Abukhater)
David Ben-Gurion once said in a conversation with Nahum Goldman: “That is natural: we have taken their country […] Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance.”
We have not forgotten, and we will never be forced to forget.
This issue is dangerous beyond description, and such illegal acts must not be allowed to pass unnoticed. People must act quickly and support the schools that have refused to deal with such misleading textbooks. The JEA has now threatened to cut funding to those schools, which are in need of support.
Everyone has the right to preserve his or her identity, heritage and history. All people have the right to receive proper education at schools they attend; no one deserves to receive censored, politicized propaganda that aims to control the minds of young people in any way. We will not be forced to forget nor will we be forced into ignorance about our own identity.
Jalal Abukhater is a resident of East Jerusalem, and a high school senior attending school in Ramallah. You can follow him on twitter @JalalAK_jojo