----------------------- Message requiring your approval ---------------------- From: Andrea Rapp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [ha-Safran]: Re: Seeking series of books (and anti-Israel bias)
> Is there a series of books about the Israeli wars, > geared to junior high? ==== Funny you should ask. I just received a box of books on Israel, an assortment of titles I ordered to update our Israel collection. Included are 3 titles from Rosen�s series called: War and Conflict in the Middle East. Are there no accurate and reasonably unbiased books about Israel from mainline publishers? The title on the Six Day War presents Arafat as a mild-mannered former engineer. Nasser�s blockade of Eilat is not called an act of war, but a demonstration of his �commitment to the cause of Arab unity.� It says that the Balfour Declaration called for 2 states of equal size and the internationalization of Jerusalem. The title on the Suez crisis presents the war as a conspiracy among Israel and its allies. It gives an inordinate amount of space to Anthony Eden�s supposed use of amphetamines and other substances and says that �we cannot know� whether Eden�s health affected his judgment but goes on to say �It is almost certain, though, that it did.� The title on the Yom Kippur War says that Yom Kippur is an important day because according to the Bible, Abraham offered to sacrifice his son on Yom Kippur and that God (in the Bible) told Abraham that thenceforth he and his sons should blow a shofar every year on Yom Kippur. This volume says that Golda Meir lied to her people about the attacks, that Dayan is looked on as a failure, that Syria�s Assad was an elected leader�. I find even worse bias in general books about Israel. Example: (from A Historical Atlas of Israel by Amy Romano; published by Rosen Group): Re: the UN Partition vote: �Although the Jews accepted the decree, they also had no intention of honoring it.� (p.37). The goal of the PLO is �the liberation of Palestine� (p.42), not the destruction of Israel. The title on Israel in the �Modern World Nations� series (Chelsea House) traces Jews to ancient Israelite ancestors and Palestinians to ancient Philistines, so both peoples are presented as having the same degree of ancient attachment to the land. This book continually presents the PA as if it belongs in a discussion on an equal par with institutions of the state of Israel in a book about Israel! A title on the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre describes the pride felt by one of the terrorists and says that Israeli soldiers forced hundreds of thousands of Arabs into horrible refugee camps where they lived in tin huts with little protection from scorching heat or wintry winds. One could go on and on and on. We really need a series of reliable books on Israel for students, just as there are series on the Holocaust for junior high level students.
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