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GCSE Edexcel textbook challenged over 'rewriting' Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Publisher promises to 'immediately' launch independent review of book described by researcher as having 'no place inside the classroom'
October 27, 2019 11:01
Publisher promises to 'immediately' launch independent review of book described by researcher as having 'no place inside the classroom'
October 27, 2019 11:01The publisher of a book used to teach GCSE students about the Arab-Israeli conflict has said it will launch an independent review into the works’ content, after it was identified as “rewriting history” and “whitewashing anti-Jewish violence.”
Pearson, the company which owns the Edexcel exam board, is the publisher of “The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change, 1917-2012”, which is used for the international GCSE (IGCSE) History course. In a newly published report, the investigator David Collier described the book as “poisonous...hard core anti-Zionist revisionist material” which “whitewashes violence against Jews.”
For example, Mr Collier identifies the book as being full of pictures of victims of Jewish/Israeli actions, but meanwhile “not a single image shows the devastation on Israel and Israelis. Not one. There was no room for an image of a burnt-out bus, or the damage Hezbollah did to civilian housing. From the images alone you might gather that the Arabs posed some threat – but thankfully nobody ever died from it.”
Similarly, Mr Collier states that in the book’s section on the Oslo Peace process, where it subsequently asks students to explain the failure of that process, it “never once mentioned the exploding buses in Israel’s streets - and only mentioned a single terror attacking during this period.
“How can a student possibly mention the failure of Oslo if you don’t mention the hundreds of Israelis slain in Israeli streets?”
A spokesperson for Pearson told the Telegraph that the company would “immediately launch an independent and impartial review, and will take action if necessary.”
However, the company maintained that it always “aimed to present impartial, objective content.”
Mr Collier’s analysis identifies how the book similarly presents a one-sided view of the violence in the British Mandate in he 1920s and 1930s. For example, Mr Collier writes, “while the book drums Jewish violence into the heads of students – through repetitive use of keywords such as ‘Irgun’, Lehi’, ‘the King David Hotel’ and ‘Deir Yassin’ – The Mufti of Jerusalem – a man responsible for much of the violence in the 1920-1939 Mandate – is not mentioned anywhere in the book. Not once.
“How can you write a history of the conflict without mentioning the Mufti? Perhaps the dozen or so references to Deir Yassin or the Irgun didn’t leave enough space.”
Other examples of bias include the book’s attitude towards different groups. According to Mr Collier, the word “terrorist” is “almost exclusively reserved for Jewish actions”. While Jewish groups like the Irgun are always described as “terrorists”, the book treats Palestinian groups, like the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, responsible for numerous terror attacks) or the Palestinian Fedayeen with far more ambiguity.
“This book has no place inside the classroom”, Mr Collier stated.
“How many children in state funded schools have been exposed to this type of indoctrination? Someone somewhere needs to explain how this is even possible.”
The Zionist Federation, which commissioned Mr Collier to study the book, described the Pearson publication as “quite simply, a textbook case of rank anti-Israel bias based on lies and distortions.
“Every child who has been exposed to this book has been exposed to hardcore anti-Zionist revisionist material, manipulatively delivered through the use of images, misleading maps and distorted statistics and facts.”
It has launched an online petition, which has been signed by almost 2,500 to date, urging people to support its efforts to remove this textbook from the education syllabus.
