Censoring the Nakba

Israel's Ministry of Education is ordering teachers not to attend a workshop that promotes including the facts of Palestinian dispossession in classes:

"Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

"Israel’s education ministry issued the advisory after Zochrot – a Jewish group that seeks to raise awareness among Israeli Jews of the events of 1948, referred to as the 'nakba' by Palestinians – organised a workshop for primary school teachers...

"The warning is the latest move by the education ministry, headed by Gideon Saar, a member of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, to use school curricula to advance a more strident Zionist agenda.

"In March, for instance, the ministry banned Israeli schools from distributing a booklet for children about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Critics had objected to parts of the declaration that refer to freedom of religion and protection of asylum-seekers."

As you can gather from this short excerpt, the Israeli government has a great amount of power over Israeli society, power which is used to promote the educational agenda favored by the current government. Under Netanyahu, that means attempting to indoctrinate students with right-wing Israeli nationalism.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)