CAMERA Op-Ed: Misinforming Students on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Op-Ed in the Jewish Advocate June 14, 2013 by Steve StotskyNew evidence of the same old problem for schoolsLast November, the Vice Chairman of the Newton School Committee reassured the public that there was no reason to believe that anti-Israel materials were used in Newton schools to teach about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. He rhetorically asked, “Does it really sound plausible that for years virtually everyone has unknowingly been the victim of the teaching of such horrible material?”
Sadly, the most recent batch of current instructional material offers new evidence of the problem.
Two weeks ago, copies of handouts used in the 10th-grade honors class in the Newton schools to teach about the Israeli Palestinian conflict were forwarded to me for review by concerned residents. Included was a timeline titled “POV: History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” that purports to cover both “An Israeli Perspective” and “A Palestinian Perspective.” It was compiled in 2001 by Negar Katirai, during a two-year post-undergraduate internship. Nothing in Katirai’s experience as a legal-aid advocate or her educational background indicates expertise on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Katirai thanked Professor Mark LeVine of UC Irvine for reviewing the document. LeVine is an outspoken critic of Israel whose columns regularly appear on Al Jazeera’s English website. In a guest column in The Huffington Post on Jan. 13, 2009, he compared Hamas’ fight against Israel in Gaza to “the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.” LeVine contended that Israelis have an “addiction” to violence and suffer from “collective mental illness.”
![Jewish studies on the rise in India
Two recently held seminars in two different Indian cities bring Jewish, Israel studies into sharp focus
Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Tazpit Published: 06.11.13, 07:31 /
During the last two months, two international seminars took place in India focusing on Jewish and Israel studies.
Held with a gap of a month, in two very different cities, the seminars signal the advent of Jewish and Israel studies in India as an academic discipline and pave the way for India’s first center for Israel studies, scheduled to become functional in August this year.
It was interesting to see Afghan and Jewish studies take the center stage at a three-day international seminar on “Cultural Dynamics in Asian Connections” held at the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies in Kolkata, India, in mid March.
It was interesting given the fact that Jewish studies are not a recognized academic discipline in India, though Jews have been present in the country for at least twelve centuries and possibly two millennia. Yet Jewish studies found more room than any other field.
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The seminar saw the participation of four Afghans, three Jews, a secular humanist Pashtun from India, besides a number of scholars from many other countries, like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Lebanon.
The seminar touched upon a broad spectrum of topics. Yael Silliman spoke about women’s narratives as they appear in her book “A Diaspora of Hope: The Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta.” The narratives raised the issues of identity, gender and what it means to live in Diaspora and be part of a traveling community.
Taking forward the discussion of identity, the present author drew attention to the ambivalence the Indian Jews have always faced when it comes to their dual identity of being Indian as well as Jewish, in the paper he presented, titled “Between Indianness and Jewishness: The Ambivalence of Indian Jews as Reflected in Literature, Cinema and Art.”
Israeli sculptor and scholar Achia Anzi, who gives Hebrew lessons at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, mourns and longs for the lost ideals and vision of Zionism through an introduction to his artistic work, which has emerged for him as a means to deal with the spiritual crisis, besides the political and social, that Israel is experiencing today according to him.
His presentation was titled “Peaceful be your return O lovely bird, from warm lands back to my window…”, which was also the title of his first solo exhibition held at Gallery Threshold in New Delhi in March last year.
The other seminar to focus on Jewish and Israel Studies took place in mid April, a month after the seminar at the Maulana Abul Kalam Institute of Asian Studies in Kolkata. This seminar, titled “Israel: Perspectives on a State in Transition” was jointly organized by O. P. Jindal Global University and the Middle East Institute at the university’s campus in Sonipat, Haryana.
The seminar, convened by Dr. Rohee Das Gupta of the Jindal School of International Affairs, an imminent scholar of Ashkenazim, saw the participation of scholars from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Washington University, Brandeis University and the Gautam Buddha University.
It had two panels, one on “Israeli Identity, History and Democracy” and the other on “Israeli Military Strategy and Conflict,” and keynote lectures by Professor P. R. Kumaraswamy of Jawaharlal Nehru University, author of “India’s Israel Policy and Dr. Maina Chawla Singh of Washington University, author of “Being Indian, Being Israeli: Migration, Ethnicity and Gender in the Jewish Homeland.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/c7d8022b0d661b7e5641b4662b0ab7bc/tumblr_moj29eKogI1s4lolfo1_500.jpg)
