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The Israeli government is fuming over a new Dutch textbook which calls Menachem Begin a terrorist and accuses Israeli soldiers of murdering Arab civilians during its war of independence. The Israeli Embassy in the Netherlands capital of The Hague issued a formal complaint to the Dutch government about it on Tuesday.
This is the sort of thing that people have come to expect from textbooks written by the Palestinian Authority and used in Gaza. Perhaps the people who compiled the textbook merely translated an Arab one.
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But whatever the reason, the very existence of this textbook is another threat to the Jews of Europe at a time when acts of violence against them have been increasing.
The embassy said that it took action over the book Geschiedeniswerkplaats, ” or “History Workplace, ” by the Noordhoff Uitgevers, after receiving complaints from members of the local Jewish community. It stated, “We are acting on the subject in several areas. We are looking into the outrageous statements to identify any factual inaccuracies and the possibility of incitement.”
One of those who complained was An Israeli-Dutch 16 year old named Barak Gorani who is a student at the Maimonides Jewish School in Amsterdam. His father told YnetNews about one image in the book showing a Palestinian using a slingshot against an Israeli tank, “Why do they show a picture of a tank from the year 2000 for a section about 1948? This is meant to create the impression that nothing has changed since then and we still kill children.”
“This is a provocative image accompanied by provocative text. My son is required to study this book if he wants to pass his final history exams and that cannot be allowed, ” he added.
Part of the problem with the book is that it is completely one sided. It says that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes because thousands were “murdered” by Israeli soldiers in 1948. Not only is this inaccurate, but it also leaves out the fact that Israel was attacked by armies from five different Arab nations.
The question is, why would a European country make such a one sided view of history in its textbooks? Is it because of ant-Semitism on the part of its officials? Is it because of stupidity? Or is it because the Arab world has succeeded in its international propaganda campaign to rewrite the history of the Arab-Israel conflict?
As George Orwell wrote, he who controls the present controls the past. And he who controls the past controls the future.
