[Senate Hearing 108-290]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-290
PALESTINIAN EDUCATION--TEACHING PEACE OR WAR?
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HEARING
before a
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SPECIAL HEARING
OCTOBER 30, 2003--WASHINGTON, DC
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
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COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
TED STEVENS, Alaska, Chairman
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky TOM HARKIN, Iowa
CONRAD BURNS, Montana BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama HARRY REID, Nevada
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire HERB KOHL, Wisconsin
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah PATTY MURRAY, Washington
BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
LARRY CRAIG, Idaho DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana
James W. Morhard, Staff Director
Lisa Sutherland, Deputy Staff Director
Terrence E. Sauvain, Minority Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education, and Related Agencies
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi TOM HARKIN, Iowa
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina
LARRY CRAIG, Idaho DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas HARRY REID, Nevada
TED STEVENS, Alaska HERB KOHL, Wisconsin
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio PATTY MURRAY, Washington
RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana
ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia (Ex
officio)
Professional Staff
Bettilou Taylor
Jim Sourwine
Mark Laisch
Sudip Shrikant Parikh
Candice Rogers
Ellen Murray (Minority)
Erik Fatemi (Minority)
Adrienne Hallett (Minority)
Administrative Support
Carole Geagley
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Opening statement of Senator Arlen Specter....................... 1
Statement of Itamar Marcus, director, Palstinian Media Watch..... 2
Statement of Hon. David Satterfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary
of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Department of State......... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 5
Statement of James Kunder, Deputy Assistant Administrator for
Asia and Near Eastern Affairs, Director, Afghan Relief and
Reconstruction, USAID.......................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Statement of Richard Solomon, President, U.S. Institute of Peace. 13
Prepared statement........................................... 15
Prepared statement of Itamar Marcus.............................. 32
Statement of Hassan Abdel Rahman, chief representative, PLO
Mission........................................................ 33
Statement of Ziad Asali, president, American Task Force on
Palestine...................................................... 38
Prepared statement........................................... 40
Opening statement of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.............. 52
Prepared statement........................................... 54
Statement of Morton Klein, president, Zionist Organization of
America........................................................ 55
Prepared statement........................................... 59
Prepared statement of The American Jewish Committee.............. 68
PALESTINIAN EDUCATION--TEACHING PEACE OR WAR?
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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human
Services, and Education, and Related Agencies,
Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m., in room SD-192, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Arlen Specter (chairman)
presiding.
Present: Senator Specter.
Also present: Senator Clinton.
opening statement of senator arlen specter
Senator Specter. It is 9:30, the scheduled starting time
for the hearing of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor,
Health and Human Services, and Education.
This morning, we are going to take up the issue of
education of Palestinian young people, the issue of the funding
of the U.S. Government for the Palestinian Authority, and the
implications on the Mid-East peace process.
A few days ago, I had an opportunity to see some videos of
young Palestinians talking about suicide bombings and the
benefits of participating in that kind of a suicide bombing as
an entry to heaven and as an entry to paradise. Notwithstanding
some substantial experience in terrorism and what is going on
in the Mid-East I found these videos to be absolutely
shocking--absolutely shocking that teenagers, attractive young
Palestinians, were stating a view that the desired goal in life
is to be a suicide bomber, to kill as many Israelis as they
could as an entry to nirvana, to heaven, to paradise.
This hearing has been scheduled as promptly as we could
because of our views that these films ought to be known by the
people of the United States and the people of the world as to
what is going on. We have seen and heard a lot about suicide
bombings, but I believe these videos have a portrayal and a
depiction on an entirely different level.
Consideration was given to having this hearing in the
Foreign Operations subcommittee, where I'm a member, and I
discussed it with the chairman there, Senator McConnell, and
the decision was made to proceed in this subcommittee because
the Foreign Operations appropriation bill is now under
consideration by the full Senate and it was thought this was
the better committee to proceed.
We are going to be hearing from administration authorities.
We're going to be hearing from the representatives of the
Palestinian Authority. We're going to be hearing from people
who are in favor of the peace process, people who have
questions about the peace process.
Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, the U.S. Government has
contributed $1,200,000,000 to the Palestinian Authority, almost
all of it going to non-governmental agencies. This year, some
$20 million has been allocated under waiver provisions,
allocated by the Department of State, and we're going to be
questioning the wisdom of that, in light of the terrorism that
the Palestinian Authority is a party to. Before, some $36
million went directly to the Palestinian Authority, so most of
the funding has been going to non-governmental agencies. But,
even there, there's a substantial question as to where the
money ends up.
In 1995, Senator Shelby and I introduced an amendment to
the Foreign Operations bill which prohibited governmental
funding to the Palestinian Authority until the Palestinian
Authority made a maximum effort to avoid terrorism and to
recognize the State of Israel.
Now, that is a very, very brief overview and a very brief
introduction.
STATEMENT OF ITAMAR MARCUS, DIRECTOR, PALSTINIAN MEDIA
WATCH
Senator Specter. We have a very distinguished panel of
witnesses. We're going to start, really, out of turn here
today, with Mr. Itamar Marcus, who is the director of the
Palestinian Media Watch, showing us these videos, which, as I
say, I saw a few days ago, and that will set the stage for the
witnesses from the administration, the witnesses from the
Palestinian Authority, and our other witnesses.
Mr. Marcus, if you would identify yourself for the record,
I would appreciate it.
Mr. Marcus. Yes, director of Palestinian Media Watch.
Senator Specter. And do you have in your possession certain
videos?
Mr. Marcus. Yes.
Senator Specter. And where were the videos obtained?
Mr. Marcus. Everything that you'll see was filmed in
Palestinian Authority television. This is PBC, Palestine
Broadcast Company, that is owned and operated by the
Palestinian Authority.
Senator Specter. All right, would you please show those to
the subcommittee?
Video Presentation
``Ask for death'' is the message the Palestinian Authority has been
conveying to its children since the start of violence in October 2000.
In July 2002, two articulate 11-year-old girls were interviewed in
a studio of official Palestinian television.
What has caused this compelling desire for death among these
children? The Palestinian Authority has been making a supreme effort to
convince their own children that there is no greater achievement than
to die for Allah in battle, known as Shahada. This indoctrination film
clip is designed to offset a child's natural fear of death. It portrays
Shahada as both heroic and tranquil, and was broadcast repeatedly over
the last 2 years.
The film's hero, a nice-looking school boy, leaves his father a
farewell letter explaining his choice to carry out Shahada.
This film was broadcast on official Palestinian television. Most of
the scenes portray blood and death. The film ends with this screen
displaying, in Arabic and in English, ``Ask for death. The life will be
given to you.''
In another film clip, ``I am the shahid, my mother,'' mothers are
urged to be joyous over the Shahada death of their own children.
The Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education textbooks portray
Shahada as an ideal. For example, the poem of the shahid appears in
textbooks on four grade levels and extols yearning for death.
A song honoring Wafa Idris, the first woman suicide terrorist, was
broadcast on Palestinian television three times.
The Shahada mandate comes from top Palestinian political
leadership.
The Palestinian Authority gives significant media exposure to
parents who praise their children's choice to die.
Palestinian religious leaders have been a driving force in calling
for Palestinians to kill Jews, especially through suicide bombings, and
direct these messages at children, as well.
Palestinian polls show that 72 to 80 percent of Palestinian
children desire death as Shahids. Having been repeatedly exposed to
this indoctrination, Palestinian children today actively set their
sights on Shahada as a personal goal.
The Palestinian indoctrination has already led to the death of
Palestinian children. Young children have written farewell letters to
their parents in which they express pride in their desire to die and
have set out on suicide terrorist attacks.
The child Yusef Zakut wrote: ``Don't cry for me. Bury me with my
brothers and with the Shahids.''
The Palestinian Authority has created a violent death-seeking
reality for their children, having taught them to see death for Allah,
Shahada, as an ideal which they are expected to achieve.
The examples presented in this report are a representative
selection demonstrating the comprehensive campaign waged daily by the
Palestinian Authority. Even if just 1 percent of the children attempt
to fill their duty and seek Shahada through suicide terrorism, the
ramifications will be cataclysmic. The targets of the future
Palestinian terror wave will be Israel and, in all likelihood, other
Western democracies, as well.
This education is an indelible stain on Palestinian society and
places the Palestinian Authority among the greatest child abusers in
history.
Senator Specter. Thank you very much, Mr. Marcus.
The characterization at the end about child abusers is a
vast understatement. They're civilization abusers. The children
are their means to destroy civilization.
STATEMENT OF HON. DAVID SATTERFIELD, DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR NEAR EASTERN
AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Senator Specter. I will now proceed to the administration
witnesses. We will first call on Mr. David Satterfield.
Ambassador Satterfield is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for Near Eastern Affairs. He previously had served as
ambassador to Lebanon, director of the State Department's
Office of Israel and Arab-Israeli Affairs on the National
Security Council staff. Satterfield is a graduate of the
University of Maryland and Georgetown University.
Welcome, Mr. Satterfield.
We are going to limit the opening statements of witnesses
to 5 minutes. I have been commenting, when the announcement is
made about the limitation of time, to the Memorial service for
Ambassador Walter Annenberg, where the time was 3 minutes,
President Ford and Secretary of State Colin Powell and I and
others were given 3 minutes. So I want you to know what a
lengthy period 5 minutes is for an opening statement.
Thank you for joining us, Ambassador Satterfield, and the
floor is yours.
Ambassador Satterfield. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would ask, first, that my prepared statement be entered
into the record, and I do have some brief opening remarks to
make.
The video clips that we've just seen--and there are many
others that could have been chosen--do, indeed, cultivate a
climate of alienation, hostility, incitement, what has been
termed a culture of death rather than a culture of life, hope,
and promise. As I said, many more images of this kind could
have been chosen.
The subject of this hearing today is a very serious one for
the administration. Indeed, Mr. Chairman, if we look back on
the record of the modern peace process, since 1993, the issue
which has been most problematic for us and for our partners in
peacemaking to address, has been the challenge of how one
changes minds, hearts, and attitudes. Frankly, too little
attention was given to this challenge during many years of the
peace process when focus was placed upon treaties, agreements,
understandings. They have their place certainly, but the
fundamental changes in the way people look at each other and
deal with each other, the way they look at themselves and their
culture and society, that also has to be addressed.
The administration, in pursuit of President Bush's vision
of two states, Israel and Palestinian--Palestine, living
together in peace and security--has been focused upon building
institutions for Palestinian statehood. Upon confronting the
issue of incitement, incitement to violence, incitement to
death, wherever it may be found, this is a major challenge, and
I cannot minimize for you, Mr. Chairman, the magnitude of this
problem.
We have been making efforts to try, with our partners in
the region and outside, with the Palestinian Authority and with
the Government of Israel, and with institutions drawn from
civil society on both sides, to find ways in which to tackle
this problem. I cannot tell you that this is an issue which we
have succeeded in addressing, which we have succeeded in
transforming from the type of images of hostility and death
that you just saw to something else. But we do believe some
progress--and I'll be quite honest--some progress is being
made.
It's most important, if we look at how one changes minds
and hearts, to begin at the earliest age possible in changing
the nature of the culture and changing the nature of views of
one people towards another. We have been successful, to an
extent, in introducing changes into the textbooks used by the
Palestinian educational system, the public educational system.
Those textbooks, in the past, were marked by overt anti-
Semitism, rejection of Israel, images of hostility towards Jews
and Israelis which were absolutely unacceptable in any climate
of peacemaking.
The current textbooks, which are in the process of being
introduced through grades kindergarten to 12, sin more now by
omission rather than commission. The images of anti-Semitism
have been largely removed, but we want to see positive images
of embracing Israel as a state, Israelis as a people, put in.
We don't just want the absence of negative image. We want the
presence of positive images, and this is a challenge that
remains before us. Some progress, as I said, has been made, but
much more needs to be done.
Mr. Chairman, those images which we witnessed, the
challenge that confronts us as we deal with Israel/Palestinian
peacemaking also is reflected on a broader regional scale. We
are committed to doing everything possible, not just to address
the call for death, the call for martyrdom, which we saw here
today, but also the continuing images of anti-Semitism,
rejection of Israel, rejection of Israelis, rejection of Jews
as a people who merit a life in peace and security in the
Middle East and elsewhere throughout the Middle East and the
world.
prepared statement
Here, too, the challenge remains before us. Here, too, we
have not been fully successful in our efforts with other
governments in the region, indeed outside, in addressing this
challenge. But the administration is fully committed to
applying what resources we have to this goal, and we welcome
the opportunity to appear here today in that pursuit.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. David Satterfield
Thank you, Chairman Specter. I wish to express my gratitude to all
the Members of this Subcommittee for this opportunity to discuss
Palestinian education.
Mr. Chairman, let me begin by stating that we are in full agreement
with the goals underlying this hearing. We all recognize that an
education system that promotes peace and tolerance best prepares
children for a bright future. We welcome this Committee's interests in
the Palestinian education system and share its concerns. This is why we
have placed such great emphasis on working with the Palestinian
Authority to revise their curriculum to promote principles of human
rights, democracy, diversity, tolerance and pluralism. That approach to
education will provide a foundation for democracy and peace in the
region, and the basis for a shared future.
Of concern to our discussions today is the question, to what extent
does the current Palestinian education system promote the hate and
violence that undermine the foundations for stability and peace? It is
clear that the old Palestinian curriculum in the West Bank and Gaza is
unacceptable to us and everyone else in the international community
genuinely interested in an education system that teaches children the
truth, as opposed to hatred. The United States and other donor nations,
as well as Israel, have long been concerned that materials used in the
Palestinian education system and the UNRWA schools incited hatred. The
curriculum--formed around a core of outdated Egyptian and Jordanian
textbooks that fell out of use in those countries long ago--contained
anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli content and promoted gender stereotypes.
Moreover, the textbooks failed to promote critical-thinking, but rather
favored rote memorization. The Palestinian Authority, at the urging of
the United States and the international community, recognized that
neither intolerance nor deprivation of independent thought would serve
future generations of the Palestinian people. Accordingly, the
Palestinian Authority undertook the revision of the entire curriculum.
The revised curriculum represents a significant and positive step
forward. There are no longer references to the Jews as ``the evil
enemy'' or as being ``treacherous'', but rather there is clearly an
avoidance of dealing with the Jewish-Islamic relationships in negative
contexts. The new books seek to advance inter-religious tolerance and
diversity, and have rid themselves of their anti-Semitic content.
Concepts of good citizenship and ethics are stressed, as is respect for
the environment and for others. The new curriculum also reflects an
effort to promote active learning and critical thinking, over passive
acceptance.
Despite these important gains, the new books fall short of
expectations in important ways. Israel's existence is not explicitly
acknowledged either in narratives or on maps. Discussions of ``historic
Palestine'' are ambiguous on the status of Israeli cities such as Haifa
and Nazareth. Encouragement of inter-religious tolerance focuses on
Islam and Christianity, without mentioning Judaism.
A true peace curriculum must contain neither the sins of commission
nor of omission. Therefore we will continue to press for further change
and have dedicated the resources to do so. Revisions are underway for
the remaining grades that use the older texts (grades 5, 10, 11, 12).
Moreover, the Ministry of Education regards the development of the new
curriculum as a continuing process, with further amendments expected
once President Bush's two-state vision becomes reality. Obviously, that
is not soon enough. We recognize that the new textbooks still contain
certain historical and political omissions and inaccuracies. What they
do not contain, however, is a call to violence or reason for hate. To
further ensure that the positive concepts of peace and tolerance in the
textbooks are being promoted, with funding appropriated by Congress, we
have charged the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information
(IPCRI)--a well-respected NGO--with continued monitoring of the
content, distribution, and use of these new books, and with the
training of Palestinian teachers in peace and tolerance. IPCRI's
materials stress Israel's existence as a political and historical
reality.
We call upon your Committee to work to strengthen the hand of the
President and Secretary as they seek to lead the region away from
violence and towards peace by supporting these efforts. The future of
the region depends on its children.
Thank you very much Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee.
I'd be pleased to take your questions.
Senator Specter. Ambassador Satterfield, the roadmap states
that: ``All official Palestinian institutions must end
incitement against Israel,'' and the roadmap requires the
Palestinian Authority to: ``undertake efforts on the ground to
arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting
and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.'' Are those
requirements being complied with by the Palestinian Authority?
Ambassador Satterfield. No, Mr. Chairman, they are not. We
have not seen those basic steps necessary by the Palestinian
Authority to confront violence and terror being taken to the
extent that the roadmap requires and, indeed, any meaningful
progress towards peace mandates.
Senator Specter. And the depiction shows Chairman Yasser
Arafat on film talking about Shahid. What efforts are being
made to combat Arafat's efforts as depicted and shown on the
screen?
Ambassador Satterfield. Mr. Chairman, the position of this
administration towards Mr. Arafat is very well known. We do not
regard him as an interlocutor for the purpose of peacemaking.
We have sought, working with the Government of Israel, working
with individuals in the Palestinian Authority, and our partners
in the region and the international community, to see an
empowered, credible Palestinian leadership take office and move
against terror and violence, as it moves towards the necessary
institutional steps required, to see a Palestinian State
achieved.
Senator Specter. Now, Ambassador Satterfield, in light of
this kind of filming, and in light of the failure of the
Palestinian Authority to act to restrain violence, what's the
justification for the U.S. Government this year advancing $20
million to the Palestinian Authority?
Ambassador Satterfield. Mr. Chairman, that decision was
made after careful reflection, upon the state of Prime Minister
Abu Masen's government, the credibility of Minister of Finance
Salam Fayed, the institutional checks and balances, which both
our own system and auditing mechanisms in place and the
credibility of Abu Masen and Salam Fayed, established. We would
not have taken this step--did not take this step lightly.
We believe that that decision was appropriate. We believe
that those monies are accountable, fully, and that they went to
purposes for which they were intended. Obviously, the
administration continued to look very closely at any future
issue of direct financing for the Palestinian Authority. No
such financing is under contemplation at this point. Were we to
do so, we would obviously consult with the Congress. We would
also reflect very carefully on the issue of transparency and
accountability for funds.
Senator Specter. Well, you say the monies have been
accounted for. Where did the $20 million go?
Ambassador Satterfield. They went through the Ministry of
Finance, under mechanisms which we believe are transparent and
accountable, for both salary payments and repayment of debt to
the Palestinian private sector.
Senator Specter. Can you be more specific than that?
Ambassador Satterfield. Mr. Chairman, we can provide
detailed specifics on where the $20 million----
Senator Specter. We'd like you to----
Ambassador Satterfield [continuing]. Went.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Tell this subcommittee----
Ambassador Satterfield. We'd be happy to.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Where every dime of the $20
million went.
Ambassador Satterfield. We'd be happy to.
[The information follows:]
In July, $20 million from the Wartime Supplemental Appropriations
Act was transferred to the Palestinian Authority (PA) though a ``Cash
Transfer Grant Agreement'' between the PA (represented by the Ministry
of Finance) and the U.S. Government (represented by USAID). Use of the
$20 million was subject to a variety of controls and monitoring
mechanisms.
Under the terms of the agreement, up to $9 million could be spent
on the financing of utility payments. On August 28 the USAID West Bank/
Gaza mission approved the use of $9 million to pay the Israeli Electric
Company for bills owed by the PA. The PA made the payment on the same
day.
For the remaining $11 million of the Grant, the Ministry of Finance
has proposed 65 projects--25 in the West Bank and 40 in Gaza--with a
total estimated cost of $10,878,280. Most of the projects involve
repair and rehabilitation of roads, water and wastewater facilities,
and municipal halls.
On September 22, following site visits by USAID staff engineers,
USAID approved 30 projects, totaling $4,410,000.
On October 21, USAID approved an additional 11 projects totaling
$1,310,000. This brought the total of approved projects to 41, with an
estimated cost of $5,720,000.
Twenty-four projects ($5,158,280) proposed by the Finance Ministry
have not yet been approved. Several of these will likely be approved
once project designs and cost estimates are completed by the Ministry
and reviewed by USAID engineers. The Finance Ministry will propose
substitutions for any projects that are rejected.
Funds for a given project are drawn down by the Finance Ministry in
five tranches, corresponding to work completed and subject to USAID
approval at each stage.
The following mechanisms, incorporated into the Agreement and
subsequent Implementation Letters, allow USAID to monitor use of the
money:
--The Ministry of Finance has certified that none of the money will
go to anyone involved in ``armed hostilities or other acts of
violence'' or for the purchase of military or police equipment;
--The Ministry has established a separate bank account solely for
this money, so as to ensure it will not commingle with funds
from any other source;
--The Ministry has sent an authorization letter to its bank,
authorizing USAID to access directly information about the
account;
--The PA has agreed to keep detailed records and provide them for
USAID to review and audit;
--Contractors are vetted using standard USAID procedures;
--Reports are provided quarterly by the Ministry of Finance,
including copies of bank statements and a list of agreed-upon
uses;
--The agreement contains a clause saying that the Ministry may be
required to pay back any money not supported by appropriate
documentation as being in accordance with the agreement;
--At the conclusion of each project, a USAID engineer will visit the
site to confirm that the work was done as planned; and
--USAID's regional Inspector-General will conduct a financial audit
of the Cash Transfer activity after all $20 million has been
expended.
Senator Specter. Essentially, what you're saying is that
$20 million was given to the Palestinian Authority to help Abu
Masen in his effort to become the Prime Minister. Is that about
the size of it?
Ambassador Satterfield. Mr. Chairman, it was given to the
Palestinian Authority in a way that we believe bolstered the
credible empowered authority of Prime Minister Abu Masen, of
the Ministry of Finance, and institutional mechanisms and
safeguards which have been put in place under Minister Salam
Fayed.
Senator Specter. Well, are you essentially saying that the
way things are today, with former Prime Minister Abu Masen
having departed, that there will be no further payments by the
U.S. Government to the Palestinian Authority?
Ambassador Satterfield. Mr. Chairman, that was a one-time
direct payment, the only such payment of its kind. Before we
would contemplate any such step in the future, we would need to
see in place an empowered, credible Prime Minister and Cabinet,
with unified security services under the control of the Prime
Minister and tangible steps taken on the ground to confront
terror and violence, yes.
Senator Specter. Would you go further and require proof
that the Palestinian Authority is not going to be showing these
videos, with young people glorifying and--self-sacrifice and
being suicide bombers?
Ambassador Satterfield. Mr. Chairman, we have made very
clear that the Palestinian Authority, to be viewed as a
credible partner for peace, must not just move against terror
and violence--that's obviously a central critical priority--but
also must move against the climate and culture of incitement
and violence which underlies the actual acts of terror.
Senator Specter. Well, that's not quite a flat statement
that additional funds would not be advanced to the Palestinian
Authority unless this kind of propaganda was stopped. Can you
give this subcommittee that assurance flatly?
Ambassador Satterfield. I can assure that we would not make
any direct funding available to the Palestinian Authority if
there was any question whatsoever regarding the commitment of
that authority, translated into action on the ground, including
with respect to incitement.
Senator Specter. Like this----
Ambassador Satterfield. As was seen here.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Video.
Well, okay, thank you, Ambassador Satterfield. We
appreciate your coming over. We know you have commitments today
and have asked to be excused at this point, and you are excused
by the subcommittee.
Customarily, we like the witnesses to stay, because there
may be some comments at a later time for a response, but I
understand your official duties, so we'll thank you.
Ambassador Satterfield. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate
this opportunity.
STATEMENT OF JAMES KUNDER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT
ADMINISTRATOR FOR ASIA AND NEAR EASTERN
AFFAIRS, DIRECTOR, AFGHAN RELIEF AND
RECONSTRUCTION, USAID
Senator Specter. Our next witness is Deputy Assistant
Administrator for Asia and Near Eastern Affairs, Mr. James
Kunder, Director for Afghan Relief and Reconstruction. Mr.
Kunder received his master's degree in international relations
from Georgetown, and his bachelor's in political science from
Harvard University.
Thank you for joining us, Mr. Kunder, and we look forward
to your testimony.
Mr. Kunder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have a prepared statement that, with your permission, I'd
like to submit for the record.
Senator Specter. Your full statement will be made a part of
the record.
Mr. Kunder. I want to give a quick overview of the U.S.
Foreign Assistance Program in the areas in which the Committee
has expressed an interest. But just to start with a personal
comment of, USAID throughout the world, with the support of
taxpayer dollars, uses the media for a number of positive, what
we refer to as, social marketing activities in AIDS prevention
and better healthcare, participation of girls in school. And I
just have to say, at a personal level, to see this kind of
perversion of media targeted at children, knowing the powerful
impact that media has on children, it's an abomination to see
this thing firsthand.
The U.S. Agency for International Development Program
targeted at Palestinians is, as you described earlier,
primarily targeted at international or Palestinian non-
governmental organizations, with the exception of the $20
million direct cash transfer this past year. It works in the
area of humanitarian assistance and, more broadly, at building
Palestinian civil society so that there are voices of
moderation in the political debate in Palestine. And that
includes support for independent media organizations that show
debate in the Palestinian Legislative Council, and otherwise
bring in groups whose voices might not be heard in the
Palestinian debate. Following the congressional guidance and
the law, we do not give direct assistance to the Palestinian
Broadcasting Company.
We recognize that our attempts to bring voices of
moderation into the political process, however, is subject to
diversion of resources, and, therefore, we have put in place a
range of safeguards, including the vetting within the American
Embassy of all of the organizations, all the grantees and
program partners with which we work. We have, in all of our
grant agreements, a certification requirement that the
organization receiving U.S. taxpayer dollars is not passing any
of that money through to terrorist organizations. We have an
extensive oversight operation where, consistent with the
security situation on the ground, either U.S. Government
direct-hire employees or our contractors are out monitoring the
use of our funds to ensure that there are not abuses or
diversions, and we are discussing these issues on a regular
basis with the Israeli authorities in the West Bank and Gaza.
prepared statement
So from our view, the totality of the U.S. foreign aid
program is contributing to moderate voices being part of the
Palestinian debate, and we have implemented a range of
safeguards that we think ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are
going to the purposes for which they are intended.
I'd be glad to answer any questions, sir.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. James Kunder
Mr. Chairman: Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on
behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development. I would like
to begin by echoing the words of Deputy Assistant Secretary
Satterfield: We appreciate the importance of education as a force for
peace and progress in the world, and share the concern of this
Subcommittee whenever the education of children is perverted to serve
as a platform for violence and hatred.
program overview
In order to provide context for the Subcommittee's inquires today,
I would like briefly to summarize the U.S. foreign assistance program
in the West Bank and Gaza. In general terms, the Mission responds to
the humanitarian situation, providing relief to the poorest segments of
the Palestinian population, while at the same time implements longer
term development projects, supporting the road map and other U.S.
foreign policy goals in the region.
Consistent with Congressional guidance and in support of U.S.
foreign policy priorities, the U.S. foreign assistance program in West
Bank and Gaza consists of several elements. First, we are addressing
basic human needs resulting from the severe economic downturn of the
past three years. Our programs provide food, medical care and emergency
water and create jobs for those who have lost them as a result of the
depressed economy and the limited employment opportunities within
Israel. Working with U.S. partners such as the YMCA, Save the Children,
ANERA, CHF Inc. and local NGOs, we have created more than 1.9 million
person days of employment since 2001. In addition, our support to food
aid delivery through WFP and ICRC has ensured that more than 650,000 of
the most vulnerable Palestinians have received a nutritional food
basket on a regular basis. We also support vaccination projects, supply
clinics and health NGOs with emergency medicines, and fund special
training for doctors and nurses though our grants with CARE
International.
Second, we are promoting a wide range of reform efforts within the
Palestinian Territories. Since the 1996 national elections, we have
been the lead donor working with the Palestinian Legislative Council,
which within the last 12 months has challenged the PALESTINIAN
Executive Branch on issues relating to the designation of a Cabinet and
delineation of the Prime Minister's responsibilities. In 1999, we
initiated a rule of law program, which has trained scores of
Palestinian judges and prosecutors and has led to the formation of two
commercial Alternative Dispute Resolution Centers. We have also funded
programs to develop the capacity of the Palestinian Monetary Authority,
to assist the Minister of Finance in strengthening the internal audit
capacity of the Palestinian Authority, and to restructure the new
Ministry of National Economy. We are poised to support a Palestinian
election process, having already conducted a comprehensive electoral
assessment and provided technical assistance to the Central Election
Commission. Lastly, we have a robust civil society program that funds
Palestinian NGOs, which are advocates for reform and democratization.
Third, our Mission has supported the ``revitalization'' of the
private sector. Activities include direct technical assistance at the
firm level to assist in their internal restructuring, grants to repair
damaged business premises and providing loan capital for mid-size
businesses. Our emergency micro lending programs have provided much
needed cash to small business owners, mostly women. With $3 million of
USAID funds, we have leveraged funds for small loans from two
commercial banks in the amount of $17 million.
Fourth, I would like to emphasize that we have maintained some of
our longer-term development projects. These include the construction of
much needed water infrastructure, which has provided potable water to
much of the population in the Southern West Bank. We are also repairing
small scale water infrastructure in several cities, working closely
with the municipal governments. Our community services projects, which
build schools, clinics, agricultural roads, youth centers, and other
small infrastructure, are active in 50 per cent of the villages in the
West Bank and Gaza.
Fifth, through our scholarship and training programs, we are
developing the human capital that a democratic Palestinian state will
require. Since 2000, 90 Palestinians have received or are in the
process of receiving Masters Degree scholarships from] U.S.
universities. In addition to their academic studies, many of the
returned scholars serve to educate their fellow-citizens about the
reality of life in the United States. The Mission also has provided
more than 300 full scholarships to Palestinians for study in local
universities and funds short training programs in the IT sector that
has benefited more than 115 Palestinians to date.
Last, using the $50 million we received as part of the fiscal year
2003 emergency wartime supplemental appropriation, we responded quickly
to acute problems on the ground, repairing roads in 5 cities in the
West Bank and repairing bridges, greenhouses, damaged business
premises, and agricultural wells in Northern Gaza. Of this
Supplemental, we used $20 million as a cash transfer to the Palestinian
Authority. With the very tight restrictions and safeguards we attached
to this cash transfer, I am happy to report that it is being used in a
transparent manner to pay utility bills owed to the Israeli Electric
Company and to make municipal infrastructure repairs throughout the
West Bank and Gaza.
These results have been achieved, notwithstanding the on-going
violence, because of the dedication and commitment of our contractors,
grantees and Palestinian partners, and with the full support and
cooperation of the Government of Israel. Through creative mechanisms,
which I will describe below, we have maintained adequate oversight to
ensure that US taxpayer resources are well spent and support the
foreign policy goals of the Administration.
Having provided general background on the USAID program, let me now
address the specific issues covered by this hearing related to
Palestinian education and other issues related to the promotion of
peace and moderation.
education
Palestinians put a very high priority on education for children.
USAID does not work specifically on curriculum development or
textbooks. We do fund significant training programs for teachers and
students, which help students deal in alternative ways with trauma and
anger. Our ``psycho-social'' training project has reached over 32,000
students between the ages of 6 and 18 and their teachers. Activities
under this project, which is implemented by Save the Children, include
play and art activities for children, geared towards helping them deal
with the tension of the situation on the ground, and group discussions
with parents and teachers. This program is implemented throughout the
West Bank and Gaza, including such urban centers as Jenin, Ramallah,
and Gaza City. The project is also active in rural areas. We also
improve the learning environment by building and repairing classrooms,
libraries, and labs. The 800 classrooms that USAID has remodeled and
rebuilt provide improved learning environments for children. Among
other things, these new classrooms provide the opportunity for girls to
go to school in areas that they previously were unable to because of
space limitations.
In addition, our NGO support project, TAMKEEN, implemented by U.S.
contractor CHEMONICS, has awarded some grants related to education. One
NGO in Gaza supports university students' work on issues of democratic
practice, including peer mediation and conflict resolution. Another NGO
has provided extremely high quality civic education to thousands of
people (mostly high school students) throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
Our Moderate Voices program has awarded NGOs to work with teachers,
Ministry of Education, and school administrators on a peace curriculum
integrated with the regular school curriculum. It has also supported an
initiative with high school students promoting democratic dialogue,
attitudes, and skills, and an ongoing project in the Gaza Strip to
enrich and emphasize democratic and human rights oriented values in the
standard curriculum. Also in Gaza, a peer mediation and conflict
resolution program conducted in UNWRA schools disseminates desired
values and identifies and training peer leaders to act as mediators in
conflict situations.
One part of the the Wye-funded People to People program, being
implemented by Professor Dan Bar-On of Ben Gurion University and Dr.
Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University, works with Palestinian Ministry of
Education and Israeli public school teachers on developing a curriculum
that recognizes the views, values, narrative, and humanity of the each
side in the conflict.
media
Since 1998 USAID has been prohibited from supporting the
Palestinian Broadcasting Company. Still, through activities in our
democracy and governance portfolio, we have funded various media
programs produced by the independent television and radio stations and
prepared for daily newspapers that provide outlets for voices of
moderation and peace. For example, our ``Moderate Voices'' NGO project
has funded the development and broadcasting of a popular soap opera
series, which examine the daily conflicts inherent to Palestinian life,
including, but not entirely focused on the interface with Israel and
Israelis. Our flagship civil society support project, TAMKEEN, provides
grants to Palestinian NGOs for media programs that provide voice to
marginalized groups, including women and the disabled, and recently
convened a workshop for eight media broadcasting outlets and teaching
institutes to improve professionalism and competency. Lastly, our
legislative assistance program has included a televised series
regarding the role of women in the Council and in politics, televised
proceedings of the Council and widely broadcast town hall meeting
events with Council members. Through these programs and others, we have
helped Palestinian media outlets provide information about democratic
processes and facilitated debate among democratic actors.
In a situation like the West Bank and Gaza, there is always a
concern that U.S. assistance dollars may be diverted from their
intended purposes and inadvertently be used to foment hatred or
violence, in educational programs or in some other way. To counter this
possibility, USAID has instituted a number of safeguards in our
programs. I would like to describe briefly two such safeguards: our
system of vetting program partners, and our system of program
oversight.
vetting
The Mission is well aware of the dangers associated with providing
assistance to terrorist organizations or those who are affiliated with
such organizations. Consequently, beginning in November 2001, the
Mission implemented a program whereby Palestinian grantees and
contractors must be vetted by the U.S. Country Team. This applies to
all contracts in excess of $100,000 and to all grants regardless of
dollar value. In each case, the organization and its key personnel are
reviewed to determine whether they are engaged in terrorist activity.
Also, individuals applying for scholarships or to participate in USAID
funded training programs are similarly vetted. To date, the Mission has
vetted more than 1000 Palestinian organizations and individuals.
oversight
To oversee the USAID Mission's large portfolio, project managers
and contracting officers at Mission headquarters and local staff work
closely together, even when travel restrictions preclude face-to-face
meetings. The Mission's staff includes three engineers residing in Gaza
and another three in the West Bank, ensuring visits to construction
sites during periods when U.S. staff are unable to enter the West Bank
and Gaza.
The Mission also utilizes information communications technology to
ensure effective oversight. Telecommuting is common-place for staff
unable to travel to Tel Aviv on a regular basis, and video-conferencing
is used to maintain contacts between project officers in Tel Aviv and
contractors/grantees with offices in Ramallah or Gaza. Our engineers
often make use of digital photography to help keep the home office
suitably informed of construction project progress.
The Mission has pioneered a GIS-based performance monitoring system
under which project information data are entered by project managers.
This system allows almost immediate retrieval of data on any given
activity. The system has been implemented for the Mission's largest
strategic objective and will soon be applied to all the others.
The Mission conducts portfolio reviews several times a year, and
publishes a report detailing the status of each activity twice a year.
In addition to periodic audits, the Mission, with congressional
encouragement, has developed a robust risk assessment strategy. All
Mission institutional contracts and grants--approximately 100--are
audited on an annual basis by local accounting firms under the guidance
and direction of USAID's Inspector General. Preliminary findings on the
first 10 auditable units appear to indicate that except for some
questioned costs, general compliance and internal controls appear to be
adequate.
Mr. Chairman: Once again, I appreciate the opportunity to testify
today and the interest of this Subcommittee in the work of the U.S
Agency for international development. We believe our stewardship of the
U.S. foreign aid program in West Bank and Gaza has been a force for
peace, and not for war; a force for moderation, and not for conflict. I
welcome the Subcommittees questions on our programs and oversight
mechanisms.
Senator Specter. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Kunder.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD SOLOMON, PRESIDENT, U.S. INSTITUTE
OF PEACE
ACCOMPANIED BY STEVEN RISKIN, PROGRAM OFFICER, GRANT PROGRAM, U.S.
INSTITUTE OF PEACE
Senator Specter. We have one further witness on this panel,
Mr. Richard Solomon, president of the U.S. Institute for Peace.
We'd like Mr. Solomon to come forward at this time.
Dr. Solomon has served as the president of the U.S.
Institute of Peace since 1993, previously served as Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs and
Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State. He
holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Solomon, and we look forward
to your testimony.
Dr. Solomon. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. And I and my
colleagues really appreciate the opportunity to be with you
this morning. As you know, our institution reports directly to
the Labor, Health, and Human Services Committee. You fund our
work directly, inasmuch as we're an independent federal
institution. Normally, since I come up asking for financial
support, it's a pleasure to be able to describe to you some of
our activities that relate to this very serious issue that is
on the agenda today.
The Institute of Peace, as I think you know, was created as
an educational institution, and what I will describe is a shift
in our work over the last 20 years from educational activities
largely focused here within the United States to activities in
zones of conflict around the world. And those activities very
substantially focus on the effort to promote educational reform
in Muslim societies, ranging from Northern Africa, the Middle
East, through South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Our objective is to try to mobilize those interested in
reform, reconciliation within these societies in the interest
of promoting peaceful resolution of disputes, reconciliation,
tolerance, and certainly countering incitement.
What we have discovered through a decade of activities that
began with work after the Dayton Accords, when we went into the
Balkans and worked with educators to promote an educational
system that had been corrupted by the Milosevic regime, was, of
course, that education is a very powerful tool for reform, for
teaching reconciliation and breaking the cycles of hatred and
violence. Indeed, the power of education is precisely why the
extremists have been trying to capture the madrasa system and
turn it against even existing Muslim governments, whether it's
in Pakistan, Malaysia, or Indonesia. And so our work is
attempting to empower those who seek to use the educational
system for purposes of reconciliation. And one of the dilemmas
our friends in these various parts of the world face is that
many of them do not have the national government resources to
fully fund their educational system, so that money comes in
from abroad from what you might characterize as interested
parties who are trying to turn the madrasa system in the
direction of the kind of horrific propagation of violence that
we saw in the opening video.
Let me describe three very brief examples of the kind of
work that the U.S. Institute of Peace supports through its full
range of programming--our grant-giving, our fellowship
activity, our education/rule-of-law programs, and our
professional training activities.
The first example would be the effort to support the Anti-
Incitement Commission that was established after the 1998 Wye
River agreement. And two of our board members, former board
members now, Father Theodore Hesburgh, of Notre Dame, and
Shibley Telhami, professor at the University of Maryland, were
on the Anti-Incitement Commission. And two of my colleagues who
are with me here today, Dr. Jeff Helsing, who is with the
Education Program, and Steven Riskin, who is with our Grant
Commission, they are more specialists on this region than
certainly I am. They brief the Commission on our experience
about educational reform and efforts to limit incitement.
Unfortunately, as Father Hesburgh concluded after a number of
efforts to engage both sides in the region, was that issues of
limiting incitement were just not open to discussion. This is
the late 1990s.
A second example is our support for Seeds of Peace, an
effort to bring teenagers from the Israeli/Palestinian
societies together in the pristine, secure environment of
Northern Maine, an effort that's gone on for 10 years and has
engaged over 2,500 teenagers. And I think the Seeds of Peace
experience, which is documented in a book that we've published,
written by John Wallach, the late John Wallach, who,
tragically, died rather early, was that this kind of a
cloistered experience, if run professionally, can help to break
stereotypes, hostilities, establish friendships. And, indeed,
what we find is that many of the Palestinian kids who went back
to societies totally unsupportive of this reconciliation work
demonstrated real courage in resisting the return to the kind
of attitudes that we've seen here.
The third project was an effort in which we supported a
book project by a George Washington University professor, Dr.
Nathan Brown, who analyzed the situation in the Palestinian
areas of reform following the Oslo Accords. And his conclusion,
and he should, of course, speak for himself, was that there had
been modest change in the direction of a moving away from the
kind of inciteful textbooks and the educational material that
we've seen here today, but clearly much more incitement than we
want to see in these instances, but some movement away from
what it had been in earlier times. And the clear fact is that
the political context which would support the moderating
efforts of work like Seeds of Peace or the kinds of reform
efforts that Dr. Brown describes are, at this point in time,
just not supportive of significant reform.
So, in conclusion, based on the experience of institute
work, I would say the four issues I would stress is that
intergenerational cycles of conflict, hatred, can be broken,
especially if you work with teenagers, those who are much more
impressionable. But, unfortunately, as we've seen in these
videos, you can also see the opposite effect.
Second, educational reform is not a short-term process. Our
work with educational reformers in Northern Ireland indicates
that this is a decades-long effort.
Third, we have found professional educators who are
receptive to reform, and our efforts are to support, at the
civil society level, those who want to see a curriculum that
will encourage reconciliation and peace.
prepared statement
But, fourth, and most disturbing, of course, is that the
political context, the leadership that would encourage these
kinds of reforms, is, in the Palestinian areas, apparently
totally lacking at this point, and that unless we have that
kind of leadership, it seems unlikely we will see sustained
efforts to promote this kind of reform.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Richard H. Solomon
introduction
Thank you, Senator Specter, for inviting me to testify this morning
before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and
Human Services and Education.\1\ The U.S. Institute of Peace \2\ has
traditionally testified before this Subcommittee to discuss its annual
budget, which is funded by this Subcommittee. We are honored to be here
today to discuss an issue that is at the core of the Institute's
mandate: educating people in the perspectives of tolerance and mutual
understanding, and training professionals in the skills of conflict
management and resolution.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Dr. Solomon will be accompanied by Mr. Steven Riskin, Program
Officer in the Institute's Grant Program.
\2\ The U.S. Institute of Peace was established by Congress in 1984
as an independent, nonpartisan federal institution to promote the
prevention, management, and peaceful resolution of international
conflicts.
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As you know, the Institute was created nearly two decades ago as an
educational institution. In our first decade of work, we focused on
raising the awareness of American educators about war and peace issues
and conflict resolution strategies. During the 1990s, in the context of
efforts to stabilize the post-Dayton peace in the Balkans, the
Institute developed programs beyond our borders to promote conflict
resolution education in zones of conflict. What the Institute has
learned through these activities abroad is that education reform is a
powerful force for change. Indeed, it is critical in efforts to break
the cycle of violence in conflict-ridden societies. Educating for
tolerance and reconciliation, and overcoming entrenched attitudes of
prejudice and hatred, requires intensive efforts at a people-to-people
level, with educators and other leaders of civil society.
We recognize that educating for peace is not a substitute for a
successful political process. In an atmosphere poisoned by relentless
violence, it is tempting to conclude that education and other dialogue
programs are either irrelevant or impossible to sustain. But such a
conclusion ignores the reality that any peace process can be sustained
only with broad public support.
The Institute's ongoing work with Israeli and Palestinian
educators, religious leaders, and legal experts, even in the face of
terrorist violence, however, sustains hope among leaders in these
societies, leaders who some day will be the builders of peace. These
are the people, in both societies, whose support will be critical to
any future peace agreement. They are the ones who will be called upon
to promote reconciliation once the political process gets back on
track.
Thus, the Institute is sustaining its educational programs despite
the horrendous violence over the last three years. Despite occasions
when our activities are disrupted by a bombing or a failure of
diplomacy, we are heartened that Israeli and Palestinian educators have
the courage to seek reforms and promote mutual understanding.
Given the topic of today's hearing, I would like to describe what
the Institute has done, and is doing, through its range of programs--
our Grant, Education, Training, and Fellowship programs--to help bring
Palestinians and Israelis together, to reduce incitement to conflict,
and build constituencies in support of reconciliation. I will also
summarize some lessons the Institute has learned, through its work in
conflict zones around the world, about how education can be used as a
peacebuilding tool.
wye river memorandum and the anti-incitement subcommittee
The Institute became involved with the issue of incitement to
violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the signing in 1998
of the Wye River Memorandum. That agreement established a Trilateral
Anti-Incitement Committee ``whose purpose [was] to reduce tensions and
create a positive atmosphere of positive cohabitation. Its purpose
[was] not to incriminate but to solve pressing problems.'' Among those
serving on the Committee were former Institute Board members Father
Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of Notre Dame University, and Dr.
Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the
University of Maryland. As Father Hesburgh noted at the time, getting
both sides to discuss educational reform was a daunting challenge. In a
recent conversation on the issue, Father Hesburgh recalled, ``Both
sides were not open to discussion.''
As the Trilateral Anti-Incitement Committee began its work, two
Institute staff members, Dr. Jeffrey Helsing and Mr. Steven Riskin,
briefed the Committee about the Institute's experience on this topic
and also provided useful lessons from other societies that had been
working to reduce incitement by reforming their educational curricula.
the significance of education reform
As relations between Palestinians and Israelis have evolved since
Madrid and Oslo, U.S. officials, researchers, and education specialists
have increasingly recognized the importance of reforming education
systems in the promotion of peace, tolerance, and reconciliation.
Educators in Israel and the Palestinian territories have begun over the
past decade to examine ways the formal educational systems--through
school textbooks and other means--address such topics as the history of
the region. A primary objective of revising textbooks is to lay the
groundwork to advance mutual understanding, encourage greater
tolerance, and promote coexistence. Reconciliation cannot happen until
long-held prejudices are challenged and the history, culture, and
religion of the other side are recognized as having their own
legitimacy.
This is obviously a monumental task given the long history and
current intensity of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Institute is using
its resources in support of educational reforms--however incremental--
and confidence-building measures that will end incitement to conflict
and violence.
Let me give you a few examples of our programs in this regard.
institute-related grants
Through the Institute's Grant Program,\3\ we have supported the
work of Seeds of Peace, a summer camp experience that sends Arab and
Israeli teenagers for six weeks of coexistence training in Maine. Since
1993, Seeds of Peace has brought together more than 2,500 young people
who have learned of alternatives to hatred and conflict.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ As mandated by Congress, the Institute distributes funds each
year ($3.25 million in fiscal year 2003) in support of research and
conflict resolution programs worldwide.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1999, the Institute awarded a grant to Seeds of Peace to develop
an educational, interactive CD-ROM program based on the experiences of
Arab and Israeli youth who have participated in the summer camp program
for use in classrooms around the Middle East. The initiative has also
prepared related curricular materials, a manual to guide educators in
the use of the CD-ROM program, and a students' handbook. The start of
the current Intifada has slowed dissemination of the CD-ROM, but it is
reaching schools across the region.
I should also note that the Seeds of Peace founder John Wallach,
who tragically passed away last year, was an Institute fellow in 1998.
During his fellowship, John documented the work of his remarkable
organization in breaking down stereotypes and seeking an end to
incitement and violence. His fellowship year culminated in the
publication by the Institute of a study, The Enemy Has a Face: The
Seeds of Peace Experience.
The Institute also provided a grant in 1999-2000 to George
Washington University Professor Dr. Nathan Brown to study the reforms
underway in Palestinian politics in the wake of the Oslo peace accords.
The culmination of this grant was his recently released book,
Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords; Resuming Arab Palestine.
Dr. Brown focuses his work on five areas: legal development,
constitution drafting, the Palestinian Legislative Council, civil
society, and the effort to reform education and write a new curriculum.
He devotes a chapter of this book to ``Democracy, Nationalism, and
Contesting the Palestinian Curriculum.'' In this latter chapter, Dr.
Brown sheds light on the challenges facing Palestinian educators in
their efforts to reform education in Palestinian society, advance more
modern and democratic approaches to learning, and develop and implement
new curricula.
In this important work, Dr. Brown outlines the debates among
Palestinian educators and politicians about how to build a new
generation of Palestinian citizens committed to democracy and
coexistence. He writes that the textbooks in use in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority were
old Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks used when the territories were
held by those two countries prior to the 1967 war. They contained many
offensive and inaccurate passages regarding the history of the region
and the State of Israel. These educators confronted the need to remove
outdated and inaccurate accounts of history and geography from the
curriculum and replace them with new perspectives that are consistent
with the two-state solution that Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as
well as President Bush, now hold out as the goal of a political
process.
In reworking their own textbooks, however, Palestinian educators
confronted the fact that no Palestinian state yet exists, and that
their relationship with the Israelis is still undefined. As a result of
this uncertainty, Dr. Brown concluded, the new Palestinian textbooks do
not fully reflect a commitment to educating for coexistence.
Nevertheless, he asserts, these new Palestinian teaching materials
represent a significant improvement over the old textbooks.
Dr. Brown's assessment of Palestinian textbooks reveals a mixed
record of reform and considerable room for improvement. But that is not
a reason for despair. The Institute's experience is that there are many
moderates on both sides of this conflict prepared to improve the
quality of education on behalf of coexistence. While political leaders
must create the context for peace, the Institute's responsibility is to
support educational professionals who are laying the basis for mutual
understanding.
Another example of our grant-making and education work is our
collaboration with the Middle East Children's Association, a joint
Israeli/Palestinian non-government organization that works with
teachers to improve intercommunal relations and promote curriculum
development. As one of the few educational organizations still working
across the Green Line, the Middle East Children's Association was
awarded an Institute grant in the summer of 2001 to engage Palestinian
and Israeli elementary and middle school teachers to:
(1) assess the impact of the current violence on teachers and their
professional capacities in the classroom;
(2) develop educational materials that introduce students to human
rights concepts and their relevance to tolerance and mutual
understanding; and,
(3) design a work plan for continued inter-ethnic engagement among
educators in the context of the ongoing violence.
With Institute support, the Middle East Children's Association has
trained more than 250 Palestinian and Israeli elementary, middle, and
high school teachers to cope with trauma resulting from the conflict.
The initiative will result in a guide for implementing seminars for
educators dealing with trauma, tools assessing the impact of such
sessions on the capacity of educators to identify and cope with the
trauma of their students, and educational materials for use in the
classroom.
At the end of November, the Institute's Education Program will be
training 40 Israeli and Palestinian educators in new cross-cultural
learning techniques and curricular materials that were developed by
teachers in other zones of conflict (specifically, Northern Ireland and
Macedonia). As part of this program, training materials from the
``Education for Mutual Understanding'' curriculum mandated throughout
Northern Ireland are being translated into Hebrew and Arabic. In
addition, the November workshop will help Israeli and Palestinian
educators to enhance their facilitation and conflict resolution skills
so that they can work effectively in bi-national teams.
Other relevant Institute activities in the educational area
include:
--A recent grant to Catholic Relief Services is supporting a project
to explore how issues of peace and tolerance can be addressed
in Pakistani religious educational institutions. The initiative
will result in a report on ways to integrate peace education
into the religious curriculum and will produce a peace
education module to be implemented in those institutions.
--With Institute funding, a study based at Brown University is
examining religious educational materials used in schools
across the Middle East, in an effort to identify and promote
more tolerant Islamic curricula.
--A 1997 grant to Hebrew University of Jerusalem examined middle and
secondary school history and civics textbooks used by
Palestinian and Israeli students, focusing particular attention
on the treatment of Israeli-Palestinian history and interaction
from 1949 to 1987. A joint Israeli and Palestinian research
team produced a report that examined national narratives in the
textbooks and identified negative stereotypes of the other in
an attempt to weed out these stereotypes and hostile references
of each other.
--A 2002 grant to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is supporting a
human rights education project to develop, implement and
evaluate a pilot teacher training course in Hebrew and Arabic
on theories of and approaches to promoting human rights.
Targeting some two dozen Arab and Jewish teachers from
underserved areas in Israel and East Jerusalem, the program
will result in a ``Human Rights Reader'' in Arabic to accompany
its Hebrew analogue, provide teachers with educational tools to
integrate human rights concepts into lesson plans, and produce
a model for human rights education that will be disseminated to
university schools of education and other teacher training
institutions in Israel.
--A 2003 grant to the Israeli organization, Yesodot--The Center for
the Study of Torah and Democracy--is underwriting a faith-based
peace building training program for 16 religiously observant
Jewish and Muslim teachers in Israel that explores the
theological, psychological and social roots of intolerance and
conflict. The initiative will result in a manual for
facilitators of future religious Jewish and Muslim school
encounters and a curriculum on coexistence for teachers that
includes religious Muslim and Jewish sources and simulation
exercises. A previous Institute grant to Yesodot supported an
education program that brought together principals of Jewish,
Muslim, and Christian religious schools in a series of bi-
monthly workshops exploring religious tolerance, coexistence
and citizenship issues.
lessons learned about education reform in other zones of conflict
The Institute's work in conflict zones around the world has yielded
lessons that we are applying in our work with Israelis and Palestinian.
Our Education Program recently convened scholars from Israel, Northern
Ireland, Macedonia, and South Africa (via the Internet) to evaluate the
effectiveness of cross-community relationship-building and to share
experiences of teaching and curriculum development.
The experience of Northern Ireland is particularly instructive, as
schools there were reinforcing negative stereotypes and promoting
incitement to conflict. In the 1970s, a small group of Protestant and
Catholic parents and teachers wanted to transform education in Northern
Ireland so that it promoted tolerance, respect, non-violence, and human
rights. The curriculum they developed began in only a few schools, but
after twenty years--or one generation--it has been adopted as a
requirement by the educational authorities throughout Northern Ireland.
A new curriculum on civic education is now being developed by a
combined group of Protestant and Catholic educators. Northern Ireland
will be a significant case study for a workshop on conflict resolution
education that the Institute's Education Program is putting together at
Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Institute's extensive work in the Balkans has included peace
education. A 1997 grant to the Centre for Transition and Civil Society
Research in Zagreb, Croatia, sought to examine the content of history,
politics, and literature textbooks at the primary and secondary school
level in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia. The study, conducted by a
multinational team, assessed the utility of existing textbooks in
promoting reconciliation, and developed recommendations for designing
and implementing peace education programs in the former Yugoslavia.
Through the Institute's Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program, in
2000-2001 we hosted an educator from Macedonia (Violeta Petroska-Beska)
who conducted a project on ``Education for Interculturalism: Learning
to Live Together in a Multicultural Society.'' With our support, Dr.
Petroska-Beska has written curriculum development guides for teachers
and trainers in Macedonia on topics such as combating ethnic
stereotyping and promoting ethnic tolerance. Dr. Petroska-Beska is one
of the education experts participating in our workshop with the Middle
East Children's Association.
The history of South Africa also provides insight about how to
address curriculum reform and how the reform process requires a long-
term commitment to be successful. With the end of apartheid in South
Africa there were, initially, many school programs on tolerance
(including a strong human rights component) and conflict management.
But transforming the official education curriculum, particularly on
issues such as history and race relations, has now taken more than a
decade and is not scheduled to be completed before 2005. Education
reform is not a short-term process.
Through its Grant Program, the Institute of Peace is currently
funding a major research initiative focusing on how the teaching of
history--through textbooks and school-based programs--affects attitudes
about former enemies and contested pasts. The project will involve
comparisons among case studies (Northern Ireland, Russia, Kazakhstan,
and North and South Korea) and is likely to yield fresh insights for
educators seeking to advance reconciliation in conflict and post-
conflict settings.
other institute programs promoting israeli-palestinian conflict
resolution
As mentioned earlier, the Institute is working with a range of
civil society leaders in Israeli and Palestinian societies to support
conflict resolution.
The Institute's Religion and Peacemaking Program continues to
support the follow-up work to the Alexandria Declaration, signed in
January 2002 by prominent Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders from
Israel and the West Bank. The Declaration stresses that none of the
three religious faiths legitimizes political violence, and calls for an
end to all violence in the region. Because of the religious arguments
used by extremists in this conflict to justify the use of violence, it
is especially important to mobilize religious leaders to speak out for
peace and coexistence--to undercut the arguments of the extremists.
The Institute's Training Program works with Palestinians, other
Arabs, and Israelis to promote alternative strategies to the use of
violence in bringing about change. During 2000 and 2001, Institute
staff conducted two workshops for 40 young Arab and Israeli leaders
from universities, governments, the media, non-governmental
organizations, and civil society with the goals of networking and
preparing for a non-violent future. Institute facilitators used
training in conflict management and resolution to illustrate how skills
such as analysis and negotiation could resolve conflicts and achieve
political and social goals. Arabs and Israelis engaged in joint problem
solving, many working with each other for the first time. They also
engaged in dialogue on their visions of the future in the Middle East,
while grappling with the ongoing violence between their communities.
The Institute's Training Program is currently organizing another
skills-building workshop for Palestinians and Israelis in the first
half of 2004.
The Institute's Rule of Law Program, at the request of the Israeli
and Palestinian ministers of justice, organized a special initiative on
a Palestinian-Israeli legal dialogue. The Institute seeks to build
professional relationships between the two legal communities and enable
them to jointly solve common problems--a process they had not been able
to start without outside facilitation, and that no other international
party had undertaken. At roundtables and follow-on working groups in
the region, members of the two legal communities and foreign experts
discuss issues affecting the daily interaction of their two systems,
and develop proposed solutions to common problems. Over 120 members of
the two legal communities have participated to date. Although the
dialogue was suspended during the recent violence, the Institute is
exploring ways to reactivate the program.
conclusion and policy recommendations
To summarize, the U.S. Institute of Peace is committed to the
concept that education, through curriculum reform and the training of
teachers, can be an effective component of conflict resolution efforts
between Israelis and Palestinians. We support this commitment with our
funding and programming, and we are sustaining our efforts despite
today's daunting environment of hostility and violence!
In the case of the Palestinians' education curriculum, the process
of change that supports coexistence is incomplete, incremental, and
still controversial. But continued attention to this issue by Members
of Congress and the Administration is one important way of encouraging
further progress.
Educational reform in the Palestinian Authority will fully advance
only in the context of political reconciliation, a process that, as
President Bush has stressed, is at the heart of the ``roadmap'' effort.
Educational reform will be a vital means of ensuring that any future
peace agreement is widely understood, supported, and sustained over the
long-term. Thus, the links the Institute is helping to build today
between Palestinian and Israeli educators, legal professionals, and
religious leaders will be part of the public support structure
necessary for preventing the kind of collapse that ended the Oslo
process. It is an investment in future peace.
Confronting deeply held views of history and territory, much less
revising them in the interest of accommodation with an adversary, is
one of the most difficult and long-term tasks in conflict resolution.
But such changes in attitude are essential to helping peace take root
and preventing future outbreaks of conflict. The U.S. Institute of
Peace is committing its resources to support Israelis, Palestinians,
and other communities in conflict to educate their children for peace
by teaching conflict resolution skills and promoting the values of
mutual understanding, tolerance, and respect for the other.
We thank the Committee for its support of our work. My colleagues
and I look forward to responding to your questions.
Senator Specter. Well, Dr. Solomon, when you talk about
breaking the pattern if there is education of teenagers, isn't
it all going in the wrong direction? Is there any effort being
made to educate teenagers away from the culture of violence?
Dr. Solomon. We have seen some efforts of that sort. We
have funded some activities----
Senator Specter. Such as what?
Dr. Solomon. Well, here again, I think, at this point, we
may want my colleagues to give you much more detail. My formal
testimony gives a number of examples of institutions of civil
society, not associated directly with the Palestinian
Authority, that are trying to promote a curriculum of
reconciliation.
Senator Specter. Well, what are they accomplishing?
Mr. Riskin. Well, the institution has supported several
initiatives----
Senator Specter. Well, we hadn't planned to have more
witnesses, but step up and identify yourself, and----
Mr. Riskin. This is Steven Riskin, of our----
Senator Specter [continuing]. Talk to the question, if you
can.
Mr. Riskin [continuing]. Of our Grant Program.
Senator Specter. What is your name, sir?
Mr. Riskin. Steve Riskin. I work in the institute's Grant
Program, and I'm a----
Senator Specter. I would like to know specifically what the
Institute of Peace is doing. We fund you $17\1/2\ million from
this subcommittee.
Mr. Riskin. Correct.
Senator Specter. And I believe there is going to be an
additional allocation of funding in the supplemental
appropriation. And my question to you, What specifically are
you doing to counteract that kind of virulent terrorism which
is depicted in those videos?
Mr. Riskin. We're a bridge-builder. We work with a variety
of organizations in the region that are moderate and that are
interested in removing the hate----
Senator Specter. What are they doing?
Mr. Riskin. What are they doing? In one instance, for
example, Yesodot, which is the Center for the Study of Torah
and Democracy, they are bringing teachers together----
Senator Specter. Study of Torah and Democracy?
Mr. Riskin. Torah and--Muslim, Christian, and Jewish
liturgy--to talk about and to ferret out the areas where there
is promotion of tolerance and reconciliation.
Senator Specter. Are you reaching----
Mr. Riskin. These are----
Senator Specter [continuing]. Are you reaching teenagers,
such as those you saw in the videos?
Mr. Riskin. The work with the teachers--the work that we
are doing with the teachers does trickle down into the
classroom. We have found that the religious communities,
particularly--and educators, but the religious communities were
not involved or engaged in the Oslo process, and this is one
area that, in the future, they will not only be--they have--
religion has been seen as being an impediment to the peace
process, but here are people on both sides, religious people,
who are committed to promoting nonviolence and peace.
One of the other activities that we have been involved with
as an institute is the Alexandria Declaration. David Smock, who
works in our Religion and Peacemaking Program, has been a
proponent of this, and this brought together Jewish, Christian,
and Muslim leaders in Cairo to--and they signed a declaration
in support of the peace process and nonviolent approaches to
resolving the conflict, and there is an array of activities
that are flowing from that.
Senator Specter. Well, I think----
Mr. Riskin. Getting----
Senator Specter [continuing]. I think at the level that you
describe, it's commendable, but it's not too impressive to talk
about ``trickle-down.'' How much of it----
Mr. Riskin. There----
Senator Specter. Excuse me. Finish the question. How much
of it reaches the kind of young people we see on these videos?
Mr. Riskin. There are other organizations that we have and
are supporting, like Neve Shalom, in addition to the Seeds of
Peace Program, that directly relates to youth and gets them
engaged with the other in mutual understanding.
Senator Specter. Palestinian youth?
Mr. Riskin. Palestinian youth. There are organizations that
work both in Israel, with Jews and Arabs, and across the Green
Line, because it's our view that what is happening in relations
between Jews and Arabs in Israel does have an impact across the
Green Line, as well. But there are materials that are being
developed--human rights materials at the Hebrew University,
both for Jewish and Arab classrooms. There is teacher training
that's going on, and this is certainly connected to moving
toward a resolution of the conflict.
Senator Specter. How would you evaluate the effectiveness--
how would you evaluate the effectiveness of all of that,
contrasted with these propaganda videos, which are shown on
Palestinian terrorism?
Mr. Riskin. Well, this is a difficult environment,
obviously. The last 3 years, the intensity of the conflict, it
is very difficult to say, okay, here's a huge success that we
have had. We are working with courageous moderate educators--in
some cases, legal specialists--across the Green Line. These are
people who are committed to working together to resolve the
conflict. These are two competing narratives on the education
front. We have supported work--and it's in the testimony--
Jewish and Arab educators together, looking at what is in the
textbooks and seeing how events were portrayed and trying to
work out, not a unified history, but at least an appreciation
that can then be--and work has been done to translate that
appreciation into material that's used in classrooms.
Senator Specter. Let me come back----
Mr. Riskin. It is----
Senator Specter [continuing]. Let me come back to my
question. How effective is that against this kind of video
propaganda?
Mr. Riskin. That's a difficult--it's a difficult question
to answer. We know it is effective with the teachers who are
engaged in these activities, because they are committed to
working with the other and mutual understanding. And it is our
hope--and this work is to expand the pool of moderate, in this
case, educators----
Senator Specter. We have seen----
Mr. Riskin. [continuing]. Working through the system.
Senator Specter [continuing]. We have seen the textbooks in
the Palestinian schools, for a decade or more, preaching
violence, terrorism, and hatred. Have those textbooks been
changed?
Mr. Riskin. Dr. Solomon referred to the study here that we
funded, in part, that looked at those textbooks. And before
1993, as you may know, the textbooks that were used in Gaza and
the West Bank were Egyptian and Jordanian, and there was
hateful material in those. And those are no longer, by and
large, used. There is now new material coming out, and the
study that we funded indicates that progress has been made.
Still, there are problems with it, but significant progress
about removing hateful references to Jews and Israel--in fact,
the omissions that I think were mentioned earlier talking about
Israel from a Palestinian perspective is a difficult thing to
do, as it is for Israelis talking about it. Where do you draw
the lines for a state? It's very difficult to present maps, for
example, when you don't know where the limits of your----
Senator Specter. Never mind the maps or the delineation of
the states. Do the current textbooks being given to--in
Palestinian schools to fourth-graders, fifth-graders, sixth-
graders, seventh-graders contain hateful information about
Israel and Jews?
Mr. Riskin. I have not done the study of those textbooks. I
can only refer to some of the work that's been done here. It's
been less than 10 years since there was a Ministry of
Education, and there had--reform is underway, and I think a
few--textbooks at a few levels--and there will be speakers
later, I think, who can address this--there are textbooks at
some of the levels that have come out that are a step clearly
in the right direction, of removing hateful material.
Dr. Solomon. Mr. Chairman, let me just add----
Senator Specter. Excuse me----
Dr. Solomon. Sure.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Dr. Solomon.
The subcommittee would like an answer to the question
specifically. It shouldn't be too hard to answer. Those
materials are available, and the subcommittee would like to
know whether, currently, the textbooks being used in
Palestinian schools have hateful and inciteful matters against
Israel and Jews.
You wanted to say something, Dr. Solomon?
Dr. Solomon. Well, I was just going to repeat--I think my
bottom line on this is, until you get a leadership in the
Palestinian Authority that is committed to reform and
reconciliation, the people that we work with in civil society
are not going to be reinforced, empowered by their own
leadership. And so that puts a substantial constraint on the
impact of the kinds of things we're supporting.
But you are certainly entitled to a full accounting of the
projects that we support and as best an answer to your question
as we can provide you.
Senator Specter. Well, we'd like to have it, because every
year we take a look at your request for money, and the budget
is extremely tight, and we'd like to know what value is being
received by the U.S. Government for the $17 million a year.
[The information follows:]
Teaching About Combating Incitement in Palestinian Schools
Hate and incitement in Palestinian schools is a serious issue and a
central concern of all the Institute's education work. We commend you,
Senator Specter, for raising this issue to the attention of your
colleagues and the American people, and taking a leadership role in
addressing this very disturbing problem. Teaching children to hate is
unacceptable, and the Institute is doing its part to address this
problem.
While hateful and inciting materials were clearly evident in older
Palestinian textbooks, improvements are being made to eliminate such
overt incitement statements in more recently published Palestinian
textbooks. When the Palestinian Authority (PA) assumed control over
education in the West Bank and Gaza in 1994, it initially relied on
Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks, pending the composition of a new,
Palestinian curriculum. That new curriculum was designed between 1995
and 1998, and the first new textbooks (for grades 1 and 6) were
introduced in 2000. Two grades have been switched over to the new
textbooks each year; as of the beginning of the current school year,
grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 all use the new textbooks. In grade 5
and the remaining high school grades the older Jordanian and Egyptian
books are still in use as of this writing. Israeli schools for
Palestinians in East Jerusalem follow the same pattern, using the same
books. No academic study has been carried out regarding the older
books, but they have few defenders. Thus, to our understanding, they do
include material that is hostile to Jews and Israel.
The newer Palestinian textbooks have been studied extensively by
academics and by non-governmental organizations including:
--Nathan J. Brown, professor of political science and international
affairs at George Washington University, has conducted research
on the new curriculum with funding from a grant from the U.S.
Institute of Peace and a Fulbright research and teaching grant
in Israel.
--The U.S. Department of State, through our embassy in Tel Aviv and
the consulate in Jerusalem, commissioned a study conducted by
Israeli, Palestinian, and international educational experts
under the auspices of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research
and Information (IPCRI).
--A joint project was conducted by an Israeli academic (Ruth Firer)
and a Palestinian academic (Sami Adwan), funded in part by the
U.S. Institute of Peace, and carried out under the auspices of
the George Eckert Institute in Germany, covered both Israeli
and Palestinian education.
--The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), an Israeli
non-governmental organization, has focused on the topic since
1998.
--The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released a report
on the first new Palestinian textbooks in 2002.
All five assessments agree that explicit incitement has decreased
or been eliminated in the new Palestinian textbooks. The latter two
organizations still find problematic material and implicit incitement.
The first three studies, however, found no material that could be
fairly called incitement. The new textbooks, however, do not treat
Israel or Jews in any consistent manner. The little material they do
include reflects a strongly nationalistic point of view (for instance,
they include illustrations of home demolitions and a short unit on the
1948 massacre at Deir Yassin). The new textbooks do not make efforts at
peace education, either avoiding many of the most sensitive topics or
treating them obliquely. The new textbooks show some progressive
themes--as on gender, democracy, and human rights issues--but they are
quite timid on issues related to Israel.
The Institute is well aware of the serious problem of textbooks
teaching hate and incitement and has approached it from a number of
vantage points. Institute staff have worked with our former Board
member Father Theodore Hesburgh, who traveled to Israel a number of
times as a member of an official delegation looking into the issue of
incitement following the signing of the 1998 Wye Agreement. The
Institute has approached the issue of Palestinian education primarily
through its Education Program and Grant Program, which are involved in
teacher training and the development of learning materials for
Palestinian and Israeli teachers to use in the classroom. The Institute
has learned from its work in other zones of conflict, such as Northern
Ireland and the Balkans, that a central component of any effective
strategy for reaching students is to work with their teachers. This has
a multiplier effect by influencing the students in the classrooms. If
teachers are not sensitive to the issue of hate and incitement, then
what is in the textbooks will have limited effect.
The following is an account of how the U.S. Institute of Peace is
doing its part to address incitement by working directly with American,
Israeli and Palestinian educators and civic groups through our
Education and Grant making programs:
1. The Institute has worked with the Middle East Children's
Association (MECA), a joint Palestinian-Israeli NGO, in a project that
brings over 250 Palestinian and Israeli elementary and middle school
teachers together to create learning materials for their students that
incorporate peace, tolerance, respect, responsibility and non-violence.
From November 28-30, 2003, the Institute's Education staff conducted a
training workshop in Cyprus for MECA participants. In this workshop,
Palestinian and Israeli teachers worked with curriculum developers and
teacher trainers from other zones of conflict. They drew on the lessons
and experiences of teachers in other conflict zones, such as Violeta
Petroska-Beska, a Macedonian educator who was a 2000-2001 Jennings
Randolph Fellow at the Institute and wrote curriculum development
guides for teachers and trainers in Macedonia on topics such as
combating ethnic stereotyping and promoting ethnic tolerance. The MECA
participants will be training additional teachers inside Israel, the
West Bank and Gaza Strip. MECA's training initiatives, with the
Institute's support, will not only engage educators from both sides of
the conflict, but will directly impact several thousand students. The
multiplier effect of the Institute's working with and training teachers
is significant. Programs like MECA provide Israeli and Palestinian
teachers with the opportunity to counter the incitement that surrounds
their classrooms and reinforce the message of coexistence to their
students. The Institute has also provided grants to assist in the
development of MECA.
2. Promoting understanding and respect for human rights is another
critical aspect of the Institute's efforts to reduce incitement and
strengthen peaceful approaches to resolving differences. A 2002 grant
to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem mentioned in my testimony is
supporting a human rights education project to develop, implement and
evaluate a pilot teacher-training course in Hebrew and Arabic on
theories of and approaches to promoting human rights. Targeting some
two dozen Arab and Jewish teachers from underserved areas in Israel and
East Jerusalem, the program will produce a ``Human Rights Reader'' in
Arabic to accompany its Hebrew analogue, provide teachers with
educational tools to integrate human rights concepts into lesson plans,
and produce a model for human rights education that will be
disseminated to university schools of education and other teacher-
training institutions throughout the country. In the initial phase,
this program will reach several hundred Jewish and Arab Israeli
students as well as Palestinian students in East Jerusalem. In
collaboration with Haifa University the program will soon be launching
training programs that will engage between 80-100 Arab and Jewish
teachers in northern Israel--impacting hundreds of classrooms and
thousands of students. Discussions are now underway with Ben Gurion
University of the Negev to mount a similar program for teachers in the
southern part of the country.
3. The Institute is a supporter of the Seeds of Peace organization,
a summer camp experience that sends Arab and Israeli teenagers for six
weeks of coexistence training in Maine. In 1999, the Institute awarded
a grant to Seeds of Peace to develop an educational, interactive CD-ROM
program based on the experiences of Arab and Israeli youth who have
participated in the summer camp program for use in classrooms around
the Middle East. The initiative has also prepared related curricular
materials, a manual to guide educators in the use of the CD-ROM
program, and a students' handbook. The start of the current Intifada
has slowed dissemination of the CD-ROM, but even so it is reaching
schools.
4. The Institute also provided through a grant to Seeds of Peace
support for an October 10-17, 2003, Seeds of Peace International Youth
Conference ``Breaking News, Making Headlines.'' The Conference enabled
125 youth ages 15-19, including Palestinian and Israeli, to develop the
independent thinking skills necessary to decipher media and use it to
make their voices heard. The Conference moved beyond identifying the
factors that contribute to conflict towards constructive action to
reverse these trends in their societies, specifically focusing on the
question: How can we redirect the power of the media towards the
positive aim of building a culture of peace.
5. As noted in my testimony, a 2003 Institute grant to the Israeli
organization, Yesodot--The Center for the Study of Torah and
Democracy--is enabling this organization of religiously observant
Jewish Israelis to reach communities long neglected by programs seeking
to advance tolerance, mutual understanding and peace. This peace-
building training program for 16 religiously observant Jewish and
Muslim teachers in Israel explores the theological, psychological, and
social roots of intolerance and conflict. While modest in its early
stages, the project will expand the small but growing number of
religious educators promoting shared values of coexistence and mutual
acceptance, and will reach several hundred students. Moreover, the
potential growth of this program is significant, with the number of
Muslim and Jewish student beneficiaries likely to reach several
thousand.
6. A 2003 Institute grant to the Jerusalem-based Citizens' Accord
Forum is funding a coexistence leadership training program for Jewish
and Arab middle school youth. In the first phase, targeting students
between the ages of 14-15, the initiative will train and develop the
skills of a future cadre of outstanding community leaders motivated and
equipped to be active in the field of coexistence work on a local and
national level. The initiative will also develop curricula and study
materials in peacemaking and coexistence, and disseminate a new model
of collaboration and partnership among Arab and Jewish youth, parents,
educators, and their broader communities.
7. As stated above, an Institute-funded project in 1997 based at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem examined middle and secondary school
history and civics textbooks used by Palestinian and Israeli students,
focusing particular attention on the treatment of Israeli-Palestinian
history and interaction from 1949 to 1987. A joint Israeli and
Palestinian research team produced several reports that examined
national narratives in the textbooks and identified negative
stereotypes of the other in an attempt to weed out these stereotypes
and hostile references of each other. The soon-to-be published findings
of this research have already been used by and had a direct impact on
curriculum development in the Palestinian Ministry of Education, and
the development of new junior high school curriculum in Hebrew and
Arabic on the subjects of geography, literature and civics, is now
underway.
8. Also as stated above, the Institute provided a grant in 1999-
2000 to George Washington University Professor Dr. Nathan Brown to
study the reforms underway in Palestinian politics in the wake of the
Oslo peace accords. The culmination of this grant was his recently
released book, Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords; Resuming
Arab Palestine. He devotes a chapter of this book to ``Democracy,
Nationalism, and Contesting the Palestinian Curriculum.'' In this
chapter, Dr. Brown sheds light on the challenges facing Palestinian
educators in their efforts to reform education in Palestinian society,
advance more modern and democratic approaches to learning, and develop
and implement new curricula.
9. With Institute grant funding in 2003, a study based at Brown
University is currently examining religious educational materials used
in schools across the Middle East, in an effort to identify and promote
more tolerant Islamic curricula. The initiative will also assess
contemporary Islamic education in comparison with the classical
tradition, explore points of convergence and reciprocity among
different religious traditions in the Middle East, and probe models for
Islamic religious education that can inform the development of new,
more tolerant and inclusive curricula.
10. In addition, in May 2004, the Institute is planning to conduct
a conflict resolution education program at Hebrew University of
Jerusalem that will supplement the education graduate students are
receiving in conflict resolution studies. The training program will
bring together Israeli and Palestinians educators who are working to
incorporate principles of conflict resolution, peace and non-violence
into their teaching and their classrooms.
In closing, the Institute is committed to expanding its work with
educators on anti-incitement education wherever we find receptive
Israelis and Palestinians partners. We understand that these efforts
will be substantially constrained until there is leadership in the
Palestinian Authority that is committed to reform and reconciliation.
In the meantime, the Institute measures the impact of its programs
based on increasing dialogues between Israeli and Palestinian teachers
and getting them to teach their students about peace and conflict
resolution.
I want to express the Institute's deep appreciation for your
support of its work, which is sustained by appropriations from this
Subcommittee. We look forward to working with you and other members of
this Subcommittee on this very important subject.
Senator Specter. Mr. Kunder, I note that the administration
requested $75 million in direct aid for the Palestinian
Authority for the fiscal year 2004. The bill drafted by the
Senate does not contain a specific dollar amount for the
Palestinians. Is there still a request by the administration
for $75 million in direct aid for the Palestinian Authority, or
has that changed with the deterioration of the Palestinian
Government and the change of Prime Minister?
Mr. Kunder. Sir, I think Ambassador Satterfield stated
exactly what the situation is now, that there would be no
additional direct--it would be considered on a case-by-case
basis. There would not be additional assistance, except in
those cases--in those circumstances that he described, that all
those guarantees would be met. So I take that, his answer to
your earlier question, as the current state of play.
Senator Specter. Mr. Kunder, where you fund humanitarian
projects in the West Bank and Gaza, does that result in the
indirect release of funds, which can be used by the Palestinian
Authority for terrorism?
Mr. Kunder. Sir, whenever we're acting as stewards of the
taxpayer dollars anywhere around the world, I think the
question of fungibility always comes up, and we cannot deny
that in any circumstance a dollar is a dollar, so that a dollar
going to any entity or any nation or any NGO around the world
can be seen as a dollar that that organization does not have to
locate or access from some other source. So at that level of
generality, of course dollars going to any entity provide
resources that don't have to be raised somewhere else.
Senator Specter. Well, it obviously poses a very difficult
choice. You don't want to free up money to go to terrorist
operations.
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
Senator Specter. And I know there is a real effort to try
to stimulate some moderate view----
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Within the Palestinian
Authority to try to advance the peace process. But, to the
extent possible, are you looking at situations where USAID
might release money for terrorism, to avoid it where at all
possible?
Mr. Kunder. We have a specific certification required of
all of our grantees that's quite specific--we could certainly
make a copy of it available to you--that goes into quite
detailed requirements by any of our recipients, in terms of
what they can do and cannot do, in terms of the pass-through of
money.
Senator Specter. I'm familiar with the certification.
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
Senator Specter. It provides that the Palestinian entities
will not provide material, support, or resources to any
individual or entity which it knows or has reason to know is
acting as an agent for any individual or entity that advocates,
plans, sponsors, engages in, or is engaged in terrorist
activity. So that's what you were referring to.
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
Senator Specter. And we've been advised that many
Palestinian partners have refused to sign the pledge. Is that
correct?
Mr. Kunder. That's correct. Yes, sir.
Senator Specter. But where they refuse to sign the pledge,
do you give them American money?
Mr. Kunder. I'm sorry, sir? They----
Senator Specter. Where they refused to sign the pledge, do
you advance U.S. aid to them?
Mr. Kunder. If this is an--the certification is an absolute
requirement to receive USAID assistance. If an organization
does not sign the certification, it will not receive any
assistance.
Senator Specter. Well, okay, that's good news.
Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. It's a very, very
difficult issue, but what I think we have to look for is
something that does hand-to-hand combat with those videos. Is
there any avenue available for the United States or any other
entity to put on videos to compete with the videos which we
have seen?
Mr. Kunder. Sir, if I could, the--on page 3 of my
testimony--I didn't capture it in my quick overview--but we go
into some of the peace curriculum and conflict resolution work
that is being done, the development of curriculum to be
inserted into the Palestinian school systems. And these
programs, in answer to your question about what kind of impact,
have reached tens of thousands of students, and we will be glad
to provide detailed descriptions of those programs. So there
are certainly competing curricula out there.
Senator Specter. Any--never mind curricula--any television?
Curricula is very passive. Television is very active. Any
competing television?
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir. We are----
Senator Specter. Such as?
Mr. Kunder. Both in terms of participation, we are funding
the coverage, for example, of town meetings and alternate
moderate voices that--to lobby the Palestinian Legislative
Council. We have actually funded--because we know the power of
this kind of media, we have actually funded some soap operas
that portray--and sometimes in some pretty controversial
terms--but Israel-Palestinian dialogue. So, yes, sir, we take
your point, and we're doing some of that.
Senator Specter. Anything that, head-on, hits the
inducement to these young Palestinians to commit suicide with a
bombing?
Mr. Kunder. Sir, to the best of my knowledge, I don't think
so, but I will follow up and get that information to the
committee.
[The information follows:]
USAID funds a broad range of activities in the West Bank and Gaza
that engage the youth population, and are aimed at dissuading
Palestinian youth from aspiring to be suicide bombers. For example, as
the attached table of civil society and community service activities
indicates:
--Our democracy and governance projects teach the skills of
democratic, civil, non-violent mobilization and advocacy. They
reach out to school children and university students, providing
mentoring, counseling, and structure, and at the same time
imparting skills, knowledge, and appreciation for non-violent
conflict resolution techniques.
--USAID-supported civic education media programs are widely
disseminated and artfully designed to deliver and reinforce the
message that while there are problems, violence is not a
solution.
--Town hall meetings, panel discussions, and young leader training
programs reach out into the heart of the communities that have
been identified as prime breeding grounds for suicide bombers,
providing avenues of communication and organization that are
effective and healthy alternatives to violence.
--Through our various community service programs, we are trying to
inculcate skills and positive experiences that will support
non-violent conflict resolution behaviors. For Palestinians
teens and young adults, we support programs that ``get them off
the street'' into positive, healthy, mentored situations where
they are engaged in constructive activities and, at the same
time, developing attitudes and problem-solving techniques that
are conducive to adopting non-violent approaches to resolving
the national conflict.
In addition, a significant portion of our overall programming is
geared to meeting emergency health and humanitarian needs, creating
jobs, providing educational opportunities, and supporting economic
development. In this way, USAID programs give Palestinian youth hope
for a better life and future.
This hearing has been useful in sharpening USAID's focus on the
nature of the issue of suicide bombings. Consequently, this fiscal year
we plan to use available funds to design and implement additional
targeted activities, within the parameters of current U.S. law.
USAID/WEST BANK AND GAZA CIVIL SOCIETY PORTFOLIO CONTRIBUTIO TO ANTI
INCITEMENT \1\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity Name/Implementing
NGO Partner(s) Amount
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moderate Voices
Academy for Educational Development (AED);
Search for Common Ground (SEARCH)
The Palestinian Center for Gaza Conflict Resolution $54,965
Helping to Resolve Community Project--Peer Mediation. 26,662
Disputes. Nablus Youth Parliament........
Middle East Non-violence and Non-Violence Training Of 49,949
Democracy (MEND). Trainers. 49,494
Non Violence Radio Soap Opera.. 27,824
Training of Media Professional
in skills that Promote Non-
Violence.
Israel Palestinian Center for Peace Education Program Non- 25,212
Research and Information. Violence Module.
Palestinian Forum for Non-Violence Training of 48,902
Democracy. Leaders in Gaza.
Tamkeen
Chemonics Inc.
The Palestinian Center for Advocating Democracy and Human 70,800
Micro Project Development. Rights through Combating
Social Violence.
Fekra For Educational Art.... Women in Gaza: Expression 85,660
through Theater.
Women and Child Development Democracy Awareness Program for 51,580
Association. Children in Rafah.
Community Training and Crisis Civic Education Program of 64,320
Management. Youth in the Shejayia and
Zeitoun areas.
MAAN......................... Palestinian Children Taking 98,412
Part--A Right and a
Responsibility.
International Palestinian Democracy and Citizenship 68,543
Youth League. Summer Camp.
Panorama..................... Youth Assembly on Leadership... 95,705
Special Interest Groups for 99,475
Community participation via
Advocacy and Policy
Developemtn.
Bisan........................ Advocacy for a Regional Public 97,019
Policy on Youth in Civic and
Democratic Participation
(Nablus).
Gaza Community Mental Health Cooperation through Video 24,308
Programme. Conferencing.
The Palestinian Association Supporting the Rule of Law and 78,530
for Legal Sciences. Resolving Disputes through
Arbitration and Mediation.
Civic Forum.................. Strengthening Palestinian Civil 297,000
Society and Grassroots
Democratic Development in the
Northern, Central, and
Southern West Bank.
Al Mamal Foundation for Contemporary Art for 85,286
Contemporary Art. Palestinian Youth.
Maghazi Community To Enhance Community Based 90,155
Rehabilitation Society. Education in Maghazi Camp.
The Palestinian Institute for Enhancing university Students 50,610
Community Research and Role in Public Issues. 50,725
Training. Enhancing Students' Role and
Participation in Civil Society
Issues and Democratic Reforms
in Al Aqsa University.
Al Jalaa For Culture and Arts Civic Education for Children 95,913
through Drama.
El Karmel Cultural Enhancing Democracy and 51,400
Association. Creativity Among the Children.
Gaza Center for Rights and Civil Education in Democracy 47,680
Law. and Human Rights for Young
Leadership.
Center for Private Sector The Palestinian Private Sector-- 92,682
Development. Towards a More Vibrant Role.
Ashtar Theatre............... Abu Shaker's Affairs 2002. A 93,700
Theatre Performance as a Tool
for Change.
Alpha International.......... Monitoring Attitudes and 94,120
Perception of High School
Students in Pales- tine and
Utilizing Derived Indicators
to Conduct an Array of Public
Advocacy Activities on Various
Aspects of Survey Findings.
Educational Network Center... Strengthening the Role of 99,925
Education in Building Civil
Society in Pales- tine.
Arab Thought Forum........... Civil Society Participation 99,292
Project.
Citizen's Rights Project....... 99,412
Youth Leadership Project....... 98,644
Ayyam Al Masrah.............. Theatre Plays with Kids in Gaza 83,330
and Hebron.
Civitas
Participating Agencies Services Agreement (PASA)
with Public Diplomacy, Department of State
Palestinian Youth Association Youth4Change................... 20,000
for Leadership and Rights
Activation.
Center for Continuing Birzeit University............. 19,535
Education.
Association for Women's Developing Young Female Leaders 24,000
Action for Training and
Rehabilitation.
Palestinian Center for Empowering Women in the Nablus 20,400
Resolving Community Disputes. Area to Understand Legislation
and Increase their Capacity
for Political Participation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Ongoing sub-grants only, not including completed or planned
activities under these projects.
Senator Specter. Well, it's a subtle matter as to how you
combat it. Do you have people working on it to figure out how
you do it, where you have some, perhaps, other Palestinian
teenagers talking about living and affirming life, and not
hatred and suicide?
Mr. Kunder. Frankly, sir, your hearing here today will
cause us to look at all these issues more sharply in the
future, and we will look at that.
Senator Specter. Well, that's the first time I've heard any
hearing doing any good, but----
Mr. Kunder. I'm quite serious. I'm not saying that to make
you feel good. I'm being quite serious.
Senator Specter. All right. Let us know what is being done
at the present time----
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
Senator Specter [continuing]. To combat that kind of
inciting video of the suicide bombers and what you have plans
to do to come to hand-to-hand combat with that kind of trash,
garbage, and incitement.
Mr. Kunder. Yes, sir.
Senator Specter. Okay, thank you very much, gentlemen.
Dr. Solomon. Thank you.
Senator Specter. I'd like to proceed now to our second
panel, Dr. Hassan Abdel Rahman, Dr. Ziad Asali, and Dr. Morton
Klein, and also Mr. Itamar Marcus.
Mr. Marcus, you have already identified yourself, and thank
you for making those videos available to Members of the Senate
earlier and for providing them to the hearing today. The floor
is now yours for 5 minutes.
Mr. Marcus. Okay, thank you.
One of the challenges, I think, facing any funding of the
Palestinian Authority is that not only do the Palestinians use
television as we've seen, the Palestinians use the full range
of social structures and cultural structures within Palestinian
society in order to promote these values. And I wanted to give
you some examples, and you can actually follow with some of
these texts there on the screen.
So, for example, this summer, there was a whole summer-camp
infrastructure, which we presume is to get children out of the
cities and out into the country, and yet the summer-camp
infrastructure was one that was focused, as well, on the
suicide terrorists.
So, for example, there was a summer camp named after Wafa
Idris, who was the first woman suicide bomber. And if you look
at the bottom of the article here on the screen, you'll see
that UNICEF was thanked for its support of the camps at the
closing ceremonies. So you have a camp named after the first
woman suicide bomber, UNICEF funding for this camp.
We had another summer camp for the Ayyat al-Akhras, 17-
year-old girl, youngest suicide bomber, again this summer. So
that summer camps are used as this means, as well.
Sporting events, which, again, is entertainment around the
world for children, have been a means also to rave and to
create role models for children who are terrorists. So that,
for example, just this past month, there was a soccer
tournament, a major, major soccer tournament, in the
Palestinian Authority. The sponsors of the tournament were Saab
Erekat, Yasser Arafat, Jibril Rajoub, the Minister of Sport,
the mufti, all of the heads of the Palestinian Authority
sponsoring a soccer tournament. And the 24 teams, each of the
24 teams was named after a different shahid, a different
martyr, including people like Yechya Ayash, who was the first
Hamas engineer, Dalil Mughrabi, who--involved in a hijacking
killing 36, including an American. So all of the heads of the
Palestinian Authority this summer put their names on a sport
tournament glorifying terrorists.
This role-modeling, by the way, and naming after
terrorists, is not limited to terrorists who have killed
Israeli's; it includes terrorists who have killed Americans in
Iraq. So, for example, we found in the Palestinian newspaper,
just 4 days after the first suicide Iraqi terrorist killed four
U.S. marines, the P.A. renamed a square in Jenin after that
suicide terrorist. So this role-modeling and turning the
terrorists into heroes is directed not just at Israelis, but at
Americans, as well.
Now, I want to step back for one moment, and I want to show
you a film here. We've been discussing the level of terrorism,
but what we haven't discussed at all is the level of ideology.
And I think this must be understood, because unless we
understand why the Palestinians are teaching their children to
fight, we won't understand why they are participating in
terrorism. And I want to show you a short item here from an
educational program on Palestinian television. It's significant
the person speaking is the head of a history department. And in
understanding what he is saying to these children, you will get
a sense of the foundation of the conflict that we are having
today, that continues to until today.
[Video presentation.]
Mr. Marcus. Again, I start with this because I think this
is why we still have a conflict today. This message, we have
heard hundreds and hundreds of times, to Palestinians, both in
formal and informal structures, all of Jewish history is lies,
everything belongs to the Palestinians.
Interestingly, the new Prime Minister made this comment,
which appeared in a Palestinian daily just after President Bush
had made the speech in June of this year talking about the
Palestinians recognizing Israel as Jewish state. And he said:
``What is the meaning and the concept of a Jewish state? Does
this mean that this is a Jewish state, this is Sunni, this is
Shi'ite, this one is Christian? These differences could plunge
the region into a whirlpool.'' Even the new Prime Minister
refuses to acknowledge that the Jews are a nation having a
right to a state. He puts this in the category of a religion.
And so we're seeing that this message isn't coming in the
formal education, it's coming from the political leader. It
permeates Palestinian society, and I feel this is the
foundation of the conflict that continues to date.
This message continues even in the new school books. And I
will beg to differ, it's not just a sin of omission in the new
school books; the new schools books continue to de-legitimize
Israel. And I have a couple of items here that appear in the
very new school books. Israel is defined as a colony. And to
the chapter on colonialism, Palestine faced British occupation
after the first world war, and Israeli occupation in 1948.
Israel is foreign. They are an occupier.
Referring to Israel cities and regions, like Beersheba and
Negev, they're talked about Southern Palestine. The Sea of
Galilee is referred to as part of Palestine. There is no
recognition in the school books. People look at the maps, as
you see here, in the Palestinian school books and say, it is
because there is no borders, final borders. That is not the way
they're presenting it to their children. They're presenting it
to their children that this is the Palestine. These are all
pictures from new school books.
Senator Specter. Mr. Marcus, you're a minute over time.
Could you sum up at this point?
Mr. Marcus. Yes.
I just want to put the two messages together with this
final short video that you will see. This is from a Palestinian
graduation this summer, and it combines the ideology, as well
as the desire that the children have--are being taught for the
use of force to achieve their goals. Again, this is Palestinian
television, a film from a high school graduation.
[Video presentation.]
prepared statement
Mr. Marcus. Okay. This summarizes the essential conflict.
Israeli cities are still being portrayed to the children as
Palestine, and they will liberate it through their stone and
their knife.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Itamar Marcus
Mr. Chairman, Senators, there is significant evidence documenting
Palestinian Authority [PA] incitement of its children to hatred,
violence and Death for Allah--the Shahada. This incitement is advanced
by the PA through the entire social-educational structure, including
sporting events and summer camps, the media including music videos for
children and schoolbooks. Jews and Judaism are presented as inherently
evil, Israel existence as a state is de-legitimized and denied, and
fighting Jews and Judaism is presented as justified and heroic.
The PA Ministries of Education and Sport have turned the most
abhorrent murderers of Jews into role models and heroes for Palestinian
youth. A soccer tournament for 11-year-old boys was named for Abd Al-
Baset Odeh--the terrorist who murdered 30 in the Passover Seder suicide
bombing. [Sports section, Al Hayat Al Jadida Jan 21, 2003]. This past
summer, during the period of the U.S. sponsored Road Map, numerous
summer camps were named for suicide bombers, including a camp for
teenagers named after a teenage suicide bomber, a 17 year old girl,
Ayyat Al Akhras. Another camp for girls was named after Wafa Idris, the
first woman suicide bomber. Many schools, cultural events, educational
programs, and trophies, are named after terrorist murderers and suicide
bombers. There can be no greater incitement to hatred and violence than
the recurring portrayal of Palestinian terrorists as role models for
children. As recently as September this year PA Chairman Arafat and 13
PA Leaders jointly sponsored a soccer tournament honoring arch
terrorists. The PA leaders included Saeb Erikat; Jibril Rajoub; the
Minister of Sport--Abdul Fatach Hamal; the Mufti of the PA Ikrama
Sabri; and 10 other senior PA officials. Each of the 24 soccer teams
was named for a terrorist or other Shahids [``Martyrs''] including some
of the most infamous murderers like Yechya Ayash, the first Hamas bomb
engineer, who initiated the suicide bombings, and Dalal Mughrabi, a
terrorist woman who hijacked a bus killing 36 including American Gail
Ruben in 1978; [Al Ayyam, Sept. 21, 2003] At the completion of this
tournament Saeb Erikat distributed the trophies.
While Music videos around the world are used to entertain children,
in the PA they are used to indoctrinate children to hatred, violence,
and Shahada. Regularly broadcast PA music videos have actors depicting
Israelis carrying out execution-style murders of old men, woman and
children, or blowing up mothers with their babies. In one music video
broadcast continuously in 2003, actors portray a woman being murdered
in cold blood in front of her daughter. In another, broadcast tens of
times in 2003, the image of young girl on a swing turns into a flaming
inferno, and a football blows up after being kicked by a child.
Children are taught through these videos not only to hate and to be
violent, but are openly encouraged to aspire to death through Shahada
[Martyrdom]. Clips designed to offset a child's natural fear of death
portraying child Shahada as both heroic and tranquil, have appeared on
PA TV thousands of times over three years. [2000-2003] One clip for
children ends with the words: ``Ask for Death--the Life will be Given
to you''. In another, a child writes a farewell letter and goes off to
die. Children who have achieved death through suicide missions have
been turned into PA heroes and role models by the PA leaders.
The hatred, anti Semitism and Shahada encouragement appear in the
PA schoolbooks as well. The poem The Shahid [The Martyr] in a new PA
schoolbook includes the phrase: ``I see my death, but I hasten my steps
toward it'' [Our Beautiful Language, grade 7, p. 97] The PA argument
that some of the books are copies of Jordanian books is not relevant,
as a child being taught that Jews are evil is not going to be less
influenced because of the identity of the publisher. Furthermore, even
the new PA-produced schoolbooks teach hatred, de-legitimize Israel, and
include anti-Semitic themes. This education will perpetuate the
conflict into the next generation.
It is important to note that the PA is making use of foreign
funding to promote this hatred among its children. Summer camps named
for suicide bombers this summer were funded by UNICEF. [Al-Hayat Al-
Jadida, July 22, 2003, Al-Ayyam July 18, 2003, Al-Quds, July 23, 2003].
Renovation of a school named for Dalal Maghrabi, a terrorist who
participated in the murder of 36 including an American, was funded by
USAID [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida July 30 2002]. And whereas the PA announced
two days later that they had changed the name, in order to receive the
USAID funding, PA press reports indicated that the name was still being
used. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 16, 2002]
Clearly, children are being incited to hatred, violence and
Shahada, not merely by fringe elements in the PA, but by the entire
mainstream of PA leadership and society. This incitement to hatred and
violence penetrates the minds of the PA children and, after terrorism
itself, is the single greatest long-term obstacle to peace.
Under the Oslo accords and subsequently under the Wye accords, the
PA obligated itself to cease this incitement, but has ignored its own
laws. In the interest of achieving a lasting peace, pressure must be
brought on the PA, through all available means, including temporary
political isolation and the temporary freezing of financial support, in
order to impress upon the Palestinians the importance of peace
education.
The following concrete steps should be taken by the PA immediately:
1. Music videos promoting hatred, violence, and Shahada must never
again be broadcast on PA TV.
2. The practice of naming schools, cultural events, educational
programs, sport events and trophies after terrorists and suicide
bombers must cease. Educational institutions and cultural frameworks
currently named for terrorists must be changed.
3. PA children must be taught that Israel is a legitimate country
with a right to exist.
4. There is no greater incitement against Israels legitimacy as a
state, than to mark the word Palestineor occupied Palestinein place of
Israel on all maps in the PA. These maps must be removed from
Palestinian schools, schoolbooks and TV broadcasting and be replaced by
maps that show Israel by name in Arabic. This will be the most
important act of recognition of Israel by the PA, more important than
the signing of the Oslo Accords. To continue the current practice,
makes the statements of recognition of Israel at Oslo irrelevant and
sends a clear message to the population that is was not said with
integrity.
5. The hatred and anti Semitism in the PA schoolbooks must be
removed. The PA argument that many of the books are copies of Jordanian
books is not relevant to the issues at hand, which is, the educational
damage being done to the children. A child being taught that Jews are
evil is not going to be less influenced because of the identity of the
publisher. In addition, even the new PA produced schoolbooks educate to
hatred, de-legitimize Israel, and include anti Semitic themes. The PA
schoolbooks must be reprinted without the hatred before the start of
the next school year.
Senator Specter. Thank you very much, Mr. Marcus.
STATEMENT OF HASSAN ABDEL RAHMAN, CHIEF REPRESENTATIVE,
PLO MISSION
Senator Specter. We now turn to Dr. Hassan Abdel Rahman,
chief representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization
and the Palestinian National Authority in the United States. He
attended universities in Puerto Rico before earning his Ph.D.
from the City University of New York.
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Rahman, and we look forward
to your testimony.
Dr. Rahman. Thank you, Senator Specter.
Let me, at the outset, start on a personal note. I have
four children, three boys and a girl. The four of them attended
the camp of Seeds of Peace. I am a founder or co-founder, with
John Wallach, late John Wallach, of that organization, and my
name was on the board of that organization.
I am a believer in the coexistence between the Palestinians
and the Israelis. I have struggled for that objective since my
beginning as a representative of the PLO in New York at the
United Nations since 1974. I don't need to establish my
credentials as a supporter of peace.
I have, on many occasions, on Arabic television as well as
on American television, objected, condemned suicide bombing. I
am opposed to it. I am against it. And this is the official
policy also of the Palestinian National Authority.
Mr. Marcus lives on a settlement on the West Bank. It is
stolen from the Palestinian people. It is a territory that has
been taken away from Palestinians. In violation of the policy
of the U.S. Government, which opposes the building of
settlements in the Palestine territories, it is in violation of
the Fourth Geneva Convention, which considers the transfer of
population of the occupying power to the occupied territory as
illegal and as a war crime.
Having said that, I really hesitated before coming to
appear before this subcommittee for the very simple reason,
there are two parties to this conflict, Palestinians and the
Israelis. And there is incitement on both sides. I see only the
Palestinians brought to a task here, and no mention of what the
Israeli media, what the Israeli textbooks say or do not say
about the Palestinians. I would have liked, Mr. Chairman, in
the spirit of fairness, to have a hearing on the incitement in
both textbooks and both medias, Palestinians as well as
Israelis, and then we would have not hesitated to appear before
this subcommittee. Because there are studies that are made on
Israeli textbooks, 1,600 textbooks, that never mentions the
word Palestine or the history of the Palestinian people in
historic Palestine. Whenever there is a reference to Palestine,
it is called Israel.
Mr. Marcus and his colleagues, the 200,000 armed settlers
in the West Bank and Gaza who stole the land of the
Palestinians, are armed, and they call the West Bank and Gaza
as Judea and Samaria. They never call it by its name.
No amount of education or teaching of the Palestinians how
important it is will change certain realities, Mr. Specter.
When there is the generation of Palestinians who have been
living under foreign military occupation, 35 years of brutal
military occupation, where bulldozers are used to demolish
homes, where Apache helicopters given by the United States to
the Government of Israel are attacking civilians in Gaza and
elsewhere, where the Israeli Army sanctions the assassination,
extra-judicially, of Palestine leaders without what you cherish
the most, the due process of law, in this country, people are
not--or do not need to be told that the Israeli settlers and
the Israeli soldiers are bad. They have to live in the West
Bank and Gaza in order to dislike and even hate the Israelis,
because the average Palestinian, Mr. Specter, do not see your
civilian in Ramallah. The average Palestinian encounters two
kinds of Israelis, and both are armed, the soldier and the
settler, and both are there to humiliate, oppress, suppress the
Palestinians.
If any American would live holed in his home for 20 or 30
days under curfew, I am sure they would be angry, and anger is
expressed by different people in different ways. I, personally,
will express my anger in a different way. Others express it in
a totally different way, which we do not sanction.
But instead of cursing the darkness, we have to light a
candle. We have to stop Israeli from building more settlements.
We have to improve the conditions for the Palestinians so they
can have a stake in changing their attitudes. But when they see
their parents, their neighbors, their mothers, fathers, their
sisters giving birth on checkpoints, humiliated by Israeli
soldiers, I assure you they will be angry, and you would be
angry.
I looked at those distorted tapes collected by Mr. Marcus,
and I can take an issue with every statement that was made
there. But that's not really the objective and my goal today,
because they are taken out of context, they are translated out
of the cultural meaning of what is said. I remember that the
battle cry for Patrick Henry, who wanted to freedom. He said,
``Give me liberty or give me death,'' and that was the battle
cry for the independence of this country. Every society has its
way of encouraging people to make sacrifices for independence,
for freedom, and for dignity.
We need an understanding from you and from the Congress of
the United States that the only way to end incitement is by
drying off the causes of incitement, freedom for the
Palestinians so they can live as equal neighbors to Israel. But
I assure you that the continued occupation of the Palestinians,
their denial of the God-given right to live as a free,
dignified people in their own country, is the biggest source of
incitement. Let's deal with real issues, and not with the
effects. Let's deal with the causes of incitement.
Thank you.
Senator Specter. Well, thank you, Dr. Rahman.
We invited you here today, and others, to speak on behalf
of the Palestinian Authority because of our interest in hearing
what you had to say.
Dr. Rahman. Yes, thank you.
Senator Specter. And when you asked for time to state the
incitement by Israel, we're prepared to give you that time. You
spoke for longer than the allotted time, but there was quite a
bit on the other side, and I thought, as a matter of fairness,
to hear you out, and I would have cared to hear you further----
Dr. Rahman. Thank you.
Senator Specter [continuing]. If you care to amplify as to
the incitement on the part of the Israelis. We're prepared to
give you whatever time that you'd like to have.
Dr. Rahman. No, Mr. Chairman, I know you are a fair person,
and I know that you want to help. But, again, what I wanted to
say, that after the Wye River Accords we established a
trilateral commission of the Israelis, Palestinians, and
Americans to monitor the media and monitor incitement on both
sides. And a great deal has been done in that regard. And we
continue to express our readiness to work with the Israelis and
with the Americans to monitor incitement on both sides.
But I cannot accept that the basis for the position of the
U.S. Senate will be a distorted videotape collected by Mr.
Marcus, who is a settler on the West Bank. That is absolutely
unfair to the Palestinians, because those are a collection of
items taken out of context, Senator. They are not accurate
translations of what has been said.
Senator Specter. Well, Dr. Rahman, let's examine that.
Customarily, we go through the entire panel before questioning,
but we're going to proceed just a little differently because of
what you've said. I'm going to take a few minutes, then yield
to Senator Clinton to give her an opportunity to raise
questions.
Where you're saying the comments were taken out of
context----
Dr. Rahman. Right.
Senator Specter [continuing]. We just saw the videos, and I
am not in a position to have translated them, but we have seen
teenagers, an 11-year-old girl----
Dr. Rahman. Yes.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Say that she was prepared to
give her life as a suicide bomber in order to go to heaven. Was
that an inaccurate translation of what she said?
Dr. Rahman. Well, what she was saying, she was making a
religious statement, which every religion--if I go to the
Torah, I will find references that I may not like, and that--I
have, in fact, a statement here about what happened in Jericho
after the invasion of Jericho, and it really--it is--I may not
like it. So we cannot translate religious statements into
policies. There is a difference there, Mr. Chairman, and I'm
sure that you are aware of that.
So we keep religious discussion out of it. When there's a
reference to the history, the--of history, who said something
about the war, that it did not exist. But if you ask the
Jewish--followers of the Jewish religion and ask them, ``Did
Mohammed--was he a prophet,'' they will tell you no. I don't
take that as an offense. That is their religious belief. We
have to put religion aside.
So--and we deal with politics here. If we want to take a
statement that was made by a sheik in a mosque and base our
policy on that statement, we go nowhere, and we would reach the
wrong conclusions.
I am saying that we have textbooks that we have to deal
with. We have television stations we have to deal with. We have
incitement, yes. But the incitement is the product of the
conditions that exist in the Palestinian territories.
Senator Specter. Well, Dr. Rahman, how about the part where
the young man had written a letter to his father saying, ``Do
not grieve for me. I have given my life for my country, and I
have sacrificed myself so that I can go to heaven.'' Was that
also a religious statement or----
Dr. Rahman. Yeah, I would----
Senator Specter. Well, let me finish my question.
Dr. Rahman. Yes, I'm sorry.
Senator Specter. Or wasn't that a statement by a young man
who had, in fact, been a suicide bomber?
Dr. Rahman. If I remember correctly what was said, the kid
is 14 years old. He's saying to his father, ``When I become 18,
I'm going to fight for my country and be a shahid for my
country.'' He did not do it, he was not a shahid yet.
Senator Specter. Well, Dr. Rahman----
Dr. Rahman. If I recall correctly what I saw.
Senator Specter. Well, Dr. Rahman, isn't it true that there
have been very young people, Palestinians, who have become
suicide bombers----
Dr. Rahman. Yes.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Really in carrying out just
exactly the theme which we saw on the videos?
Dr. Rahman. Yes, sir. I believe that there has been, and
there is, and there may be going to be more suicide bombing.
Because you go today to Gaza, where 70 percent of the
population are unemployed and hungry. Where do they turn to?
They turn to God. They turn to the mosque. And they are
recruited there by the most vicious people. So instead of--why
did not in the year 2000, Senator Specter, did not have one
suicide bombing? Why not? Because there was a light at the end
of the tunnel. People felt that finally they will be free. Not
one single suicide bombing in the year 2000 until the beginning
of the intifada. Why? People felt there is a possibility for
peace.
So instead of cursing the darkness, we have really to light
candles, and candles are telling people: ``Listen, no more
Jewish settlement on Palestinian territories. There's no
apartheid wall in the West Bank. There is no assassination, no
demolishing of homes, no destruction of crops, no, no, no.''
Then people will have something to look for. But as long as
those things are continuing, I cannot guarantee that there will
not be suicide bombing.
Senator Specter. Well, Dr. Rahman, I agree with you totally
that, as you have articulated, instead of cursing the darkness,
let us light a candle. Where do we go from here? When former
Prime Minister Barak offered statehood at Camp David and it was
declined by Chairman Arafat, where do we go from here? Where do
we light the candle? How?
Dr. Rahman. Well, sir, I happened to be a witness to the
Camp David, and I assure you that what Mr. Barak offered them
was not an independent Palestinian state. He offered a free--in
the West Bank that were not independent. We have the roadmap
today that is ahead of us. We agreed to it, we accept it, and I
believe that it can guide our efforts to achieve peace. If the
Israelis are serious, we are serious. We can get tomorrow into
the implementation of the roadmap.
What was offered in Camp David was unacceptable to the
Palestinians, because it does not give back to them what--the
minimum. The Palestinians then were asking for 22 percent of
historic Palestine, and they were, in exchange, conceding and
recognizing the right of Israel within 78 percent of historic
Palestine.
Senator Specter. Well, Dr. Rahman, in articulating the view
that you accept the roadmap, the roadmap calls for the
Palestinian Authority to exercise its maximum efforts to stop
violence.
Dr. Rahman. Yes.
Senator Specter. Wouldn't that comprehend stopping the
playing of these kinds of videos, which incite suicide bombing
by teenagers?
Dr. Rahman. Yes, the roadmap asked both parties to do
certain things, asked the Palestinians to stop violence and do
everything within their power to do that, and we did achieve 51
days of total calm; while, on the other side, it asked Israel
to dismantle Jewish settlements, outposts, in the West Bank.
Did not. They asked Israel to stop assassination of
Palestinians. It did not. It asked Israel to stop building the
wall. It did not. So there were, on both sides, not total
compliance. But we had 51 days of total quiet, while on the
Israeli side, within 51 days, over 80 Palestinians were killed
by Israel.
Senator Specter. If you have something to add, fine. If
not, let's turn to Dr. Ziad Asali, and we'll come back to you,
Dr. Rahman, if you care to----
Dr. Rahman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Address the subject further.
STATEMENT OF ZIAD ASALI, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN TASK FORCE
ON PALESTINE
Senator Specter. Now, Dr. Asali is president and founder of
the American Task Force on Palestine. He has been a member of
the Chairman's Council of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee since 1982, received his undergraduate degree from
American University at Beirut, and an M.D. from the American
University of Beirut Medical School.
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Asali, and we look forward to
your testimony.
Dr. Asali. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's an honor and a
privilege to appear before you.
Senator Specter. Dr. Asali, they have just started a vote.
And before you testify, not to interrupt you, it would be a
good time for me to leave, and I will be back in a very, very
few minutes. And you can start at the beginning and--without
interruption.
Dr. Asali. Yes, we will gladly wait.
Senator Specter. We will recess for a few moments.
Dr. Asali. Thank you.
Senator Specter. The hearing will resume. For those who are
uninformed about the interruption, when we have a vote, that
takes precedence over everything. Sometimes a group of Members
will be at the White House on some very important matter,
talking to the President. If the word comes through that there
is a vote, we all leave. The President can't even come and
vote. It's kind of impolite, in a sense, but when the vote is
called, we all go to vote.
But I came back as soon as I could, because we want to
proceed. We have other witnesses, and we're on a very important
subject. I saw Senator Clinton on her way to vote. She's going
to return.
So now, Dr. Asali, the floor is yours.
Dr. Asali. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
It is an honor and a privilege to appear before you. I
received an invitation to this hearing the night before last
while at an Iftar dinner at the table of the President of the
United States. At that time, I learned that other Arab-American
Palestinian leaders had turned down this opportunity, and I,
myself, was strongly advised against accepting it. It is,
however, my judgment that each and every occasion should be
explored to bring about peace and amity to the longsuffering
Palestinian and Israeli people.
Before--I appear here before you as a citizen, a man
concerned about the tragic and dehumanizing cycle in the Middle
East, and physicians who want to maintain the health and well-
being of all people and individuals, as an individual who was
born and raised in Jerusalem and was privileged to become an
American citizen and enjoy the attendant benefits such as
testifying before this august body.
Fear, anger, despair, violence, and an almost exclusive
sense of victimization on both sides, the Palestinians and
Israelis have their most damaging consequences in narrowing the
space needed for policy options and rational debate. Public
discourse is stunted, simplistic, and crude. It is easier in
this climate to follow the safe course of demonizing and
dehumanizing ``the other.'' To assume the worst, and to impugn
the motives of ``the other'' is much safer than to explore the
possibilities of compromise and working out solutions.
This is the kind of atmosphere that makes it possible to
advance racist and fascist arguments, sometimes openly stated,
but more often felt and implied. They are not human, they
understand nothing but force and violence, we should never show
them any mercy, because they will think it is a sign of
weakness, a face for an eye. In short, a prescription for more
disasters and mayhem.
The problem with history is that it has been around for too
long. It has provided arguments based in fact, fiction, or
perceived wisdom for each party to the conflict, and even for
those who seem to have no axe to grind. The difference between
the Palestinian and Israeli narratives continues to feed
polarizing and centrifugal forces that fail to see the
existential need for compromise. Each and every effort directed
against divisional peace, the two-state solution so clearly
stated by President Bush, is yet another tool to extend the
violent and destructive realities of the status quo. It is in
this context that we should view all facets of this conflict,
education included.
Because the time allotted for me is so brief, and because
others, I know, who have spent years studying this subject and
writing about it are not present on this panel, I'll sketch
briefly the contours of the argument, as I see them, for
education.
I am, for the record, including what I think are useful and
thoughtful studies about the issue of Palestinian textbooks and
hope that people entrusted with making decisions about it, or
are serious students of it, will take time to read them.
Jordanian textbooks in the West Bank and Egyptian textbooks
in Gaza continued to be taught to students from 1948 through
1967, and for decades, several decades, after that, under
Israeli occupation, til the problem of their content was faced
after Oslo by the Palestinian Authority in 1994. At that time,
the Curriculum Development Center, CDC, was established, and it
began studying and overhauling the educational system and
started over to phase in a new set of books, beginning with the
academic year 2000/2001.
Much, if not all, of the criticism leveled at the
Palestinian textbooks for incitement, anti-Semitism, or
marginalizing Jewish history has, in fact, been directed at the
Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks over which the Palestinians
had no control. In fact, it was the Palestinians who toiled for
years after Oslo to give birth to reasoned and thoughtful
solutions through the unique issues that face a people under
occupation and how they should educate their children.
No serious scholarly substantiated criticism has so far
been directed against the new books, although strident,
emotionally charged, and factually challenged statements
continue to be bandied about.
Akiva Eldar, the renowned Ha'aretz columnist, wrote, in
January 2, 2001, ``The Palestinians are punished twice. First,
they are criticized for books produced by the education
ministries of others. Second, their children study from books
that ignore their own nation's narrative.'' I have included his
article for the record.
The European Union, in a statement issued in Brussels on
May 15, 2002, concluded that quotations attributed earlier by
the Center for Monitoring the Impact on Peace, CMIP, are not
found in the new Palestinian Authority school books. New
textbooks, although not perfect, are free of inciteful content
and improve on the previous textbooks, constituting a valuable
contribution to the education of young Palestinians. It
concluded: ``Therefore, allegations against the new textbooks
funded by EU members have proven unfounded.'' I have included
that statement for the record.
The eminent scholar, Nathan Brown, professor of political
science and international affairs at George Washington
University, issued a 26-page report in November 2001, prepared
for the Adam Institute, on democracy, history, and a contest
over the Palestinian curriculum that made a most significant
contribution to this subject. He concluded by saying, ``Harsh
external critics of the PNA curriculum and textbooks have had
to rely on misleading and contentious reports to support their
claim of incitement.'' A reading of his full report that I
included for the record is most compelling.
The daily life of the Palestinian children with occupation,
closures, violence, demolitions, checkpoints, bravado, fear,
suicide bombing, air raids, humiliations, economic hardship,
vengeance, religious extremism, as well as a breakdown of
traditional values are realities--realities that cannot be
dissociated from the classroom. It is those realities that we
need to resolve by bringing about peace and security for all.
Textbooks that Israeli students read can also be reviewed
to bridge the gap between their realities and their classrooms
as we improve on those realities, too.
prepared statement
In conclusion, I would like to say that history has been
unkind to the Jews, the Israelis, and the Palestinians. There
are narratives of pogroms, ghettos, holocaust survival and
achievement, on the one hand, and dispossession, occupation,
demolition, and humiliation, as well as resistance and
persistence, on the other hand, are but just sad tales of two
people caught in the complex web of history. Let us at least,
those of us with hope for humanity, try with our thoughts
focused on the future of our children rather than the past of
our forefathers, work for peace and dignity for these two
courageous peoples. Let us not allow the demagogues, demagogues
of all sides, the violent elements and the ones with the least
sense of fundamental human values, dictate the agenda and
undermine peace.
Thank you for your attention.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Ziad Asali
Mr. Chairman, Honorable Members of the Committee. It is an honor
and a privilege to appear before you to testify about yet one more
vexing problem of the Palestinian Israeli conflict, that of the
Palestinian education.
I received an invitation to this hearing the night before last
while at an Iftar dinner at the table of the President of the United
States. I learned that other Arab American and Palestinian leaders had
turned down this opportunity, and I myself was strongly advised by
friends and people more experienced with the affairs of the Hill than I
against accepting it. It is, however, my judgment that each and every
occasion should be explored to bring about peace and amity to the long-
suffering Palestinian and Israeli people. Therefore I appear here
before you as a citizen, a man concerned about the tragic and
dehumanizing cycle of violence in the Middle East, a physician sworn to
maintain the health and well being of all people and an individual who
was born and raised in Jerusalem and was privileged to become an
American citizen and enjoy the attendant benefits such as testifying
before this august body.
Fear, anger, despair, violence and an almost exclusive sense of
victimization on both sides, the Palestinians and Israelis, have their
most damaging consequences in narrowing the space needed for policy
options and rational debate. Public discourse is stunted, simplistic
and crude. It is easier in this climate to follow the safe course of
demonizing and dehumanizing ``the other''. To assume the worst and to
impugn the motives of the other is much safer than to explore
possibilities of compromise and working out solutions. This is the kind
of atmosphere that makes it possible to advance racist and fascist
arguments sometimes openly stated but more often felt and implied,
``They are not human; they understand nothing but force and violence;
we should never show them any mercy because they will think it is a
sign of weakness; a face for an eye''. In short a prescription for more
disasters and mayhem.
The problem with history is that it has been around too long. It
has provided arguments, based in fact, fiction or perceived wisdom, for
each party to the conflict and even for those who seem to have no axe
to grind. The difference between the Palestinian and Israeli narratives
continues to feed polarizing and centrifugal forces that fail to see
the existential need for compromise. Each and every effort directed
against the vision of peace, the two-state solution so clearly stated
by President Bush, is yet one more tool to extend the violent and
destructive realities of the status quo. It is in this context that we
should view all facets of this conflict, education included.
Because the time allotted to me is so brief, and because others I
know who have spent years studying this subject and writing about it
are not present on this panel, I will sketch briefly the contours of
the arguments as I see them. I am for the record enclosing what I think
are useful and thoughtful studies about the issue of Palestinian
textbooks and hope that people entrusted with making decisions about
it; or are serious students of it, will take time to read them.
Jordanian Textbooks in the West Bank and Egyptian Textbooks in Gaza
continued to be taught to students from 1948 through 1967 and for
several decades after that under Israeli occupation till the problem of
their content was faced after Oslo by the Palestinian authority in
1994. At that time the Curriculum Development Center (CDC) was
established and it began studying and overhauling the educational
system and started over to phase in a new set of books beginning with
the academic year 2000-2001. Much, if not all of the criticism leveled
at the ``Palestinian Textbooks'' for incitement, anti-Semitism or
marginalizing Jewish history has in fact been directed at the Egyptian
and Jordanian textbooks over which the Palestinians had no control. In
fact it was the Palestinians who toiled for years after Oslo to give
birth to reasoned and thoughtful solutions to the unique issues that
face a people under occupation and how they should educate their
children. No serious scholarly substantiated criticism has so far been
directed against the new textbooks, although strident, emotionally-
charged and factually- challenged statements continue to be bandied
about.
Akiva Eldar, the renowned Ha'aretz columnist wrote in January 2,
2001: ``The Palestinians are punished twice. First, they are criticized
for books produced by the education ministries of others. Secondly,
their children study from books that ignore their own nation's
narratives.'' I have included his article for the record.
The European Union, in a statement issued in Brussels on May 15,
2002 concluded that ``Quotations attributed by earlier Center for
Monitoring the Impact on Peace, CMIP, are not found in the new
Palestinian Authority schoolbooks''. ``New Textbooks, although not
perfect, are free of inciteful content and improve the previous
textbooks, constituting a valuable contribution to the education of
young Palestinians.'' It concluded, ``Therefore, allegations against
the new textbooks funded by EU members have proven unfounded''. I have
included that statement in the record.
The eminent scholar Nathan Brown, Professor of political science
and international affairs at the George Washington University issued a
26-page report in November 2001 prepared for the Adam Institute on
Democracy, History, and the Contest over the Palestinian Curriculum
that made a most significant contribution to this subject. He concluded
by stating, ``Harsh external critics of the PNA curriculum and
textbooks have had to rely on misleading and tendentious reports to
support their claim of incitement.'' A reading of this full report that
I included for the record is most enlightening.
No full understanding of this issue can be claimed without reading
the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information IPCRI Report I
submitted to the Public Affairs Office, US Consulate General in
Jerusalem on March 2003. This scholarly, textured report grounded in a
context, cannot be reduced to a concluding statement but it sheds light
on complicated issues that ought not be subjected to strident and
simplistic generalizations. A careful reading of this document that I
submit for the record is most informative.
The daily life of these children, with occupation, closures,
violence, demolitions, checkpoints, bravado, fear, suicide bombing, air
raids, humiliation, economic hardship, vengeance, religious extremism
as well as breakdown of traditional values are realities that cannot be
dissociated from the classroom. It is those realities that we need to
resolve by bringing about peace and security for all. Textbooks that
Israeli students read can also be reviewed to bridge the gap between
their realities and their classrooms as we improve on those realities
too.
In conclusion I would like to say that history has been unkind to
the Jews, the Israelis and the Palestinians. Their narratives of
pogroms, ghettos, Holocaust, survival and achievement on the one hand,
and dispossession, occupation, demolition; and humiliation as well as
resistance and persistence on the other are but just sad tales of two
people caught in a complex web of history. Let us, at least those of us
with hope for humanity, try with our thoughts focused on the future of
our children rather than the past of our forefathers, work for peace
and dignity for these two courageous people. Let us not allow the
demagogues of all sides, the violent elements, and the ones with the
least sense of fundamental human values, dictate the agenda and
undermine peace.
Thank you for your attention and for the opportunity to speak.
Attachments.
Democracy, History, and the Contest over the Palestinian Curriculum
[By Nathan J. Brown, Professor of Political Science and International
Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052] \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ I gratefully acknowledge the assistance and comments provided
by the late Ibrahim Abu Lughod, Sam Kaplan, Ali Jarbawi, Elie Podeh,
Lara Friedman, David Matz, Khalil Mahshi, Ismail Nujum, Maher Hashweh,
Rifat Sabah, and Fouad Moughrabi. This research was funded by a
Fulbright grant and a grant from the United States Institute of Peace.
The opinions expressed are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect
the views of Fulbright or the USIP.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Almost any discussion of education in the Middle East posits it as
part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Those who seek
peace, democracy, or economic development generally claim that existing
educational institutions and practices stand in their way. Palestinian
education is particularly notable for the number and variety of its
detractors. Outside the country, critics charge that it incites rather
than educates; Palestinian critics claim that education does little to
foster democratic and productive citizens.
The external and internal critics may be placing an unrealistic
burden on what any curriculum and cadre of teachers can accomplish.
Palestinian political and economic realities are often grim, and
schools hardly have a monopoly on communicating ways to interpret such
realities, especially in matters that are so deeply felt and
encountered on a daily basis. Still, the critics charge, the
Palestinian educational system, and especially the curriculum,
exacerbates existing problems.
This paper is devoted to an examination of the Palestinian
curriculum, especially as it approaches issues of history and identity.
More specifically, the paper is broken into four sections:
--First, it will be necessary to clear up some misconceptions
prevalent about the curriculum and the textbooks: the
Palestinian curriculum is not a war curriculum; while highly
nationalistic, it does not incite hatred, violence, and anti-
Semitism. It cannot be described as a ``peace curriculum''
either, but the charges against it are often wildly exaggerated
or inaccurate.
--Second, the treatment of history in the Palestinian curriculum will
be examined in some detail. The purpose will be to present
patterns both in what it covers and what it declines to cover.
--Third, the goals that motivate this coverage of history will be
examined. Two primary goals--inculcation of identity and
respect for authority--will receive special attention. While
the curriculum can thus be presented as authoritarian in some
respects, it will also be observed that it is simultaneously
democratic in its determination to reflect the national
consensus rather than develop an elitist approach.
--Fourth and finally, the paper will examine an alternative
educational vision that has been crystallizing among
Palestinian educators and the effect of that alternative on the
existing curriculum. That alternative vision--that the
educational system should promote the development of active
learners, critical thinkers, and democratic citizens--has yet
to approach issues of identity directly. Yet it is increasingly
influential and has had some impact on the current curriculum.
Before turning to these four sections, a brief overview of the
history of the Palestinian curriculum is necessary in order to clarify
the context in which current efforts are occurring.
introduction: a brief overview of palestinian education
After 1948, the West Bank was annexed to Jordan and Gaza was
administered by Egypt. Accordingly, West Bank schools followed the
Jordanian curriculum, while Gazan schools adopted the Egyptian. In
1967, Israel occupied both areas and maintained the existing curricula
for Palestinian schools. It did attempt unsuccessfully to bring its own
curriculum into Jerusalem, and it also reviewed Jordanian and Egyptian
books, censoring material that it found objectionable. In 1994,
Palestinian education in the West Bank (including, to a limited and
unacknowledged extent, Jerusalem) and Gaza was transferred to the new
Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The PNA immediately established a
``Curriculum Development Center'' to formulate its own approach. While
the Center was working, two interim measures were taken. First, the
Jordanian and Egyptian curricula were restored temporarily in their
entirety. Second, a supplementary series of texts covering National
Education was hastily written for grades one through six to compensate
for the non-Palestinian nature of the temporary curriculum.
The Curriculum Development Center completed its work in 1996 and
presented a 600-page report that amounted to a stinging indictment of
current educational institutions, practices, and pedagogy. The Ministry
of Education drew back from some of the radical proposals of the report
in developing its own plan, which it presented in 1997 to the cabinet
and the Palestinian Legislative Council. After receiving approval from
both bodies, the Ministry established a new Curriculum Development
Center to write new books, which were to be introduced two grades at a
time, beginning with the 2000/2001 school year. As of this writing, the
plan has proceeded on schedule, with the new curriculum and textbooks
in effect in grades one, two, six, and seven. The other grades will
shift over to the new curriculum and books over the next three years.
the incitement charge
Any treatment of Palestinian education must confront at the outset
the oft-repeated claims that Palestinian textbooks instill hatred of
Israel and Jews. In a sense, this issue is at most tangential to this
paper, which focuses on internal Palestinian politics and portrays
textbooks as outcomes of domestic struggle more than producers of
international conflict. But virtually every discussion in English on
Palestinian education repeats the charge that Palestinian textbooks
incite students against Jews and Israel. It may therefore come as a
surprise to readers that the books authored under the PNA are largely
innocent of these charges. What is more remarkable than any statements
they make on the subject is their silence--the PNA-authored books often
stubbornly avoid treating anything controversial regarding current
Palestinian national identity, forcing them into awkward omissions and
gaps. The first generation of Palestinian textbooks written in 1994,
the National Education series, make no mention of any location as
Palestinian outside of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967;
those books go to some lengths to avoid saying anything about Israel at
all and the few exceptions are hardly pejorative. The second generation
of books--issued beginning in 2000--breaks some of that silence but
with neither the consistency nor the stridency that critics of the
textbooks allege.
Then where do persistent reports of incitement in Palestinian
textbooks come from? Virtually all can be traced back to the work of a
single organization, the ``Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace.''
The Center claims that its purpose is ``to encourage the development
and fostering of peaceful relations between peoples and nations, by
establishing a climate of tolerance and mutual respect founded on the
rejection of violence as a means to resolving conflicts.'' \2\ Critics
charge that the Center's real purpose is to launch attacks on the
Palestinian National Authority, and it would be difficult to contest
such a conclusion. They point to the identity of the Center's first
director, Itamar Marcus, to support their suspicions.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See the Center's website, www.edume.org.
\3\ An Israeli resident of the West Bank settlement of Efrat,
Marcus previously lobbied to keep West Bank aquifers under Israeli
control. His work on textbooks led Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to
appoint him to a joint committee with the Palestinians on incitement.
He then went on to found an organization that searches Palestinian
media for anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish statements, following a similar
method to that followed for textbooks.
For an example of a criticism of the Center's work that focuses on
Marcus personally, see the document submitted by the PLO to the
Mitchell Commission, ``Third Submission of the Palestine Liberation
Organization to the Sharm El-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee,'' 3 April
2001, www.nad-plo.org/eye/Response%20to%20Israeli%20Submission.5.pdf,
p. 22.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Center's own reports suggest such suspicions are well-founded.
The Center began operation by issuing its first report in 1998 on
Palestinian textbooks that might best be described as tendentious and
highly misleading. When the PNA issued a new series of books for grades
one and six in 2000, the Center rushed out its second report that
passed over significant changes quite quickly before presenting its
allegations of ``delegitimization of Israel's existence,'' implicit
``seeking of Israel's destruction,'' ``defamation of Israel,'' and
``encouraging militarism and violence.'' However, in contrast to the
alarm and alacrity with which it studied Palestinian textbooks, the
Center's work on Israeli textbooks showed a far more generous spirit
and proceeded at a far more leisurely pace, taking years rather than
months. The report on Israeli books followed a very different method:
rather than quoting example after example of offending passages with
little historical context or explanation (a method that would have
produced a very damning report indeed), the report on Israeli textbooks
is nuanced and far more careful. Incendiary quotations are explained,
analyzed and contextualized in the report on Israeli books; they are
listed with only brief and sensationalist explanations in the reports
on Palestinian books. In short, the Center is fair, balanced, and
understanding for Israeli textbooks but tendentious on Palestinian
books.
The Center's work has been widely circulated: its reports are the
source for virtually any quotation in English from the Palestinian
curriculum. Indeed, its influence has begun to be felt in policy
circles, and has informed congressional and presidential statements in
the United States, numerous newspaper columns, and--more recently--a
decision by some external donors to cut off funds for Palestinian
education. Recently some European parliamentarians have begun to press
their governments and the European Union as a whole, and an Israeli
cabinet minister has spoken of taking the issue to the United Nations.
Since the Center's reports have dominated the public debate with
considerable effect and little contestation, it makes some sense to
examine them.
While often highly misleading and always unreliable, most of the
contents of the Center's reports are not fabricated. Clearly false
statements are rare, though when they do occur they are far from minor.
For instance, the Center's first report on Palestinian textbooks,
issued in 1998, included the statement that: ``PA TV is a division of
the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education,'' which allowed the
report to saddle the Palestinian educational establishment with any
statement broadcast on Palestinian television. The statement was false,
however. In its second comprehensive report on Palestinian textbooks,
issued in 2000 on the new books for the first and sixth grades, the
Center claims that ``the PA has rejected international calls'' to
modify books for the other grades. In fact, as will become clear, the
plan to replace the textbooks in question was as old as the PNA itself
and was proceeding according to a well-published schedule when the
Center's report was issued. Several lesser errors occur throughout the
Center's work.
But the real problems with the Center's reports lie elsewhere. In
particular, three sets of flaws characterize its work (and much of the
public debate about Palestinian textbooks more generally). First, the
Center generally ignores any historical context in a way that renders
some of its claims sharply misleading. In its 1998 report, the Center
adduced numerous incendiary statements about Israel and Jews from books
in use in Palestinian schools. The statements quoted were accurate.
Some indeed were highly offensive to Jews and sharply anti-Israeli.\4\
Yet they came not from books authored by Palestinians but from Egyptian
and Jordanian books used in Gaza and the West Bank, respectively.\5\
The books were distributed by the PNA, to be sure, but they antedated
its establishment. (The Center's report does hold the PNA responsible
for distributing the Egyptian and Jordanian books and therefore holds
Palestinians responsible for the content. Here it displays an odd
double standard: it does not note that Israel has distributed the exact
same books in East Jerusalem, removing only the cover. The only books
that the Israelis refused to distribute after 1994 were those authored
by the PNA--the National Education series--even though those books were
free of the content that Israel objected to. The likely reason for this
odd policy is that Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem--implied by
using PNA-authored books--was far more problematic for Israel than
anti-Semitism.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ The report's method of listing large number of statements from
the books led it to include all sorts of material under the anti-Israel
rubric. For instance, any mention of a Palestinian character to
Jerusalem was listed as questioning the Israeli nature of the city.
Since Jerusalem was designated as a matter for final status
negotiations, the idea that the Palestinians questioned Israeli
annexation should have been unsurprising. What is more surprising--and
unremarked in the report--is that all mentions of locations in
Jerusalem in the Palestinian-authored books refer only to the Old City
and a few Arab neighborhoods. If textbooks are taken as indications of
negotiating positions--an implicit assumption of the report--then the
Palestinians showed far more willingness to compromise on Jerusalem
than Israel.
\5\ The Center's report does include some excerpts from the 1994
Palestinian-authored books but none can fairly be viewed as hostile to
Israel or to Jews. The texts are examined in more detail below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
By sharp contrast to the Egyptian and Jordanian books, the 1994
National Education series, actually authored by the PNA, verged on
blandness. The first generation of books made no mention of any
Palestinian area within the 1967 borders (the second generation of
books--written after the Center's first report--reversed this policy).
Indeed, the 1994 books went to some length to avoid any controversial
matter whatsoever. An organization claiming to ``monitor the impact of
peace'' might be expected to compare the older, non-Palestinian books
with the newer, Palestinian ones. Indeed, such a task would seem basic
to its mission. The Center goes beyond failing to live up to its name;
its reports are written to obfuscate the distinction between the old
and new books. It does not simply fail to note the change, but, in one
of its rare falsehoods, the Center claims that in the 1994 series,
Israel does not exist.\6\ (The treatment of Palestinian history in the
1994 books is extremely brief, but Israel is indeed referred to;
remarkably, the 1994 texts resorts to awkward phrasing to avoid citing
Israel in some negative contexts.) It is difficult escape the
conclusion that the Center was far more interested in criticizing the
PNA than in an honest assessment of the changes produced in Palestinian
education by the Oslo Accords.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ http://www.edume.org/news/news1.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The second problem with the Center's work is its prosecutorial
style. Its reports offer little more than brief themes and then list
statement after statement purporting to prove the point. Any evidence
that contradicts the Center's harsh message is ignored, obscured, or
dismissed, such as maps that clearly draw Palestinian governorates as
covering only the West Bank and Gaza, an extended and laudatory
treatment of Gandhi's nonviolence, or a tour of Palestinian cities that
includes only those under PNA rule. Other evidence is interpreted
inaccurately. For instance, a topographical map of Palestine (inserted
most likely to avoid drawing any sensitive political issues regarding
borders) is presented as a denial of Israel's existence. Many of the
selections included are presented in a highly tendentious manner: a
unit on tolerance is criticized for omitting Jews, while a reading of
the entire unit makes perfectly clear that its topic is tolerance
within Palestinian society.\7\ Izz al-Din al-Qassam is mentioned in
texts as a Palestinian national hero; the Center's 2000 report
explains:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ My son attended a Tel Aviv school which celebrated ``tolerance
day,'' assuring all students that Israelis can be religious or secular,
light-skinned or dark-skinned, and Jewish or Arab. Following the
Center's methodology, such a unit might be lambasted for failing to
include Palestinians who do not hold Israeli citizenship and for
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
denying Palestinian identity (by not mentioning it).
``The primary terrorist organization operating against Israel since
the signing of the Oslo Accords is the Hamas, whose members terrorized
Israeli citizens with suicide attacks, primarily on buses. The terror
wing of the group is called the ``Az Aldin Al Kassam'' squad, named
after the terrorist who fought the British and Jews before the
establishment of the State of Israel. The new PA schoolbook glorifies
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kassam . . .''
In essence, the Center provides a context for the mention of al-
Qassam that, while accurate, is irrelevant to the text: it deliberately
obscures how the text itself presents al-Qassam or how Palestinians
would understand a reference to him. Al-Qassam was killed at the
beginning of his attempt to organize a rebellion against the British
mandate. Subsequent generations of Palestinians have been able to read
various dimensions into his short career: for mainstream nationalists,
he is a rebel against the British, for Islamists, a warrior for Islam,
and for leftists, he is a mobilizer of the popular classes. To imply
that mentioning al-Qassam is an implicit endorsement of suicide attacks
and bus bombings is thus based on a hostile, inaccurate, and even
dishonest reading--what matters is not whether the textbooks cite him
but how they present him. Palestinian texts mention him only as a
martyr in the struggle against British imperialism.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ To follow the Center's methodology, an American textbook from
the late 1930s mentioning Abraham Lincoln might be seen as carrying a
pro-Communist message because of the role of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Certainly the Center's logic could be
used to cite any Israeli textbook mentioning Yitzhak Shamir as
encouraging massacres of Palestinians and political assassinations of
British and U.N. officials.
Clerk's Note: The full report can be found on the web.
______
What Did You Study In School Today, Palestinian Child?
[By Akiva Eldar]
After the sovereignty on the Temple Mount and the Palestinian right
of return, the debate is now turning to the textbooks, the poisonous
material brainwashing the young minds of school children in the
territories. Even the firmest supporters of the left have a problem
with the anti-Semitic quotes that Jewish organizations and right-wing
research institutes find in the textbooks used by our partners in
peace. Their huge advertisements, published in newspapers in Israel and
the United States, remind us week after week who we are dealing with.
What fool will hand over vital territory and holy sites to a neighbor
who teaches his children that the neighbor across the street is a cruel
and evil enemy? How can one build a relationship of trust with regimes
that educate their sons and daughters to hate Israel and the Jews?
And who, dear children, is taught in the first grade that the Jews
are treacherous people and the Israelis are evil enemies? Please circle
the correct answer: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's grandson,
Jordanian King Abdullah's nephew, or Yasser Arafat's daughter (when she
is not in Paris with her mother?) The answer: These anti-Semitic and
racist stereotypes are taken from Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks. For
the past 33 years, these books have also been used by the Palestinian
schools in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Every
prime minister, military governor and Jerusalem mayor knows that to
this day the Palestinians have not had any impact on the contents of
the textbooks their children learn from in class (due to budgetary
problems, the students are required to leave the books in school).
The harsh abuse against Israel included in the various Jordanian
and Egyptian textbooks has for years starred in the Foreign Ministry's
public relations material, as well as in ``the white paper'' recently
published by the Prime Minister's Office. But these book critiques have
not been directed against the charming king to the east, nor against
the important president to the south. There are no such things in their
countries. And if there are, ``the fundamentalist opposition'' is
surely to blame. Not their narrative.
On the other hand, the Palestinians are punished twice. First, they
are criticized for books produced by the education ministries of
others. Secondly, their children study from books that ignore their own
nation's narrative. The Arab states are uncomfortable with Palestinian
children born in their countries knowing that they did not make much of
an effort to help the refugees. Even today, the Jordanians do not allow
national aspirations to be cultivated among the children of the
refugees living under the Hashemite rule. Their textbooks simply skip
over the insignificant event of the creation of the refugee problem in
1948.
The Palestinians are being rebuked where they should in fact be
praised. For this school year the Palestinian Authority has, for the
first time ever, printed its own textbooks. A research team from the
Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, led by
Dr. Ruth Firer, has established that the new books are ``freer of
negative stereotypes of Jews and Israelis, compared to Jordanian and
Egyptian books.'' The defense establishment has investigated and
confirmed this finding.
The Truman team compared the new Palestinian books with Israeli
textbooks from the 1930s and 1950s that were then used by the state as
a tool for political indoctrination. ``We were surprised to find how
moderate the anger directed toward Israelis in the Palestinian
textbooks is, compared to the Palestinian predicament and suffering,''
Firer says. ``This surprise is doubled when you compare the Palestinian
books to Israeli ones from the 1950s and 1960s, which mentioned
gentiles [only] in the context of pogroms and the Holocaust.''
The study, performed in compliance with universal criteria for
textbook analysis, took five years to complete and will soon be
published. The researchers examined the narrative of the Israeli-Arab
conflict from the end of the 19th century until present days, through
20 books on both sides of the conflict. The team reviewed history and
civics textbooks, as well as some literature books, for junior high and
high school students in the territories. According to Firer, ``the
Palestinian narrative describes Jews, Israelis and Zionism in a
negative way, as part of Western colonialism in the Middle East. The
Arabs, and especially the Palestinians, are portrayed as victims. This
narrative follows through to the new books published by the Palestinian
Authority, but these books are freer of negative stereotypes compared
to their Jordanian and Egyptian equivalents.''
A comparison between Palestinian textbooks and Israeli ones also
astounded the scholars. ``Israeli books, especially those published
from the 1980s and on, include almost no derogative stereotypes of
Arabs or Palestinians,'' Firer says, ``but the basic narrative is still
the same, at least until the mid 1990s. The change in the Zionist
narrative which portrayed Israelis as a heroic, pioneering people, was
prompted by the publications of the New Historians. Wherever this does
occur, it is usually on a very small scale, and sometimes as an
afterthought to the traditional narrative. New history books stirred
such public debate that some were even taken off the curriculum (as
happened with ``A World of Changes: History for Ninth Grade'' (1999),
edited by Danny Ya'akobi).
kids can't be duped
This Thursday at the Truman Institute, Firer will be the last
speaker at the seminar on the image of the other in textbooks on Middle
East conflicts. Before that, Itamar Marcus, who runs the Center for
Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), will be speaking about how
Palestinians perceive Jews. In recent years Marcus has been making a
living translating and disseminating defamatory communications against
Israel, extracted by his staff from Palestinian publications. Marcus, a
settler, used to work for David Bar Illan, Benjamin Netanyahu's PR
chief, and served on the Joint Israeli Palestinian Anti-Incitement
Committee. Marcus's center routinely feeds the media with excerpts from
``Palestinian'' textbooks that call for Israel's annihilation. He
doesn't bother to point out that the texts quoted in fact come from
Egypt and Jordan.
In an executive summary he published for Thursday's seminar, Marcus
makes a report of the 14 new textbooks published by the PA's ``Center
for Developing the Palestinian Curricula,'' replacing the old books.
Marcus concedes there were ``a few changes,'' like the fact that ``The
open calls for Israel's destruction found in the previous books are no
longer present'' and that ``references defining Jews and Israelis as
`treacherous' or `the evil enemy,' common in the previous books, are
likewise not present.'' But this, to Marcus, is not enough. He
complains that the new books ``continue to teach non-recognition of
Israel,'' and that the maps portray greater Palestine, with no
boundaries separating the territories and Israel (just like the
official textbooks and maps used by most Israeli institutions). ``A
chapter in `National Education for Grade Six' is dedicated to
`Tolerance.' Yet the PA schoolbook does not mention Jews or Israelis in
the entire chapter. A prominent picture shows a Christian shaking hands
with a Muslim,'' Marcus complains.
Firer's co-researcher, Prof. Sami Adwan, of Bethlehem University,
can't make up his mind whether to laugh or cry at Marcus's grievances.
``How does he expect my child to interpret a Jew's handshake, the same
hand that causes my child daily suffering. Textbooks become a dead
letter if the message is too far removed from reality. The teacher has
to be able to answer a child's question, `Why should I love Israelis?'
Can your textbooks decree that you must love Germans? I know it isn't
the same, but suffering is suffering. What am I supposed to tell my
kids after settlers attack us on the way to visit their 85-year- old
grandfather? Kids can't be duped.''
The educator from Beit Jala says that what children see on the
street, on TV and on the Net has a far greater impact than any
textbook. ``How can a Palestinian write in a textbook that Israelis or
Jews should be loved, while what he is experiencing is death, land
expropriation, demolition of homes and daily degradation? Give us a
chance to teach loving. [That will happen] when they stop seeing
Israelis as soldiers or bulldozer operators. Let us breathe. Give us a
chance to love you.''
Adwan will not be attending the seminar on Mount Scopus. His
village is under closure. Only Israelis will be speaking at the seminar
on the image of the other, and all the presentations will be in Hebrew.
______
Palestinian Schoolbooks
In September 2000 Palestinian Authority and UNRWA schools
introduced the new Palestinian school curriculum and a first set of
textbooks (grades 1 and 6) published by the Palestinian Authority, that
were to replace the previous textbooks. At the beginning of the 2001
academic year, books for grades 2 and 7 were introduced. This
replacement process will be gradually implemented over the coming
years.
Parallel to this process, allegations of anti-Israeli and anti-
Jewish bias and incitement contained in Palestinian textbooks were
made, directly or indirectly based on documentation prepared by the
CMIP (Centre for Monitoring the Impact on Peace). CMIP based those
claims on specific quotations from these books inciting anti-Semitism
and urging the destruction of Israel.
A number of EU donors support the Palestinian education sector and
a few of them sponsored the preparation of the first Palestinian
curriculum and the production of new textbooks.
Information gathered by the EU missions on the ground, as well as
independent studies carried out by Israeli and Palestinian academics
and educators that have examined the new textbooks, show that:
1. Quotations attributed by earlier CMIP reports to the Palestinian
textbooks are not found in the new Palestinian Authority schoolbooks
funded by some EU Member States; some were traced to the old Egyptian
and Jordanian text books that they are replacing, some to other books
outside the school curriculum, and others not traced at all. While many
of the quotations attributed to the new textbooks by the most recent
CMIP report of November 2001 could be confirmed, these have been found
to be often badly translated or quoted out of context, thus suggesting
an anti-Jewish incitement that the books do not contain.
2. New textbooks, though not perfect, are free of inciteful content
and improve the previous textbooks, constituting a valuable
contribution to the education of young Palestinians. Palestinian
Authority Ministry of Education has accepted the need for ongoing
review, revision and improvement.
Therefore, allegations against the new textbooks funded by EU
members have proven unfounded.
In the line with the EU's political and financial commitment to
help establish a sovereign, peaceful, democratic and viable Palestinian
State, continued support to the Palestinian education sector is
essential.
EU missions on the ground will keep the issue under review and
assist in the task of monitoring the content of Palestinian Authority
textbooks as they are published. In the framework of the UNESCO
Executive Board Resolution of June 2001, Israeli and PLO
representatives agreed to undertake a joint review of Israeli and
Palestinian textbooks.
______
Report I.--Analysis and Evaluation of the New Palestinian Curriculum
reviewing palestinian textbooks and tolerance education program--
submitted to: the public affairs office, u.s. consulate general,
jerusalem, march 2003
executive summary
The Palestinian Authority (PA) established the Curriculum
Development Center (CDC) in 1994. It was commissioned with formulating
a Palestinian vision of a national educational policy and of a national
curriculum. Work on a comprehensive framework was completed in 1996.
Shortly after that, the PA's Ministry of Education (MOE) established a
new curriculum center commissioned with writing new school textbooks.
The curriculum plan assumed concrete form during the 2000-2001 school
year.
In the past three years, the Palestinian MOE introduced a number of
new textbooks and a few teachers' guides for grades 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and
8. The production of these textbooks involved hundreds of authors,
reviewers, supervisors, teacher trainers, illustrators and technical
support personnel.
The present investigation is an earnest attempt to present a
professional analysis/evaluation of the new Palestinian curriculum,
especially as it relates to the principles of civil society, peace,
tolerance and diversity. It covers all textbooks that relate to the
objectives and tasks of the investigation. However, a special focus is
placed on language arts, religious education, history, civil education,
and national education curricula.
The major goals of the new Palestinian educational system are
nationalistic, cognitive and social in nature. A review of the new
textbooks revealed that the major goals of the history, national
education, civil education, religious education and language arts
textbooks are to reinforce the Palestinian national, civic and
religious identity and to promote respect for authority (local and
national government, family and religious and civic institutions). The
curriculum attempts, among other things, to promote national
aspirations and condemn occupation practices. In doing so, it briefly
and inadequately addresses some of the conflictive and sensitive issues
that relate to the prevailing political situation.
Another interesting dimension of the curriculum is its focus on
promoting students' faculties of critical thinking, creative thinking,
decision-making and problem solving. Moreover, the innovative
instructional strategies recommended (role-playing, simulation, case
studies, and other cooperative learning techniques) point to the
national interest in promoting the principles of human rights,
democracy, diversity, tolerance and pluralism which, in turn, help in
the development of active learners and democratic citizens.
The curriculum, moreover, attempts to (re)shape students'
perceptions, beliefs and attitudes toward a number of concepts and
issues, many of which relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus,
one finds references in almost all disciplines to the concepts of
loving peace, openness to and respect for other cultures, and promotion
of peace, global and environmental awareness. Most of these instances,
however, fail to reflect a much-needed practical dimension of a truly
regional and global multicultural perspective that promotes mutual
understanding, respect, and tolerance.
The curriculum undoubtedly bears the marks of unresolved
(historical and contemporary) controversies both among Palestinians and
with the neighbors of the emerging Palestinian state. As such, the
textbooks do not openly or adequately reflect the multiethnic,
multicultural and multi-religious history of the region. Furthermore,
they do not present a multi-perspective account of several of the
formative historical events and several of the still-unresolved issues
(Jerusalem, water, borders, settlements and refugees). According to a
MOE position paper (December 2002), ``The new curriculum, politically
speaking, and as reflected in the textbooks already produced, remains
to be a tentative and transitional attempt to account for the political
complexities at this political juncture.''
Educationally speaking, the curriculum adopts a student-centered
pedagogy that acknowledges and utilizes the pluralism of intelligence
and a diversity of learning styles in the learning process. It is also
an activity-based and issue-oriented curriculum that encourages
cooperative learning, and is structured to assist learners in viewing
all subject-matter content in the context of their own communities and
the surrounding ones.
Peace and Tolerance.--The overall orientation of the curriculum is
peaceful despite the harsh and violent realities on the ground. It does
not openly incite against Israel and the Jews. It does not openly
incite hatred and violence. Religious and political tolerance is
emphasized in a good number of textbooks and in multiple contexts. Some
textbooks devote whole units or lessons to talking about these values
and encourage students to adopt them. Inter-religious tolerance towards
the followers of the other monotheistic religions, traditionally
referred to as ``Ahl al-Kitab'' (the People of the Book), is emphasized
in the framework of the teachings of Islam. In principle, these calls
apply to both Christians and Jews. However, the textbooks fail to
extend these principles and concepts to include Jews and to the State
of Israel. In addition, and although the curriculum provides the
opportunity for students to recognize and respect beliefs and practices
of ``others,'' the concept of the `other,'' in most cases, is limited
to Christians.
Civil Society.--Although many concepts, principles and skills that
relate to civil society and democracy figure prominently in the new
Palestinian textbooks (human rights, freedom of speech, the justice
system, pluralism, the role of central and local government, the
legislative council, elections, voluntary work, teamwork, fair
resolution and fair competition, a sense of right and wrong, respect
for law, and accepting responsibility), other essential ones are
lacking. These include ethical and moral judgment, community
understanding, independence of thought, genuine understanding and
respect for differences, information management, and taking action.
Also prominent in the new curriculum are attempts to enhance
students' social interaction and communication skills such as enquiry
and communication, participation and responsible action, active
listening, decision-making, problem solving and conflict resolution.
These concepts, principles and skills are introduced as they relate to
the national and local levels and do not clearly or adequately reflect
regional and global dimensions. In addition, the curriculum fails, in
crucial instances, to make the connection between local, regional and
global concerns, especially as it relates to environmental awareness,
community involvement, and global social and moral responsibility.
Cultural Literacy.--The curriculum also falls short in its attempt
to promote the concept of ``cultural literacy'' as presented by Hirsch
(1987). Although the principles that embody ``cultural literacy'' are
included in the curriculum framework, the authoring teams have failed
to adequately translate the principles and concepts into subjectmatter
content and activities. Thus, one finds few references that focus on
the inclusion of people, places, events or any ideas that reflect both
a broader nature of multiculturalism and a more international
perspective, thereby giving credence to contributions coming from other
ethnic and religious groups.
Coverage of Historical Events.--Generally speaking, coverage and
presentation of history and historical facts can be characterized as
being selective. History textbooks, one cannot fail to notice, treat
the ancient and modern history of the region and that of Palestine in a
selective way, ignoring some historical events while depicting others
from one perspective. In particular, one notices a number of cases in
which Judaism and the Jews are inadequately and inappropriately
represented in relation to their presence in the region. Different
dimensions of region's positive and intercultural history are sometimes
missing, thus giving the impression of insignificance of other
cultures, religions and political institutions in the development of
the region's present-day profile.
One also notices the lack of a sustained account of the recent
history of Palestine and the absence or the peripheral treatment of
some of the formative events in the region's history. The focus,
moreover, is on the national Palestinian narrative. The materials do
not openly reflect readiness to consider the Jewish and Israeli
narratives.
The history curriculum, however, does not show signs of ``misuse of
history.'' Although some may feel that history is being used as an
instrument of ideological anipulation, there are very few instances in
which texts are implicitly exploited to promote intolerance and ultra-
nationalistic or racist issues.
National, Civil, and Religious Identity.--In the National Education
and the Civic Education textbooks, one notices a focus on Arab and
Palestinian ethnic, national, civil and religious identity. The same
applies to the focus on the Arab character of East Jerusalem. It does
not deny the Israeli and Jewish character of, for example, the Jewish
holy places or Jewish history in the city, but does seem to ignore
their existence or their importance to Jews and to the State of Israel.
One also notices an emphasis on the duty of students to love their
land, family, towns, state, the Arab world and the Islamic world.
Palestine/Homeland, Jerusalem.--The concept of ``Palestine'' is
used in both historical and modern contexts, the former being in a
general geo-historical sense and the latter in reference a political
entity in the making. Generally speaking, ``Palestine'' is mostly
presented in its historical context. References to ``Palestine'' are
mostly made to reflect the Palestine of pre-1948 War, the pre-Partition
plan. The concept of ``The Homeland,'' in almost all instances refers
to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This creates significant confusion
particularly when maps are presented showing towns and cities that are
located within the State of Israel while indicating a map of Palestine.
Jerusalem is portrayed (historically, religiously, culturally,
socially, demographically) in relation to its Arab and Islamic nature.
Several references are made of the Christian presence in Jerusalem. All
illustrations and photos of Jerusalem reflect those found in the
Eastern or Arab part of the city (mostly, the old city). It is also
almost always referred to as the ``Capital of Palestine.'' References
reflect the national, political, cultural, economic, religious and
historical importance of the city and its Arab and Islamic
characteristics. However, there is no mention of its religious and
historical significance to Judaism and to the Jews, or that of the
State of Israel for which Jerusalem is its capital.
Israel/Israelis/Judaism/Jews.--Israel, as a sovereign state
(political and geographic entity), is not clearly or adequately
represented in the textbooks. Israel is referred to indirectly using
different terms such as ``the Land of the 1948'', ``the Interior'',
etc. In some contexts, Jews, in historical and modern-day contexts
(occupation, Zionism, settlers) are negatively represented in
Palestinian textbooks.
References to the ``other/Israel/Israelis'' are also presented in
excerpts from the modern Palestinian literature. Most references
reflect pain, suffering and bitterness experienced by Palestinians as a
result of the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict. In several instances, the
State of Israel is presented as a usurper, an occupation force and a
foreign occupier of Palestine. Israel is blamed for the suffering of
the Palestinian people.
There are several references to Jews relating to the life and death
of Jesus Christ. Jews are also presented in reference to Jesus'
teachings on marriage and divorce in the Jewish and Christian
traditions. These instances reflect that state of affairs that
prevailed in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus, especially as it
related to religious and social sects, such as the Sadducees and the
Pharisees.
Holy Places.--Holy sites in Palestine do not include those of Jews
except for the ones that are holy to both Muslims and Jews (Al-Buraq
Wall/the Wailing Wall, the Sanctuary of Abraham/Al-Haram al-Ibrahimi
as-Shareef, Jacob's Well and Joseph's Tomb). When mentioned, no
reference is made to their significance to the Jewish tradition.
Maps.--Several books contain and make reference to maps of
historical Palestine as a geographical and historical entity. Some of
the maps show Palestine as part of the Arab world (regional maps),
whereas others show it in isolation. Some maps highlight the location
of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In all
cases, the maps are not labeled in any way. In some maps the boundaries
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are contoured. This is the case when
reference is made to the demographic distribution of Palestinians and
to the administrative breakdown of the PA territory in terms of
governorates.)
Jihad and Martyrdom.--References to jihad and shahadah or istishad
(martyrdom) are made in historical and modern contexts. References are
made in militant as well as peaceful and constructive contexts. Along
the same lines, the concepts of defending and liberating Palestine as
the ``homeland'' are presented both in historical and present-day
contexts (Crusaders, Ottoman Empire, British Mandate, and Israeli
occupation). In several instances, jihad and martyrdom are presented
both as a ``religious'' and a ``national'' duty. There are also few
examples (linguistic and other) that praise the use of violence against
others. These examples are present in the framework of talking about
the duty to defend and liberate the homeland.
The Right of Return.--The right of return of the Palestinian
refugees to their homeland, as stipulated in the U.N. resolutions, is
emphasized in several texts. It is also an important part of the
Palestinian national anthem, the words of which carry the meanings of
sacrifice for the homeland and the determination to reclaim it.
Bilateral and International Agreements.--There is not much mention
of or many references to the international and bilateral agreements
signed between the Israeli government and the PLO. The Oslo Accords,
the Declaration of Principles, the Taba and Hebron agreements are not
frequently mentioned and not adequately discussed.
When, mentioned, the reference is usually made in the context of
talking about the PA, demographic and economic issues.
Clerk's Note.--The full report can be found on the web.
Senator Specter. Well, Dr. Asali, thank you very much for
joining this subcommittee today and for that very profound
statement. When you talk, as you did at the opening, about:
``fear, anger, despair, violence, and almost an exclusive sense
of victimization on both sides,'' very poignant, very profound.
And your conclusion about the unkindness of history to the
Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, and your call to prohibit the
demagogues and the violent elements and the ones with the least
sense of fundamental human values dictate the agenda and
undermine peace, again, profound and right to the point.
What would your suggestion be as to where we go from this
point forward?
Dr. Asali. It has been a most frustrating problem to me
that the collective will of people who do want peace, who want
a two-state solution, as expressed in polls showing that 70
percent of the American people, 70 percent of Jewish Americans,
65 percent of Israelis, are all for a two-state solution, as we
understand it with the general two-for-two based--two states
share Jerusalem, et cetera, et cetera. That collective will has
been undermined, vetoed, and prevented from fruition by more
strident voices, more energetic and polarizing forces that
appeals to the lower instincts of people on all sides. It is
time to redefine this conflict, in my mind, as not one between
the Israelis and the Palestinians, between the Arabs and the
Jews, between the Muslims and the Christians. It is, rather,
between those who are for peace from all these categories, who
are for a peaceful resolution of this long conflict, to
establish a two-state solution, as defined by so many people,
and those who oppose it vehemently. It is time to have those
bridges established and have fundamental relations and
political forces realigned courageously and publicly, and take
the credit or the blame for these stands in order to thwart the
forces that have used demagoguery, violence, and whatever
political or military clout that they could to frustrate the
rest of us.
Senator Specter. Thank you, Dr. Asali.
Dr. Asali. Thank you.
Senator Specter. Senator Clinton, would you care to make an
opening statement at this time, or question?
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
Senator Clinton. Well, I thank you very much, Senator
Specter, for holding this important hearing, and I will submit
my entire statement for the record.
I wholeheartedly agree with what I heard as I came in, from
Dr. Asali's testimony about advocating for a two-state solution
that is premised on security and peace and opportunity. And
it's long been my position that's the only option available for
people of good faith.
It is troubling, though, and that is something that I think
we have to recognize, that with the testimony and the
documentary evidence concerning the--actually, the
glorification of suicide killers and the incitement of young
people to aspire to that position and the martyrdom that it
may, in their minds, offer them, that's very hard, for any of
us who believe there has to be some resolution of the ongoing
dispute, to understand. And I don't believe that there has been
an adequate and consistent repudiation of the rhetoric of hate
and the incitement of young people by the authorities in the
Palestinian Authority. And I think that's so important, and I
think it needs to be not just done once, but over and over and
over again.
The position that I bring to this is that for, you know,
many years I've tried to do what I could to help children and
to provide better opportunities for them. And my heart goes out
to the Palestinian children, as well as the Israeli children,
who had nothing to do with creating the conditions in which
this violence occurs, and yet are having to grow up fearful,
having to grow up and see the losses of loved ones, for
whatever reason. You know, let's not talk about who did what to
whom and what the history is. But the fact is, we owe our
children better than that. And I think that it is just
heartbreaking to see the portrayal of martyrdom as something
that a young child should be encouraged to hope for and aspire
to. It's not just in the testimony and the evidence presented
today, but in many other settings. I've seen similar messages,
and they are broadcast on the Palestinian Authority TV, played
over and over again, children playing death games, children,
you know, being interviewed and kind of rote-ly reciting that
death by Shahada is good. It is a chilling example, and it's a
real distortion of childhood and of adult responsibility.
I mean, we can have all the arguments we want, and we can
accuse each other of all the wrongdoing that goes back as far
as the mind can remember, but we should not do it at the
expense of, you know, further undermining the opportunities and
the futures of these children.
So I just have to say that what is happening now, and what
seems to be endorsed and supported by the Palestinian
leadership through the P.A. TV is troubling, and that has to
end. I mean, there are many other arguments still to be had.
And as we all remember, you know, many people thought that we
were very close, in the year 2000, from Camp David forward, and
we couldn't. We couldn't continue the negotiations, we couldn't
get a responsive partner on the other side. It was very
discouraging.
But, from my perspective, no matter what the ongoing
political, diplomatic, historical arguments must be worked out,
these horrible examples of encouraging young people to be tools
in this adult conflict is just not to be condoned or permitted
to continue.
You know, I saw reports of a recent book called ``Army of
Roses'' by Barbara Victor about women suicide bombers. You
know, that's a new development. Now, you know, I believe in
women's participation in societies as fully as possible. It's
just tragic that that is now a way in which some women are
choosing to conduct themselves. But in this book, the author
has very compelling evidence about the fact that suicide
bombers often are trained and brainwashed into seeing
themselves as these martyrs.
The author did something which I found, as a mother, very
touching. You know, oftentimes you see the mothers of the
suicide bombers, both young men and young women, and they are
appearing fearless and very devoted to the cause and very proud
of their daughter or their son who's gone off to blow
themselves up and kill others with them. But this author went
behind the scenes and actually talked to these mothers when the
cameras were off, and they were reduced to tears, and they
shared the feelings that any mother would about. ``What is
happening? Why would my child do this?'' And often these are
children with some of the very best futures for a Palestinian
state. These are children who are going to college. These are
children who have the opportunity to contribute to building a
strong Palestinian state. And, instead, they are, in my view,
brainwashed into committing suicide for reasons that have very
little to do, other than the continuing desire by those who
encourage them to pursue a path of terrorism and violence.
prepared statement
So there must be a way out of this on the diplomatic and
political front. But, in the meantime, all adults, no matter
what our political position, no matter what the grievances that
we may carry toward another, should be at least united in
saying, ``Let our children live to make their own decisions in
the future.'' And it would be extremely beneficial to achieve
the goals that I think many of us, or at least I'll speak for
myself and what I heard from Dr. Asali share, of someday seeing
the children of Israel and Palestine living in peace, to,
without equivocation, repudiate and condemn this continuing
abuse of children and this incitement to hatred that we have
much more evidence of than just what has been presented by Mr.
Marcus.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
Thank you, Senator Specter, for the opportunity to join you today
for this important hearing. I look forward to continuing to work with
you to advance this issue.
I have been speaking out against the incitement of hate and
violence in Palestinian textbooks for years. In September of 2000, I
had the honor of joining Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel in New
York to denounce the lessons of hatred and violence that were part of
the core curriculum in Palestinian schools.
And a year and a half ago my colleague, Senator Schumer, and I
wrote a letter to President Bush urging his Administration to do
everything in his power to persuade the Palestinians to reverse their
hateful rhetoric and embrace the opportunity to move toward a strong
and lasting peace in the region. We know that if there is to be real
peace between Israelis and Palestinians, there must be a full and
immediate cessation of hateful rhetoric on the part of the Palestinian
Authority.
In our letter, we noted that the rhetoric of hate was mounting
daily. At the time, Yasser Arafat delivered a speech ``commemorating
the `catastrophe' of Israel's creation in 1948, in which he reiterated
his theme that the violent Palestinian struggle will continue `until
the flag of Palestine is raised over holy Jerusalem.' A book that was
required reading for Palestinian six graders actually starts off
stating, `There is no alternative to destroying Israel.' When
Palestinian children are brought up to hate Israel, how can we ever
expect a commitment to a lasting peace?''
What we see evidence of today is even more alarming. According to
research done by the Palestinian Media Watch organization, the Middle
East Media Research Institute, the American Jewish Committee and
others, we are seeing children being indoctrinated to yearn for
Shahada--or martyrdom. And according to the evidence presented here,
this is a clear strategy by the Palestinian Authority.
I recently met with Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch who is
here to testify. He presented me with some horrifying stories of the
messages the Palestinian Authority is conveying to its children.
As you saw in the opening videos, one film clip broadcast daily on
Palestinian Authority TV (PATV) called the ``Farewell Letter,''
portrays the martyrdom as blissful and tranquil. A young boy leaves a
farewell letter explaining his choice to achieve shahada. The words
'How sweet is shahada when I embrace you, oh my land!' are sung as the
child actor falls dead on the ground.
Messages like this on official PATV, played over and over, have had
an effect. In some Palestinian polls as many as 80 percent of
Palestinian children desire death as martyrs. Children play death
games, in which they take turns playing the prize role--that of the
martyr. And in an interview last year, one 11-year old girl, stated
that ``. . . death by Shahada is very good. Every Palestinian child
aged, say 12, says `Oh Lord, I would like to become a Shahid.' ''
These chilling examples demonstrate how deeply these impulses have
seeped into the culture and into the hearts and minds of Palestinian
children; and it is shameful and reproachful that these lessons come
from the public officials whose aim should be to protect children--not
send them to their graves.
As an advocate for children for over 25 years, I have worked to
fight abuse and neglect of children wherever I saw it. I worked with
doctors and nurses to help them identify abuse and worked within the
legal system to protect children whose lives were at risk. What is
happening in the Palestinian Authority now is frightening. It is an
abdication of adult responsibility of the highest order. Instead of
working to find an end to the violence, this propaganda from the
Palestinian Authority appears to be taking advantage of young, supple
minds and encouraging children to see the beauty of their own deaths.
Yasser Arafat has demonstrated a manifest unwillingness to address
this issue. He speaks to the international community as a victim, and
then encourages the children of his people to desire the ultimate
sacrifice. Instead of filling young minds with the promise of their
futures, Palestinian leadership--through PATV--is fabricating a deceit
based on hate and destruction. The ramifications go well beyond the
Middle East.
Anti-Semitism, of course, is not a new phenomenon, but it seems to
have gathered new life of late as witnessed by the recent statements of
the outgoing Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. History
has taught us how important it is to condemn anti-Semitism as early and
as strongly as we can--which is why I co-sponsored a resolution urging
President Bush to condemn Dr. Mohamad's hateful words. The continuing
rise of anti-Semitic acts and statements around the world is shocking
and disturbing and must be met with clear and immediate condemnation.
We cannot stand by and tolerate these kinds of remarks, especially from
a Head of State.
However, Dr. Mohamad s vicious words were not isolated. His attacks
on Jews came from the same bitter well of hatred that informs a growing
anti-American and anti-Western fervor worldwide, which is stoked by
leaders who offer few positive solutions to their people's problems.
Mort Zuckerman recently noted in U.S. News ``That rhetoric is the
product of careful calculation by Arab political leaders who recognized
the popular appeal of scapegoating Israel for their failure to provide
for their own people while legitimizing their regimes.''
What we are seeing in today's hearing is a frightening foreboding
of violence and danger to come--not only against Israelis, but against
any institution of progress, freedom and democracy. This indoctrination
must be stopped.
I'd like to say a final word about the effects of this
indoctrination on the fabric of Palestinian families and the larger
society.
I have seen reports recently about a book called Army of Roses by
Barbara Victor about women suicide bombers. The author spoke about the
fact that suicide bombers ``training'' begins ``from the cradle on . .
. . From the age of six years old, they talk about their desire to die
and their desire to be a martyr.'' She went on to discuss the mothers
of suicide bombers, who appear fearless on television as they tout
their child's bravery and heroism, only to be reduced to waves of tears
and weeping moments later--like any mother who lost a child. She
recently said ``People think these aren't like other mothers. They
don't have the same feelings. And of course, they have.''
Only when we have a Palestinian leadership that chooses to enhance
the lives of its children, rather than inciting hate and the desire for
death, and a Palestinian leadership that allows mothers to mourn their
lost babies, instead of putting on a show of heroism, will we have a
Palestinian leadership with which we can work towards peace in a
meaningful way.
The U.S. Government must deliver this message loud and clear to the
Palestinian Authority: the Palestinian Authority must reverse its
hateful rhetoric and embrace the opportunity to move toward a strong
and lasting peace in the region. This has to be the top priority of all
people who care about children, who care about peace, who care about
the kind of stability, safety, and security that Israel should be
guaranteed, and who care about the future of the Palestinian people. It
cannot be done if we don't take a strong stand against hateful
rhetoric.
Senator Specter. Thank you very much, Senator Clinton.
STATEMENT OF MORTON KLEIN, PRESIDENT, ZIONIST
ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA
Senator Specter. We now turn to our final witness on the
panel, and that is Dr. Morton Klein, national president of the
Zionist Organization of America, a member of the Executive
Committee of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. He
has led successful campaigns against anti-Israel bias in
leading textbooks, travel guides, and the media. He served as
an economist in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations,
and has been an outspoken advocate against terrorism and ways
of bringing Palestinian terrorists to justice in the United
States under our Terrorist Prosecution Act.
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Klein, and the floor is
yours.
Mr. Klein. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
address this panel, and I would ask that my remarks be placed
as part of the record.
Thank you----
Senator Specter. Your full statement will be made part of
the record, as will all other full statements, without
objection.
Mr. Klein. And thank you, Senator Clinton, for being part
of this important discussion.
First of all, I want to make a few opening remarks. I was
troubled by--I didn't understand Dr. Rahman initially stating
that these translations were incorrect and incorrect. And
without telling us what they really said, he then went on to
say that they're simply religious statements, so they don't
matter anyway. Well, it can't be both ways.
He also talked about the fact that Palestine--that this was
Palestine-Arab land all these years. In fact, we should
understand that Palestine was never a country. It was only a
region controlled by Turkey and the British until 1948. And, in
fact, even Mark Twain wrote an essay in 1868 saying he went
through the length and breadth of Palestine, and there was
virtually no people there; it was just marshes and swamps. He
didn't understand why Jews even wanted to come and live there.
And I would ask Dr. Rahman, you know, can he name any
Palestinian kings and queens. I mean, this was not a country of
Palestinian Arabs. And, in fact, of all the censuses done in
Jerusalem, the majority of people living in Jerusalem since the
mid 1800s was Jewish.
Also, about Barak, President Clinton and Dennis Ross, our
lead negotiator, made it clear that this was a real offer of 97
percent of Judea and Samaria. Contiguous land was emphasized,
that this was contiguous, billions of dollars in aid, all of
Gaza and half of Jerusalem. And instead of having even a
counter offer, the Palestinian Authority simply launched a
terror war. And the reason that the Jews in Judea and Samaria
are armed are not to intimidate Palestinian Arabs or to hurt
them; it's because they are constantly threatened by terror.
It's to defend themselves. There's been virtually no terror
attacks or killings, with rare exception, of Palestinian Arabs
by Jews who live in Judea and Samaria. And I find it utterly
racist, frankly, to ask Jews not to live in Judea and Samaria.
Why can't 200,000 Jews live among 2\1/2\ million Arabs in Judea
and Samaria and Gaza, when 1 million Arabs live among 5 million
Jews in Israel proper? I think we have to understand that.
By the way, there are many other polls. Mr. Asali mentioned
some polls--McLaughlin Group, Hannock Smith, who's the Gallup
Poll of Israel--showing a clear majority of Americans and
Israelis against the state, a Palestinian state, because they
believe it will be a terrorist state.
Tragically, in the last 10 years, there's not been a halt
to anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement in the schools,
media, and children's camps. An entire culture of hatred has
developed. Finally, with the suicide bombers, the P.A. pays for
such posters of killers. This is one of the suicide bombing
killers posted all over the schools, universities, high
schools, the streets, honoring suicide bombers, paid for by the
Palestinian Authority. It's just awful.
The children's camps teach Arab youngsters how to kidnap
and murder Jews. Streets, cities, schools, summer camps are
named after the suicide bombers, honoring them. It's just a
tragic situation.
If the Palestinian Authority was serious about peace, not
only would they end this culture of hatred and murder, they
would confiscate the tens of thousands of illegal weapons in
the hands of terrorists, they would get rid of Hamas Islamic
Jihad. Instead, they refuse to do anything. They've arrested
virtually no terrorists over this 10-year period. And as
Madeleine Albright said, it's a revolving door, justice. The
few times they've arrested terrorists, they were released
within a matter of weeks or months. Even Mahmoud Abbas and the
current Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia have vowed they will not
fight against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This is not how we can
get the peace.
The human rights abuses in the region in the Palestinian
Arab territories are legion. Human Rights Watch, Palestinian
human rights monitoring group, have said that there is large-
scale torture of dissidents perpetrated by the Palestinian
Authority regime, and dozens of people have been tortured and
murdered in P.A. prisons.
Christians are persecuted so ruthlessly by the P.A. regime
that several U.S. courts have granted Christians asylum in
American on the grounds that they would be persecuted for their
religion if they returned to P.A.-controlled territories.
The P.A. continues to engage in actions hostile to the
United States. It shelters dozens of terrorists who have been
identified as murderers of Americans. It refused, only
recently, to permit the FBI to investigate the recent terrorist
murders of three U.S. diplomatic personnel. The P.A.
vociferously supported Saddam Hussein and other enemies of the
United States and constantly distributes vicious anti-America
propaganda in the official P.A. media. It pays salaries to
imprison terrorists who have murdered Americans, and named
streets and parks after killers of American citizens. The P.A.
runs bomb factories and smuggles weapons through tunnels from
Egypt into Gaza, and the violence, of course, continues.
How should we respond to this? Until now, I believe
tragically and mistakenly, the U.S. policy has been focused on
trying to appease the P.A. regime. Dennis Ross said recently
that they made a serious mistake ignoring this incitement for
all these many years. The present administration is offering
the P.A. a sovereign state and has more than doubled the annual
aid allotment to $213 million. The assumption is that offering
funds in the state, they would agree to live in peace. But
recent studies show that suicide bombers are better educated
and more affluent than their fellow Palestinians, and a recent
survey shows a majority of Palestinians today want violence
against Israelis to continue even if a Palestinian state is
established. That survey was done only this past week. And,
remember, Syria, Libya, Iraq, and North Korea are sovereign
states; they're not lovely places. Sovereignty will not ensure
a lovely, civilized, democratic situation.
Throughout history, appeasement has never worked. Professor
Donald Kagan, of Yale, a distinguished classicist and
historian, in his book on, ``The Origins of War,'' wrote that
in studying 3,000 years of international treaties, appeasement
has always failed in those 3,000 years, and it hasn't worked
with the P.A. either.
The message given in speeches to Arab audiences by P.A.
officials constantly say that all of Palestine includes Israel,
and we must destroy Israel. The message of wiping out Israel is
reinforced in the maps, in the offices, and even on P.A.
official letterhead.
I happen to have an actual letterhead that Hassan Abdel
Rahman has used in his own testimonies in the past. At the top,
there's an emblem of the Palestinian Authority, with a map--if
you see the black there, the small--it's all of Israel is
Palestine, on their official stationary used in testimony
before the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. And that
is the message that's being sent, that all of Israel is
Palestine. The same in their atlases. The yellow there, which
is Israel within the green line, is described as Palestine, not
as Israel. The name Israel doesn't appear on any of the atlases
whatsoever.
The time has come for a new approach. It's time to come to
recognize that P.A. is not a partner for peace; it is a corrupt
terrorist regime that must be dismantled, just as the Saddam
Hussein was dismantled. Saddam's loyalists are not allowed to
serve in a new Iraqi Government, and neither should those who
are officers or officials in the present regime be allowed to
participate in any new regime that will be moderate and
peaceful.
There is strong precedent for cutting off relations with
the Palestinian Authority. The previous President Bush
undertook an experiment to test the PLO's intentions in 1988.
When it failed, Bush acknowledged the failure. The first
President George Bush cut off relations. I believe we must do
this yet again.
Second, Congress must take immediate action with regard to
the P.A.'s educational system. Raising children to hate Jews,
Israel, and America dooms any hope in the region for any
serious peace. If you educate for violence, you're going to get
violence.
We should make U.S. aid to the Palestine Arabs conditional,
and only if they completely reform their educational system
with serious new textbooks, new teachers, new maps, and other
classroom materials.
Paul Johnson wrote, in his history of the Jews, ``One of
the principal lessons of Jewish history is that repeated verbal
slanders are sooner or later followed by violent physical
deeds.'' And how true that statement is.
The aid should be linked not just to the small portion that
goes directly to the P.A. The bulk of the $213 million aid
package is not sent directly to the P.A., but does assist the
P.A. since money is fungible, as we all understand.
Finally, in addition, Congress should make further U.S.
contributions to UNRWA conditional on changes in the Palestine
Arab schools that UNRWA administers. American public opinion
supports suspension of U.S. aid. Seventy-six percent of
Americans oppose financial aid to the Palestine Arabs,
according to a recent poll by McLaughlin Associates.
Making the aid conditional in this way will accomplish
three crucial objectives. It'll put meaningful pressure on the
P.A. to change its educational system, it'll send a message to
all regimes which promote hatred that they may forfeit American
assistance or friendship if they fail to change their
educational systems, and it will create the first real hope of
raising a generation in Gaza and Ramallah that will be willing
to live in peace with Israel. We must stop rewarding terrorism
by funding this regime.
Fouad Ajami, the great scholar at Hopkins, wrote: ``We buy
no friendship in Arab lands with pro-Palestinian diplomacy. We
ward off no Arab-American terrorism.''
I will end by saying I used to work for Professor Linus
Pauling, the great two-time Nobel prize-winning chemist, as a
biostatistician. I was responsible for analyzing the data at
the end of experiments, and he would say to me: ``Mort, I'm not
interested in your hopes and dreams. Tell me what the data
requires us to believe.''
I want peace, all of us want peace, but we must look at the
evidence. The evidence shows the Palestinian Authority,
tragically, is not interested in peace. It's interested in
working to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. And, at this
point, we should do everything at our disposal to end aid to
the Palestinian Authority until it changes, and to end
relations until it changes. This would have an electric effect
by saying, as we haven't said, that there is a price to be paid
for the constant outrages against Israelis. It will not go by
simply saying: ``We're sorry about the deaths. Let's continue
the negotiations.'' If we end the negotiations, it would send
the message that the P.A. would have to make a serious choice.
Either negotiate and end terrorism, or there will be no hope of
them achieving anything.
prepared statement
So I urge this panel to consider ending aid to the P.A.,
ending relations until there's a dramatic transportation of the
P.A. authority. Stop rewarding terrorism.
Thank you very much.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Morton A. Klein
The Palestinian Authority's policy of educating children to hate
Jews, Israel, and America is just one part of a much bigger problem:
the continuing refusal of the Palestinian Arabs to give up violence and
their goal of eventually destroying the State of Israel.
The process which began with the signing of the Oslo accords in
1993 was based on the assumption that the Palestine Liberation
Organization, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, could be trusted
when it claimed that it would stop all violence and live in peace with
Israel. But events have proven that assumption was terribly mistaken.
Both the Oslo accords and the Bush Road Map plan require the PLO
and the Palestinian Authority, which it created, to undertake a number
of steps to facilitate peace and demonstrate that they would peacefully
coexist with Israel. They failed to take any of those steps.
They failed to outlaw terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic
Jihad. They failed to confiscate the terrorists' tens of thousands of
weapons, to arrest terrorists, and to dismantle the terrorists'
infrastructure of training camps and arms depots. Their leaders,
including past prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and current prime minister
Ahmed Qurei, have vowed that they will never fight against Hamas and
Islamic Jihad.
Instead of halting anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement, as the
accords require, they increased the incitement. They developed an
entire culture of hatred. The textbooks used in official PA schools
teach that Jews are ``treacherous,'' ``enemies of the prophets,'' and
``foment wars.'' PA summer camps train Arab youngsters how to kidnap
and murder Jews. Streets in PA cities are named after suicide bombers,
and posters glorifying suicide bombers appear on the walls of PA
schools and universities. PA-appointed Muslim clergymen regularly
preach sermons of hate, which are broadcast on PA radio and television.
In one recent sermon, Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi declared, ``O Allah,
annihilate the Jews,'' while Sheikh Ibrahim Abu-Awkal urged his
followers to ``cleanse the land from the filth of the Jews.''
They were obligated to implement the rule of law, to hold
democratic elections, and to respect human rights. Instead they became,
as one newspaper put it, ``the world's smallest police state.''
Newspapers that failed to toe Arafat's line are shut down. Critics of
the regime are routinely jailed. Even pro-Arab groups such as Human
Rights Watch and the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group have
documented what they called ``large scale torture'' of dissidents by
the PA regime. At least 18 people have been tortured to death in PA
prisons. Christians are persecuted so ruthlessly by the Muslim PA
regime that several U.S. courts have granted them asylum in America on
the grounds that they would be persecuted for their religion if they
return to PA-controlled territories.
Moreover, the PA has continued to engage in actions hostile to the
United States. It shelters dozens of terrorists who have been
identified as murderers of American citizens. It refused to permit the
FBI to investigate the recent terrorist murders of three U.S.
diplomatic personnel. The PA vociferously supporting Saddam Hussein and
other enemies of the United States. It constantly distributes vicious
anti-American propaganda in the official PA media. It pays salaries to
imprisoned terrorists who have murdered Americans; and naming streets
and parks after killers of Americans.
Most of all, the PA refused to abide by the most basic obligation
of the Oslo accords and the Road Map: to halt the use of violence. In
October 2000, the PA launched a terrorist war against Israel that
continues to this day. Arafat's own Fatah movement carries out the
majority of the terrorist attacks. The PA itself runs bomb factories
and smuggles weapons through tunnels from the Sinai, into Gaza. The
PA's central role in the violence that began in 2000 has been amply
proven by thousands of documents discovered by Israeli forces during
counter-terror raids over the past year.
How should the United States respond?
Until now, U.S. policy has focused on trying to appease the PA
regime. The Clinton administration bent over backwards to avoid
acknowledging the PA's violations, and it gave the Palestinian Arabs
$100 million each year. The Bush administration went even further. It
has offered them a sovereign state, and more than doubled the annual
aid allotment to $213.5 million. The assumption was that by offering
them funds and a state, they would agree to live in peace.
But throughout history, appeasement has never worked. Professor
Donald Kagan of Yale, in his book On the Origins of War, wrote that in
studying 3,000 years of international treaties, appeasement has never
worked. And it hasn't worked with the PA either, because the PA has
made it clear that its goal is not the creation of a small state next
door to Israel, but rather to eventually destroy all of Israel.
Americans understand this. Recent polls show that by a 2-to-1 margin,
we Americans believe that a Palestinian state will be a terrorist
state.
In their speeches to Arab audiences, PA officials constantly invoke
two models for their political strategy. First, they cite a treaty that
Mohammed signed, in the 7th century CE, with an enemy tribe, which
promised peace; but ten years later, when Mohammed's forces had
improved their military position, he tore up the treaty and slaughtered
his enemies. Second, they cite the PLO's own ``Strategy of Phases,''
adopted in 1974, according to which the PLO will first create a small
state next to Israel, and then use that as a launching pad to destroy
the rest of Israel. This message of eventually wiping out Israel is
reinforced every day in the maps that appear in PA schoolbooks, in the
PA's offices, even on the PA's official letterhead--maps that show all
of Israel labeled ``Palestine.''
What this means is that the appeasement approach cannot work.
The time has come for a new approach.
First, the time has come to recognize that the Palestinian
Authority is not a partner for peace. Not just Yasir Arafat, but the
entire PA is a corrupt terrorist regime that must be dismantled,
exactly as the regimes of Hitler and Saddam Hussein were dismantled.
Hitler's aides were not permitted to become officials of the postwar
German government. Saddam's loyalists are not allowed to serve in the
new Iraqi government. Arafat's regime is evil from top to bottom.
There is strong precedent for cutting off relations with the PA.
The previous President Bush undertook the first experiment to test the
PLO's intentions, and when the experiment failed, Bush acknowledged the
failure. In December 1988, he opened U.S. negotiations with the PLO,
based on Arafat's promise to stop engaging in terrorism. After 18
months, in the spring of 1990, the evidence of the PLO's continued
involvement in terrorism was so overwhelming that the Bush
administration announced it was canceling all contacts with the PLO. It
did so after just 18 months. It has now been 10 years since the United
States renewed contacts with the PLO, and once again the PLO has
demonstrated that it never changed. The current president Bush should
follow in his father's footsteps.
Second, Congress should take immediate action with regard to the
PA's educational system. Raising children to hate Jews, Israel, and
America dooms any hope for Middle East peace and undermines everything
the United States has been trying to accomplish in the region for the
past decade.
Congress should make U.S. aid to the Palestinian Arabs conditional
on the complete reforming of their educational system. New textbooks,
new teachers, new maps and other classroom materials.
All the aid should be linked, not just the small portion that goes
directly to the PA. The bulk of the $213 million aid package is not
sent directly to the PA but in fact it does assist the PA, since it
frees up PA money that would have otherwise been used for the projects
that the indirect aid is paying for.
In addition, Congress should make further U.S. contributions to the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, conditional on
changes in the Palestinian Arabs schools that UNRWA administers.
American public opinion will strongly support a suspension of U.S.
aid to the Palestinian Arabs. A poll earlier this year by McLaughlin &
Associates found that 76 percent of Americans oppose U.S. financial aid
to the Palestinian Arabs; only 11.5 percent favor it. Making the aid
conditional in this way will accomplish three crucial objectives:
--It will put meaningful pressure on the PA to change its educational
system.
--It will send a message to all regimes which promote hatred that
they too may forfeit American assistance if they fail to change
their educational systems.
--And it will create the first real hope of raising a generation in
Gaza and Ramallah that will be willing to live in peace with
Israel.
As you may know, I formerly worked as biostatistician for the two-
time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. I was responsible for analyzing the
data of experiments, and after each experiment, Professor Pauling would
say, ``I am not interested in what your hopes and dreams for this
experiment were, I am only interested in what the data shows.'' In the
same way, when you look at the evidence you must conclude that the
Palestinian Arabs are not interested in peace with Israel.
Senator Specter. Thank you, Dr. Klein.
Before going to a round of questioning, 5 minutes, by other
members of the panels here, we'll give Dr. Rahman an
opportunity, if he chooses to, to respond to any of the
comments made by Dr. Klein.
Dr. Rahman. I honestly don't know where to start, Senator.
But I can assure you----
Senator Specter. You can take your time, Dr. Rahman. We
have allowed overtime here because of the importance of the
subject and also because of the passion of the subject.
Dr. Rahman. I think, at the outset of my intervention, I
made it clear that I'm one of those who believe in the two-
state solution. I have struggled for it. I continue to believe
that's the only way to achieve an end to the tragic situation
that we both live in.
I just want to--first of all, Mr. Klein showed a poster,
and he said this is a suicide bomber, and it is paid for by the
Palestinian Authority. First of all, the name on that poster is
that of Yechya Ayash, who was assassinated in 1999, and it is a
Hamas poster, and it is not a Palestinian Authority poster.
This shows you the example of the distortions that I'm talking
about.
Second, I have here in my hand a map that was published
just a few days ago by the Israeli Minister of Defense. I don't
see the name Palestine on it, and I don't see a delineation of
the West Bank and Gaza. On the contrary, what I see here is the
wall, separating wall. So if Israel has not told us where its
borders end and where the Palestinian state starts, how can we
do it unilaterally?
Listen, I acknowledge, and I said that from the very
beginning, that there is incitement on both sides. On the
Palestinian side there is incitement, which we call
nationalistic. I may agree or disagree, but that is the
explanation that is given. On the Israeli side, there is not
only incitement, but actions on the ground that instigate
violence, which I totally oppose--the violence as well as the
actions by Israel.
Let's take some of the statement--part of the statement
that Mr. Klein made. He never referred to Palestine. He never
said he recognizes the rights of the Palestinian people to have
a state. In fact, all his arguments were against an independent
Palestinian state. He referred to it as Judea and Samaria,
rather than the West Bank and Gaza, the name which is known by
everyone.
So what I'm here to say, that the demagogues on both sides,
whether it is on our side or on this side, are the dangerous
elements. They are really confiscating our agenda. What we are
trying to do is to bring back the agenda to the people. That's
why we support efforts like those made by Mr. Ayalon, with Sari
Nusseibeh. We support efforts that are made by the group that
went to Geneva, the Geneva document that was laughed at by Yosi
Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo and groups that really sanctioned
by the Palestinian Authority with the hope to tell both sides
that there is an alternative to this quagmire that we live in
and that there is a possibility. And, Mr. Chairman, I really
would like to see an effort supporting those efforts made by
those people, by the people who are pushing peace and not
taking us back to the confrontation like we see today here.
I am making speeches around the country of the United
States to the Palestinian Arab community telling them that we
have an option, and the option is--that was worked out in
Geneva--the option is the roadmap, the option is the statement
that was made by Sari Nusseibeh and Ayalon. Those are the kind
of efforts that we want really to highlight and encourage and
show that--both Palestinians and Americans that--and the
Israelis--that there is a way out. And we seek your support in
those efforts.
Senator Specter. Well, Senator Clinton has another
commitment, so we'll yield to Senator Clinton at this point for
questioning.
Senator Clinton. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Rahman, can I just focus on the issue before us? And
perhaps it is a narrow issue, but I think it's a fundamental
and profound one. Will the Palestinian Authority direct the
P.A. TV to remove any reference to martyrdom, Shahada, and the
glorification of suicide bombers from the television?
Dr. Rahman. Senator Clinton, there was an effort made by
the previous government of Mahmoud Abbas, and there was a
meeting held between Nabil Amre, who is the Minister of
Information, and Mr. Shalom, the Foreign Minister of Israel,
working towards that end, How can we improve the coverage in
both areas, in the Palestinian as well as on the Israeli
television? And even Mr. Shalom acknowledged then that progress
was made. Yes--the answer to your question, yes, we are making
an effort.
But, again, I mean, I understand that you are--you want to
focus on this issue, but I, personally, honestly cannot
separate this from the wider context.
Senator Clinton. I understand that.
Dr. Rahman. Yes.
Senator Clinton. And I----
Dr. Rahman. And, therefore, we cannot really, Senator--and
I hate to interrupt, but we cannot overlook the situation on
the ground, because this will do an injustice----
Senator Clinton. I understand your position, and I can only
say that there are many--in fact, myriad of issues of
importance to be discussed between Israelis and the
Palestinians if there is to be any hope of resolution. But on
this issue, I do not understand why the Palestinian Authority
cannot separate out a legitimate perspective on what is
happening--and, look, we all see everything through the prism
of our own experience, so the news coverage on the Palestinian
TV is certainly going to be very different than the news
coverage on Israeli TV or on American TV. We all understand
that. But I'm talking about the affirmative support that the
Palestinian Authority is giving in rhetoric and in propaganda
and through the media to this phenomenon of suicide bombing.
Now, to me, that is separable. I'm not asking that you
would in any way abdicate what you view as your rightful
perspective to say that you disagree with settlements or you
disagree with, you know other policy of the Israeli Government.
Of course. That is part of the dispute that has to be resolved.
But on this issue, it was, for many years, not a part of
the repertoire of either incitement or violence by those who
are influenced or directed by any group in Palestine. Now it
has become the weapon of choice. And it seems to me that there
is a very big difference from people arming themselves, however
much I may disrespect that or disagree with it, and going forth
to do battle with whomever they see as the enemy, and having
young people strap bombs on themselves, going forth killing
themselves, killing other innocent people, and then being
glorified. Now, that, to me, is a separate issue that should be
addressed in order to demonstrate what you are telling us,
which is that the Palestinian Authority does wish to engage in
an ongoing effort, they do wish to create circumstances for a
two-state solution, and they do wish to be separated from the
demagogues and the terrorists. This would be a very strong
piece of evidence that that is not just rhetoric, but action. I
don't see where it undermines the Palestinian position. In
fact, I think it strengthens the legitimate Palestinian
Authority position to be separate from those who would engage
in such incitement and, in fact, in my view, brainwashing of
young people for such horrible purposes.
Why can't we just focus on that one thing? We will never,
in this forum, resolve the other issues that separate the
parties.
Dr. Rahman. Senator, I appreciate your outrage about
suicide bombers, because I am outraged by it, too, personally,
and I believe that the majority of the Palestinian people,
notwithstanding what has been stated here.
I agree that suicide bombing is unacceptable. It has to be
rejected, et cetera, et cetera. Everything--anything that you
want to say against it, I would say it even more and harder,
because I will never support a culture of death. We want our
children to live like I want my children to be productive and
live as a productive citizens.
I have said that, and I believe that we also have to be
careful about what we saw here today. There is a difference,
Senator. And I don't want to be put in the position where I
have to make explanations for things that I do not believe in
and I don't agree with. But there's a difference between
Shahada and suicide bombing. You have really to realize this.
Shahada is really to sacrifice for your own country. And you
say this to your people, and Americans said it, and the
Israelis call on their young people to do it every day, to
sacrifice in order to protect their homeland. That is Shahada.
But suicide bombing is totally--something totally different,
and we cannot confuse the two, and we cannot accept the
confusion between the two.
So, please, what I'm trying to explain here, that what we
saw today here, when you speak Shahada, that does not mean
suicide bombing. It does not.
Senator Specter. Dr. Rahman, as we have seen the videos,
Shahada has been equated with suicide bombing. Why do you say
that there is a difference?
Dr. Rahman. I'll tell you why. Because when President
Arafat was shown here, and he--the reporter asked him, he
said--asked him, ``What message do you give to the people?''
And he said that: ``This young 14-years-old kid is facing an
Israeli tank with a stone, and he was shahid,'' meaning that
the Israelis shot him and they killed him. He was not a suicide
bomber. And this boy, yes, he was 14-years-old, and he was
killed by the Israeli Army.
Senator Specter. But when----
Dr. Rahman. So he was not a suicide bomber. He was standing
in front of a tank with a stone. So does that mean that he was
a suicide bomber?
Senator Specter. But we have--we have seen on the videos
repeatedly, an 11-year-old, a 14-year-old, a 12-year-old, say
that they wished Shahada, and they plan to be--to give their
life as a martyr in a suicide bombing.
Dr. Rahman. Not in a--with suicide bombers. I did not hear
it once, and I'm willing to listen to it again.
Senator Specter. Well, I think that Senator Clinton has----
Dr. Rahman. I want to listen to it again. It does not say
suicide bomber, Senator.
Senator Specter. Well, let's see it again.
Dr. Rahman. Let's see it.
Senator Specter. I think, before you do, just let me say
that I think Senator Clinton has put her finger on the critical
point about the Palestinian Authority repudiating suicide
bombing and acting to take it off of television. And what I
will do is, I'm going to send a transcript of this hearing to
Chairman Arafat and to the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister
with the question: Will they act to stop Palestinian television
carrying these messages?
But let's take a look at it again.
Mr. Marcus. If I may say something, the film that was--that
we saw, the two girls expressed the desire to achieve the
Shahada, the death for Allah. And the end, there was a caller
who called in, and they spoke about a 17-year-old girl who
actually did go and was a suicide bomber, Ayyat al-Akhras.
Senator Specter. Let us turn to the films themselves. And
if you care to make a commentary after you show the film, that
would be the appropriate time.
[Video presentation replayed.]
Senator Specter. Right there, Mr. Marcus. Would you stop
it? Right there----
Mr. Marcus. Yes.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Where you say ``The Shahadas
go to paradise,'' isn't that in the context, Dr. Rahman, of a
suicide bombing?
Dr. Rahman. Not necessarily. I may become a Shahid even
praying--praying, not fighting. Going to Mecca as a pilgrim, I
can die and become a Shahid.
Senator Specter. Go ahead, Mr. Marcus.
Dr. Rahman. So there's--this is a religious connotation. It
has nothing to do with suicide bombing.
Senator Specter. Mr. Marcus, proceed with the----
Mr. Marcus. Yes.
Senator Specter [continuing]. Video.
Mr. Marcus. In the context of--oh, continue with the video?
In the context of this video, the two first girls were talking
about their desire for the Shahada. The third girl who was
speaking was specifically applying this to a 17-year-old
suicide bomber. And the moderator said: ``Is this natural, for
a 17-year-old girl to blow herself up?'' And she said: ``Yes,
it is natural.'' And the two girls, in the continuation, which
wasn't shown, for time limitations, were actually asked about
this, and then expressed similar sentiment.
So Shahada definitely can mean anyone who has died in the
conflict. The Palestinians define all of the suicide bombers as
shahids, as martyrs----
Senator Specter. Let us proceed with the video and ask Dr.
Rahman or Dr. Asali if they agree with other portions, that it
equates with suicide bombers.
[Video presentation continued.]
Mr. Marcus. Okay. So that was it: ``Is it natural for the
17-year-old to blow herself up to become a shahid?'' And the
answer was: ``It is natural.'' So that is the way it's
presented.
Senator Specter. What do you think, Dr. Asali?
Dr. Rahman. Yes, this is a talk show, Senator, somebody
expressing. It is not--he is--the reporter is not telling her
that--but she is saying that: ``I want to sacrifice for my
country,'' and I--they asked--in fact, even al-Jazeera network,
every single Arab network refers to the suicide bombers as
Shahada. That is--it is a religious--whether he is Shahid or
not, I am not a God to really make a judgement on him. I,
personally, call it suicide bombers. Others call it Shahid. But
Shahada is not exclusive to suicide bombers. That's what I'm
trying to say.
Senator Specter. Dr.----
Dr. Rahman. They----
Senator Specter. Go ahead, Dr. Rahman. I don't want to cut
you off.
Dr. Rahman. No, no. What I'm trying to say here is, we--
this is an inclusive. Anyone who sacrifices for his country is
a Shahid. So we cannot tell people, ``Don't sacrifice for your
country.''
Dr. Asali. If I may?
Senator Specter. Dr. Asali?
Dr. Asali. Actually, the literal translation, if there is
such a thing for a word that exists only in Arabic, of Shahid
or Shahada is the one who dies for the sake of God. It is a
religious concept. Anybody who dies in conflict, for instance,
at a war, would be a Shahid. Anybody who would be killed by an
enemy who is fighting the Arabs or the Muslims, et cetera,
would be a Shahid. Somebody who would be at prayer and he would
be killed without lifting a finger, he would be a Shahid. So we
need to understand it in that context.
Actually, the--you know, we may run the risk of trying to
get bogged down in minutia. I think those videos do show a
level of--a highly developed level of frustration that these
young people have achieved in their own life of complete
frustration with the way they live, that they do, in fact,
condone and consider it natural for a 17-year-old person to die
like this. You know, I----
Senator Specter. To die as a martyr.
Dr. Asali. As a martyr. As a martyr. I do want to mention
something. You know, the day-to-day life of the Palestinians
under their present circumstances is really rather unbearable.
You know, there are 160 checkpoints in Palestine. There are,
you know, like, 5,000 houses demolished. There are 128
Palestinian women who gave birth at checkpoints, 70 percent
malnutrition, terrible way of life. These people are, by
definition, liable to be exploited by those who would have
appealed to their sense of frustration to do things like, you
know, suicide bombing or others.
We do need to get back into a--in geopolitical context to
resolve this question, and not focus very, very narrowly on
these people. They're actually--the whole problem for suicide
bombing, if I may say, is two problems that are lumped
together. One is for the young people, themselves, who blow
themselves up; and another is for the people who send them to
do that. These young kids just don't go off, you know. They
have to have a support system somewhere that exploits their
sense of frustration.
They are, by and large, perhaps innocent, and somehow--
sometimes privileged kids who feel so absolutely desperate and
losing their dignity and their future, so the others, who are
much more calculating, and none of them is young, and none of
them would send their own kids to do this, would take advantage
of that situation. That puts the whole problem in a political
context that we cannot avoid.
Senator Specter. Well, I think we've gone about as far as
we can go on this particular interpretation. It's now noon.
It's been a very long hearing, and we thank you all for
staying. I know people want to make additional comments, so
what I would like to do is give each of you 2 minutes to sum
up.
Mr. Marcus, you had asked for an opportunity to reply to
some of the things which had been said. If you could limit it
to 2 minutes, we'd appreciate it.
Mr. Marcus. Okay.
Senator Specter. We're going to have another vote here
within the hour, and there are a number of other things which
have to be taken care of. So to the extent you can hold
yourself to 2 minutes, we'd appreciate it.
Mr. Marcus. The Palestinian Authority has been giving
active promotion to suicide bombings. When teenage children
participate in a summer camp named after Ayyat al-Akhras, a 17-
year-old girl who was a suicide bomber, there is no greater
promotion and no greater role-modeling for teenagers than
telling them this is the person who we're admiring.
The fact that Dr. Rahman is arguing about the nuance of a
film does not erase the entire society's promotion of the
suicide bombing as well as the Shahada, as well as the Shahada
especially among children, as well.
Dr. Rahman commented on the religions nature of this
belief, and that is not an excuse. That is, in fact, even
worse. These children are taught--and we're talking about a
very religious society, the Palestinian society--these children
are taught that they have the religious achievement. This is
not true that these children are frustrated and that's why
they're blowing themselves up. They are blowing themselves up
because they want to aspire to the afterlife. They have been
convinced, because of their religious beliefs that they have
been ingrained with, that doing this, this type of a suicide
bombing, or just achieving the Shahada, will actually give them
great rewards in this future.
So the religious component actually compounds the problem,
and that's why 11-year-olds are talking about, ``We don't care
about this life. We only care about the afterlife.''
Senator Specter. Dr. Rahman, would you care to sum?
Dr. Rahman. Well, I'm listening, and I cannot really
believe what I heard, because Mr. Marcus is on the West Bank
because he believes that God gave him that land. That's a
religious statement, and he is opposing Palestinians for being
religious? What else of an argument that he has to be on the
West Bank except that he is Jewish?
Listen, I would say the following. We do not support
suicide bombers. We, the Palestinian Authority, made itself
very clear on this issue over and over again. We are looking
for the opportunity to take action when the Israeli Army
withdraws from the West Bank, because while we have 50,000
Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and in Gaza, it is impossible
for the Palestinian security forces to take action.
We are ready to do that. Our new Prime Minister just made a
statement yesterday. He said: ``We are ready to declare a
unilateral cease fire.'' He is engaged in the Palestinian
organizations. We hope that the Israeli Government will
reciprocate and accept an overall cease fire. That will end the
violence between the two people so we can really put things on
the track of political negotiations.
Senator Specter. Would that cease fire bind Hamas and Islam
Jihad?
Dr. Rahman. Yes, absolutely. That's what he said. He said:
``I am negotiating with Hamas and Jihad Islam, and every other
organization for a unilateral cease fire, which I'm going to
take it to the Israelis and I hope that the Israelis will
reciprocate and we can turn it into a permanent cease fire and
move on political negotiations.'' And I hope that Israelis will
reciprocate.
Senator Specter. Dr. Asali, would you care to sum up?
Dr. Asali. Yes. I think it is always helpful in this
conflict to tone down the rhetoric, and I think we should focus
on the grand political objective. A two-state solution cannot
be achieved to be negotiated between the Israelis and the
Palestinians, left on their own devices. Political will,
political muscle has to be applied, especially in this country,
which is the only country that is in a position to do so, to
make it happen by applying the needed incentives, rewards, and
disincentives to both parties.
Senator Specter. Thank you, Dr. Asali.
Dr. Klein, would you care to sum up?
Mr. Klein. Yes. First of all, I wanted to mention, Israel
has handed over to the Bush administration literally thousands
of documents showing that the Palestinian Authority has paid
for the types of posters that I just showed here. This has been
written up and shown in Time magazine and many other major
publications the actual documents.
In addition, the schools, camps, and streets are named
after suicide bombers who have murdered Israelis, not martyrs
who have died in some other way.
The polls, by the way, by--their own Palestinian Authority
pollsters show that 60 to 90 percent of Palestinians tragically
and shockingly support suicide bombings. And, in fact, when
Joseph Lelyveld, the former editor-in-chief of the New York
Times wrote an article about suicide bombers' families, he
wrote that he was shocked and stunned that when he interviewed
the families they said how proud they are of their children,
who have killed themselves while murdering Jews.
Finally, the checkpoints are there to stop terrorists from
coming into Israel. If there was no terrorism, there would be
no more checkpoints, it would be the end of checkpoints. And I
find it really tragically and disappointingly racist statements
to say that Jews shouldn't live in Judea and Samaria. This
was--is uninhabited land where the Jews have moved into.
The cease fire? We don't need a temporary cease fire. That
would be pleasant. It didn't work before, and cease fires are
something that will not work in any long-term situation. We
must have the P.A. arrest the terrorists and outlaw Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, and we must have Hassan Abdel Rahman and others
in the territories and ask him to stop showing all of Israeli
as Palestine on their official stationary, on their maps, on
their atlases. Do I'd ask Dr. Rahman to change this stationary
and stop sending the message that all of Israel is Palestine.
Thank you very much.
Senator Specter. Gentlemen, thank you very much.
I intend to send this transcript to Chairman Arafat and the
Prime Minister of Palestinian Authority, with the request that
they stop showing these videos on Palestinian television.
ADDITIONAL SUBMITTED STATEMENT
We have received a statement from The American Jewish
Committee that will be made part of the hearing record.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of The American Jewish Committee
Thank you, Chairman Specter, for allowing me this opportunity to
submit a statement for the record.
I wish to express appreciation to the Subcommittee for
investigating the current nature of the Palestinian education system so
that we can better understand how to further the process of replacing
the teaching of hatred and violence in Palestinian schools with the
teaching of principles of coexistence, democracy, and mutual
understanding.
The American Jewish Committee welcomes your initiative in holding a
vitally important hearing on October 30 to bring to light the rampant
teaching of hatred and glorification of violence in Palestinian
schools, and the concomitant incitement to violence and hate that
permeates the broader Palestinian culture and is aimed in particular at
young people. We encourage the Subcommittee to continue to press all
American authorities that deal with the Palestinian Authority, as you
strongly did at the hearing, to demand of the Palestinian Authority
Ministries of Education and Sport a revamping of the educational
curricula that they disseminate. The basis for shared trust must begin
with clear messages from the Palestinian leadership to its children
that indeed there is a bright future for pluralism and coexistence in
the Middle East, precisely the opposite of what is being taught today.
The celebration of hate and violence that encourages children to commit
acts of terrorism, including homicide bombings, is, as Senator Clinton
noted at the hearing, a form of child abuse. The cessation of such
incitement must not await a resolution of the political issues
underlying the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. It is a sine qua non of
that resolution.
Of additional concern, such incitement is by no means a problem
limited to the Palestinian territories, but a malevolent trend to be
found in far too many parts of the Muslim world. We are familiar with
the vile anti-Semitic speech delivered by Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad to the Organization of the Islamic Conference last
month, at which, to the everlasting shame of those attending this
largest of gatherings of Muslim national leaders, his words were
greeted not with condemnation, but with a standing ovation. And, as in
the Palestinian Authority, one finds teaching of hatred that is
directed at the young in other places as well.
This past February, the American Jewish Committee and the Center
for Monitoring Peace jointly released the most comprehensive survey
ever prepared of the official Saudi worldview to which students between
the ages of six and sixteen are exposed through the medium of subject
textbooks. In analyzing the 93 school textbooks published by the Saudi
Ministry of Education and in circulation between 1999 and 2002, the
report reveals the widespread presence of contempt towards Western
civilization and followers of other religions.
Here are the main findings from our report:
--Islam is taught as the only true religion and Saudi Arabia is the
leader of the Muslim world.--Islam is presented as the only
true religion, while all other religions are presented as
false. Consequently, Muslims are portrayed as superior to
followers of all other religions. Islam plays the dominant role
in state and society, in the judicial and educational systems,
and in everyday life. Saudi Arabia assumes, in turn, a leading
role in the Muslim world and sees itself as the champion of
Islam.
--Christians and Jews are denounced as infidels.--Christians and Jews
are presented as enemies of Islam and of Muslims. Therefore,
Muslims may not befriend them nor emulate them in any way, lest
that lead to love and friendship, which is forbidden.
--The West is a decaying society on its way to extinction, and is the
source of past and present misfortunes of the Muslim world.--
Western civilization is presented in a state of cultural and
religious decline, the symptoms of which are the absence of
spirituality, the practice of adultery, and the large number of
suicides in Western society. The West is also blamed for
desiring world domination and targeting the Muslim world by
aggressively promoting Western practices, ideologies, and
lifestyle habits among Muslim society. In addition, Saudi
school children are taught to reject all notions of Western
democracy.
--Peace between Muslims and non-Muslims is ostensibly rejected.--
Saudi Arabian schoolbooks, even grammar books, are full of
phrases exalting war, jihad, and martyrdom. And though all
forms of terror are rejected by the Saudi Arabian schoolbooks,
it appears that such prohibitions do not apply to cases that
fall in the categories of jihad and martyrdom.
--The Jews are a wicked nation, characterized by bribery, slyness,
deception, and aggressiveness.--According to the Saudi
schoolbooks, the present Jewish occupation of Palestine
constitutes a danger to the neighboring Muslim countries.
Zionism is presented as an evil movement, based on ancient
Jewish notions.
--Israel is not recognized as a sovereign state in Saudi Arabian
schoolbooks, and its name does not appear on any map.--All maps
in Saudi schoolbooks bear only the name Palestine. Palestine is
presented as a Muslim country occupied by foreigners who defile
its Muslim holy places, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque in
Jerusalem. The occupation of Palestine is portrayed as the most
crucial problem of the Arabs and the Muslims, who should all
join forces for the total liberation of Palestine.
So that Members of the Subcommittee may familiarize themselves with
our findings in greater detail, I am submitting for the record our
comprehensive study, The West, Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabian
Schoolbooks.
The Saudi Government has responded to criticism of its shameful
education policies by claiming that it is working to bring about
constructive reform in its curriculum and education system, but it is
now high time for the Saudis to match deeds with words. As one of the
strongest allies of the United States, the Saudi government needs to
take a hard look at its educational system and introduce immediate
reforms that remove hate and promote genuine tolerance of and respect
for other faiths.
To this end, we urge that Congress move quickly to adopt a
Congressional initiative spearheaded by Senators Gordon Smith (R-OR)
and Charles Schumer (D-NY) in the Senate and Representatives Jim Davis
(D-FL) and Doug Bereuter (R-NE) in the House. The resolution, S. Con.
Res. 14/H. Con. Res. 242, calls on the Saudi government to ``reform its
education curriculum in a manner that promotes tolerance, develops
civil society, and encourages functionality in the global economy.''
As always, the American Jewish Committee stands with all people of
good will, regardless of their race, nationality, or religion, in an
effort to promote peace, democracy, and mutual understanding. My thanks
go again to the Subcommittee, and to its Chairman, for their continued
attention to these matters of utmost importance.
CONCLUSION OF HEARING
Senator Specter. Thank you all very much for being here.
That concludes our hearing.
[Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m., Tuesday, October 30, the hearing
was concluded, and the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene
subject to the call of the Chair.]
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