Archive for May, 2013

May 21 2013

The Palestinian Textbook Fiasco

School children in Gaza (photo: Wissam Nasser/Flash90)

For years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been accused of inciting violence by promoting the delegitimization of Israel and its people and, in some cases, even outright anti-Semitism, in its education system. According to both Israeli and third-party observers, the PA was ingraining future generations with a worldview that essentially prevented any long-term commitment to peace (let alone coexistence). So it was no surprise that a State Department-funded study called Victims of Our Own Narratives? Portrayal of the “Other” in Israeli and Palestinian School Books, published last February, sparked a firestorm that leapt from the otherwise parochial world of education policy straight into the headlines of newspapers around the world.

(This piece was originally published in The Tower Magazine)

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May 1 2013

Sephardi Stories, on the Record

Juliette Glaser shows her French passport (photo: Alex Broadwell)

“Sometimes I still have nightmares,” says Juliette Glaser to her interviewer, as she sits in front of a video camera in her Miami living room, recalling in a confident voice her childhood memories from Cairo—where she was born in 1941 and which she fled 15 years later. “They were putting the city on fire during the revolution of 1952. They were getting rid of King Farouk. The city was black, and there was fire everywhere. I remember Egyptians walking in the streets, holding big knives, saying, ‘We’re going to kill the Jews, where are the Jews? Any Jews around here?’ And we would hide in the basement, turn all the lights off, just shivering, shaking of fear.”

(This story appeared originally in The Tablet Magazine)

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