Audience Member
The prospect for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is back in the news this week with the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Is peace even possible? That question is examined from a pedagogical point of view in the documentary film, THIS IS MY LAND, by Tamara Erde.
The peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Council began with the Oslo accord of 1993. Over the following seven years, a number of agreements were reached but, sadly, many of changes that were promised by both sides were never implemented. One of them, on the matter of national education, was included in the Oslo II accord of 1995. Articles XXII to XXVII (Relations between Israel and the Council) state that both sides:
... shall accordingly abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda, against each other ... that their respective educational systems contribute to the peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples ...
Twenty years later, Palestinian children are still being taught that "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea", the river being the Jordan River and the sea being the Mediterranean. School maps show their national homeland stretching from Lebanon and Syria in the north to Egypt in the south. In other words, Israel does not exist. Meanwhile, some Israeli schools - generally religious ones - are teaching their students that this same piece of land was divinely given to the Jews and no peace agreement will ever change that.
In recent years, some Israeli schools have begun integrating Israeli Arab and Jewish students, teaching Arabic and employing Israeli Arab teachers in the hopes of sowing the seeds of peace. The programme is not without its challenges though. As THIS IS MY LAND shows, even the two teachers (one Israeli Jewish, the other Israeli Arab) in one such classroom have to edit each other's personal opinions in order to ensure their students receive an unbiased view of Israeli/Palestinian history.
Most Israelis of Erde's age and older were taught the official narrative of the State of Israel: Under the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, the country would be divided between its two peoples. However, Arab leaders and governments rejected the plan and, once it was approved by the General Assembly, civil war broke out, which culminated in July 1948, following the founding of the State of Israel. They were not taught the point of view from the side of the Arabs who were living there at the time: Many of their villages were razed to the ground as Jewish leaders sought to exert control over their new country.
To be fair, this narrative is now changing on the Israeli side of the divide and many young Jewish children are being presented with a more balanced view of their country's early history than in previous generations. However, the narrative on the Palestinian side has not changed. Children there are taught that they are under occupation and they must engage in a struggle ("jihad") to liberate their country from their oppressors. In the film, a Palestinian teacher congratulates his student for saying that "freedom ends where another person's begins". But why is one person's freedom mutually exclusive to another's? Can't both people be free? This is the fundamental problem that Israel faces with the Palestinians. The latter only sees its freedom in the context of the former's destruction. The notion of a shared future does not exist.
Unfortunately, Erde's film offers not much more than a simple overview of both the politics and the politicization of education in Israel and Palestine. There is one poignant scene where a 17-year-old Israeli boy says that he has forgotten what the word "peace" means. What is sad is not that he has forgotten. It's sad that he knows he has forgotten. I would have preferred to hear more such insights from articulate teenagers on both sides of the border who, hopefully, have started to develop their own opinions. Instead, we are shown a number of pre-teens who simply parrot the opinions that their teachers have been spoon-feeding to them over the years. In any case, if this is what the children are learning, the prospect for peace is quite dim.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
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