Education, Social Studies, History, Civics, Current Issues

Curriculum on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict”

Curriculum on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict”

By Chloe Daikh

Chloe Daikh was a volunteer at a refugee camp in Palestine, served as an AmeriCorps VISTA College Access & Success Coordinator, and taught at a boarding school in Virginia. Following this article is the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) description of the grade 6-12 lessons and links to its resources. The package for “Teaching the History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict” includes lesson plans, a slide deck, learning objectives, essential questions for students to address, primary sources, and links to recommended videos (https://icsresources.org/curriculum/the-arab-israeli-conflict/). Some of the ICS documents are included along with comments on the article and the ICS curriculum by local teachers.

Since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, there has been an increased interest in helping K-12 students understand the historical background and context of the current violence in Israel/Palestine that has now escalated to a war in Lebanon and the possibility of a regional war involving Syria, Yemen, and Iran. On October 20, 2023, The Office of the Texas Governor encouraged schools to use a list of resources shared by the Texas Education Agency “to increase awareness and understanding of the Israel-Hamas war and root causes of conflict in the region” (Office of the Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, 2023). First in a list of four resources hyperlinked to the press release is a document from the Institute of Curriculum Studies (ICS) titled “Support for Classroom Discussion on the Hamas-Israel War,” which in turn includes a link to ICS’s curriculum, “Teaching the History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Using Primary Sources.”

The Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) is not new to teacher training. Founded in 2005, their website states that 18,000 teachers have engaged in their workshops, and that all 50 states and D.C. are represented within ICS’s pool of participants. The reach of ICS’s influence in secondary school instruction is further facilitated through cooperation with the National Council of Social Studies and many of their state affiliates and local districts, including New York Department of Education; North Carolina Department of Public Instruction; Iowa Department of Education, among many others (ICS, 2024). ICS published its “Teaching the History of the Arab Israeli Conflict Using Primary Sources” in 2022 and has promoted the curriculum as an effective tool for teachers to help students understand the history of the conflict. In addition to the curriculum, which is accessible for free online and includes worksheets and graphic organizers for students (2022a), ICS offers workshops, both online and in-person in collaboration with public school districts across the country (2024). However, key aspects of ICS’s curriculum are misaligned with standards for the study of history and geography and are not conducive to helping students understand the root causes of Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, nor Israel’s widely condemned response. This curriculum, by providing students with insufficient context and inaccurate information, primes students to uncritically condone and support Israel’s ongoing settler colonial violence and dispossession, and contributes to the dissemination of racist, Islamophobic tropes.

Misalignment with C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards

By using standard curriculum formatting and creating materials and activities that can be easily implemented for class instruction, ICS’s curriculum looks like a credible curriculum, and thus may seem like a legitimate tool for teaching about Israel/Palestine. ICS claims that their curriculum is “guided by, and…in alignment with, state and national standards” (ICS, 2018b). The organization points to the Frameworks in the C3 Framework for Social Studies as supposed guiding principles for the creation of their curricular resources, “with a particular focus on Dimension 2: History and “Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence” (ICS, 2018b).The National Council for the Social Studies states that the C3 Framework was developed “for states to upgrade their state social studies standards” and “for practitioners…to strengthen their social studies programs” (2013). ICS claims to specifically and particularly align with two Dimensions within the framework: “History” and “Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence” (ICS 2018b). While ICS does not claim to address “Geography,” its substantial use of (political) maps requires attention to the desired learning outcomes of that Dimension as well. An analysis of the ICS curriculum compared to the learning outcomes outlined in the C3 Framework demonstrates the curriculum’s failure to meet standards for social studies education. This article will highlight specific ways in which the ICS curriculum is misaligned with the C3 Framework’s learning outcomes, and will include resources that, had they been included in the curriculum, would meet the expressed skills standards and learning outcomes. The C3 Framework includes learning outcomes which are used as a basis of the critique of ICS’s curriculum.

C3 Framework Learning Outcomes (achieved by end of Grade 12) (National Council for Social Studies, 2013, pp. 42-49) Dimension 1: History Change, Continuity, and Context “Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.” Perspectives “Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during historical eras.” “Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.” Historical Sources and Evidence “Analyze the relationship between historical sources and the secondary interpretations made from them.” “Critique the usefulness of historical sources for a specific historical inquiry based on their maker, date, place or origin, intended audience, and purpose” “Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources.” “Critique the appropriateness of the historical sources used in a secondary interpretation.” Causation and Argumentation “Analyze multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past.” “Distinguish between long-term causes and triggering events in developing a historical argument.” “Integrate evidence from multiple relevant historical sources and interpretations into a reasoned argument about the past” “Critique the central argument in secondary works of history on related topics in multiple media in terms of their historical accuracy.” Dimension 2: Geography Human-Environment Interaction “Evaluate how political and economic decisions through time have influenced cultural and environmental characteristics of various places and regions.” Evaluate the impact of human settlement activities on the environmental and cultural characteristics of specific places and regions.” Human Population “Evaluate the impact of economic activities and political decisions on spatial patterns within and among urban, suburban, and rural regions.” Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources & Using Evidence Gathering and Evaluating Sources “Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the source to guide the selection.”

ICS’s selection and framing of primary source material is misaligned with several learning outcomes outlined within the C3 Framework’s Dimension 2: History. ICS limits the sources provided to official governmental and intragovernmental documents and fails to provide citations for the background information that frames each of the sources and provides the overarching narrative of the curriculum. In this way, ICS fails to provide students with the opportunity to adequately strengthen skills pertaining to the study of history. Furthermore, through their narrow selection of sources, ICS fails to model the effective evaluation of sources and use of evidence for students, as outlined in Dimension 3 of the C3 Framework.

Through its failure to adequately address skills mandates as outlined in the C3 Framework, ICS dangerously misrepresents the historical context and multiple perspectives that are necessary for helping students understand the context of Hamas’s October 7 attack. In order for ICS to meet those standards, it would need to include significantly more primary sources and provide more accurate context. The ICS curriculum implies that Zionist settlers accepted Palestinians as deserving of national sovereignty in their own right and that it was solely Palestinians who rejected Jewish neighbors, beginning with the UN Partition Plan of 1947 (ICS, 2018a). The curriculum emphasizes this implication by providing inaccurate and incomplete information, insufficient, misleading and oversimplified context, and a single perspective of events. Furthermore, it is not grounded in the skills or learning outcomes outlined within the C3 framework, to which ICS claims to adhere.

Inaccurate & Incomplete Information

ICS provides inaccurate and incomplete information within the curriculum, particularly when it comes to the perspectives and experiences of Palestinians. Two serious issues that contribute to this lack of accurate and complete information are the lack of Palestinian-authored sources. Only one source written by a Palestinian is included in the entire curriculum–the Declaration of the State of Palestine (1988), in the final lesson (2022f). The Palestinians are only represented in the curriculum long after decades of representing themselves under the British Mandate. In this way, the designers of the ICS curriculum de-historicize and choose to frame Palestinian “nationalist aspirations” in a document that is comparable to the Israeli Declaration of Independence included in Lesson 4 (2022e). This factually inaccurate portrayal of the inception of the First Intifada misrepresents the most important aspects of the Intifada; namely, that it was a largely nonviolent series of protests and economic boycotts of Israel that were predominantly organized by women, eventually involved the support of Israeli peace organizations and was as much of a surprise to the PLO as it was to the Israeli occupation (Bacha, 2017).

To address the lack of Palestinian perspectives within the curriculum, primary sources that deal with the Palestinian experience of the Nakba should be included to provide an insight into the Palestinian perspective of the 1948 war, particularly given that the Nakba is widely viewed as ongoing to the present day in the context of continued settlement expansion. The Nakba Archive (2002) is a collection of oral history testimony from Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon and provides valuable context for both the Declaration of the Establishment of Israel document and the Arab League Declaration on the Invasion of Palestine, which is the second primary source included in ICS’s Lesson 4 (2022e). Additional incorporation of photographs or videos from the UNRWA Film & Photo Archive, which provides audio and visual documentation of Palestinian refugees since 1948 would provide additional insight into the lived experience of Palestinians during the Nakba and counter the lack of visual representation of Palestinians within the curriculum (UNRWA, 2016).

The inclusion of a wider variety of primary sources such as film, photographs, and posters would provide students with a more accurate representation of the First Intifada and would align with the C3 Framework’s stated learning outcomes. It would also provide insight into the rise of more violent tactics employed by Palestinians since the Second Intifada that would better contextualize the Hamas attack on October 7. ICS states, in framing the First Intifada at the beginning of Lesson 5, that “Palestinians attacked Israelis with improvised weapons and firearms supplied by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which organized much of the uprising” (2022f). This factually inaccurate portrayal of the inception of the First Intifada misrepresents the most important aspects of the Intifada. By inaccurately portraying the First Intifada, ICS legitimizes Israel’s violent response to the uprising and lacks context that would help students understand the cause-and-effect relationship between Israeli military and settler violence and the use of violent tactics by some members and groups of the Palestinian resistance.

Lack of Context

Building on the issues that stem from the lack of accurate and complete information, the lack of sufficient context further strengthens ICS’s implication that Palestinians have only been antagonistic aggressors to Israel and their Jewish neighbors. In Lesson 1 of the curriculum (2022b), the excerpt from Theodor Herzl’s “The Jewish State” (1896) lacks contextualization regarding the existing Palestinian population and their historical ties to the land ignoring the settler colonial nature of Zionism and its impact on the indigenous population of Palestine (ICS, 2022b). In Lesson 3, there is a major gap in source material from May 1948 to June 1967 (ICS, 2022d). This gap leads to a total lack of context for the inception of the 1967 war, as well as the experience of Palestinians in the years between 1948 and 1967. This lack of context makes it impossible for students to investigate Palestinian perspectives and understand cause-and-effect relationships between historical events.

The excerpt from “The Jewish State” highlights Herzl’s concerns about antisemitism across Europe, proposing the establishment of a Jewish state as a solution. The document reflects the persecution faced by Jews in Europe and their quest for a sovereign homeland. However, the document lacks contextualization regarding the existing Palestinian population and their historical ties to the land ignoring the settler colonial nature of Zionism and its impact on the indigenous population of Palestine (see Table 1 2a & 6a). It also omits Herzl’s recognition of the need for support from the Great Powers for the successful establishment of a Jewish state.

The gap in source material and information on events that occurred between May 14/15, 1948 and the June 1967 war conveys an inaccurate and incomplete depiction of the experience of Palestinians in the months and years after the creation of the state of Israel. This erasure functions in service of the curriculum’s portrayal of Palestinians as exclusively antagonistic and unwilling participants in peacebuilding. Of course, the entirety of “The Jewish State” (Herzl, 1896) is too long of a document to present to 6th-12th grade students, the target audience of ICS’s curriculum; however, the excerpt excludes text that highlights important context for the document (see Table 1 2b & 3d). An aspect of early Zionism that is also apparent in Herzl’s text but excluded from ICS’s excerpt is that multiple locations were considered for the Jewish state. Herzl highlights Palestine and Argentina (Argentine in the text). The selection of Palestine or Argentina for the Jewish state would be left to the Powers and Jewish consensus, “we shall take what is given us, and what is selected by Jewish public opinion” (American Zionist Emergency Council, 1946). Herzl mentions “the present possessors of the land” in reference to either or both Palestinians and Argentinians already living in areas proposed for the Jewish state, demonstrating his awareness that there were people living in both areas prior to Zionist colonization. By adding a few sentences to the excerpt, ICS could better contextualize the document regarding the existing Palestinian population, the settler colonial nature of Zionism, and the role of European imperialism’s support for the foundation of the Jewish state. Palestinian nationalism shifted away from “Arab/Ottoman” to “Palestinian/Arab” in the context of “watershed events” that included the British control of Palestine and the Balfour Declaration (Khalidi, 1997/2010). The ICS curriculum frames nationalism as only legitimately developing pre-World War I, which severely misrepresents the historical contexts in which Palestinian nationalism developed (see 1a, 4a & 4b). Herzl expresses the need for Great Power intervention for the Zionist project to be reified: “Should the Powers declare themselves willing to admit our sovereignty over a neutral piece of land, then the [Jewish] Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land” (American Zionist Emergency Council, 1946). Herzl further elaborates on the necessity of Great Power subscription to the Zionist project, “The Society of Jews… [will put] itself under the protectorate of the European Powers.” Herzl’s document demonstrates an amenability to the colonial mandate system that eventually came into effect after the ratification of the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1922.

Another useful addition to the collection of primary sources that would provide much-needed context for the time during May 1948 and June 1967 are the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948) and UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967). UN General Assembly Resolution 194 Article III (1948) codifies the right of return for Palestinian refugees who wish “to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors” and “that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property.” UN Resolution Security Council 242 (1967) of the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” i.e. the 1967 war. and reaffirms the importance of “a just settlement of the refugee problem.” The Israeli unwillingness to honor this right of return coupled with the continuous expansion of settlements since 1967 and continued occupation of the West Bank (and Golan Heights) are major obstacles to peace that are completely ignored by the ICS curriculum.

Single Perspective

The ICS curriculum privileges Great Power perspectives, from which Zionism as a political project was birthed, without providing sufficient information on their imperial context. This serves to legitimize the Great Power intervention in the region beginning after World War I, and the expansion of Israeli settlements since 1967, without providing sufficient information to nuance or question this perspective.

By relying heavily on primary source documents that advance only the Great Power colonial perspective such as the Balfour Declaration, Sykes-Picot Agreement, and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, ICS’s curriculum presents the colonial project and interventions advanced by the authors of these documents as legitimate, without giving students the resources or information to question the right or authority of the Great Powers to undermine the sovereignty of people living within the region following the end of World War I. This legitimization of the Great Power’s imperial project in the region after World War I contributes to the portrayal of Palestinians as antagonistic and unwilling to work towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Additionally, the curriculum developers’ decision to use only political maps (themselves crafted by ICS) that do not align with internationally recognized borders and disputed territories, rather than demographic and land use maps, fail to provide information that is essential to understanding Palestinians’ perspectives. ICS’s curriculum completely ignores the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, confiscation of land, demolition of homes, and displacement of civilians, avoiding any discussion of numerous UN resolutions and United States foreign policy over time. By depicting political boundaries that have resulted from military occupation as if they were incontrovertible facts, the maps erase the issue of territorial annexations that have not been recognized under international law. The illegal settlements in the West Bank are legitimized in the video at the beginning of Lesson 4 (ICS, 2019). They are described as “in locations chosen for their strategic security value,” though there is no explanation of what that “value” might be. The video further states that “the number of settlements remained sparse until the late 1970s. They would become a major issue in later negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.” The illegal settlements and settlement expansion are not mentioned again in the curriculum, despite the fact that settlement expansion and settler violence, along with the right of return for Palestinian refugees, are two of the primary concerns in negotiations with Israelis. Furthermore, settlements have been deemed illegal in successive judgements in institutions of international law, human rights and justice (Amnesty International, 2019).

A primary source that would provide useful insight into the perspectives of people living within Palestine contemporaneous with the other sources included by ICS is the Resolution of the General Syrian Congress at Damascus, which was ratified on July 2, 1919. The congress was composed of members from all regions of Ottoman Greater Syria who described themselves as “provided with credentials and authorizations by the inhabitants of our various districts, Moslems, Christians, and Jews” (1919). The resolution provides important insight into how Arab nationalism was shifting as a result of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Of the ten points included in the resolution, five include important context for several of the primary sources included in ICS’s curriculum, namely the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the British Mandate for Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, and the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement. Point three is a protest against Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations; the Congress unanimously rejected the institution of a mandate. Point six addresses the issue of Zionism. It states, “We oppose the pretensions of the Zionists to create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine” and that “our Jewish compatriots shall enjoy our common rights and assume the common responsibilities.” The Congress was not opposed to the millennia-long presence of Jewish people in the land of Greater Syria, but soundly opposed to the Zionist settler colonial project, an important distinction left out of the ICS curriculum. Point eight of the resolution rejects the separation of Greater Syria into Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, as was outlined in the Sykes-Picot agreement. Finally, point ten calls for the annulment of “these conventions and agreements” whose aim is establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine in light of “President Wilson’s condemnation of secret treaties,” seemingly a direct response to both the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration.

The inclusion of demographic and land-use maps would provide needed information to contextualize Palestinian resistance, particularly to settlement expansion since 1967. Alex McDonald of the Texas Coalition for Human Rights, in a video lesson titled “Letting Maps Tell the Story” (2020), is a valuable resource for educators seeking to help students employ geographic studies skills to examine the geopolitical context of the conflict. Additionally, the inclusion of UN Resolution 2334 (2016) would provide useful information on the ways in which Israel’s settlement expansion continues to make a two-state solution unviable. This would provide students valuable information on the Palestinian perspectives of Israel’s policy of expansion, and additional context for discussing causes and effects. The ICS curriculum developers chose to use only politically contested maps, rather than the very demographic and land use maps that would illuminate the situation under the Mandate before 1948, and which indeed formed the basis for the UN Partition Plan. For the period after 1948, land use, demographic information, and water resource maps would better align with the C3 Framework and provide context for discussing causes and effects.

Conclusion

Not only is the curriculum misaligned with standards for skill development in history and social studies, but it also fails in its expressed objectives. The stated goal of ICS’s curriculum, entitled “Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict” is that “students will become more knowledgeable global citizens and gain confidence in following current world issues” (2022a). Under the FAQ section of the ICS website, under the drop-down menu titled “What is ICS’s commitment to accuracy and balance?” the organization states that “accuracy is a value in itself. At a time when public discourse in America is becoming less committed to accuracy and facts, we think it is all the more important that we study historical documents and ground our understanding of history in them” (2018b). ICS’s curriculum, by providing students with insufficient context and inaccurate information across all five lessons, primes students to uncritically condone and support Israel’s ongoing settler colonial violence and dispossession rather than helping them become “more informed global citizens” (2022a). It fails to meet both its own professed goals and standards for social studies education and skills acquisition. This curriculum prevents students from engaging with the full historical context of the current situation and implicitly claims that the exclusion and erasure of Palestinian voices is an acceptable form of “accuracy.”

References

American Zionist Emergency Council. (1946). Texts Concerning Zionism: “The Jewish

State” by Theodor Herzl (1896). Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl.

Amnesty International. Chapter 3: Israeli Settlements and International Law. (2019,

January 30). Amnesty Retrieved on November 14, 2024 from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/chapter-3-israeli-settlements-and-international-law/.

Archive. (2002). Nakba Archive. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://www.nakba-archive.org/#.

Bacha, J. (Director). (2017, November 12). Naila and the Uprising [Film]. JustVision. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://justvision.org/nailaandtheuprising.

General Syrian Congress (1919 July 2). The resolution of the General Syrian Congress at Damascus proclaims Arab sovereignty over greater Syria (July 2, 1919). In A.F. Khater (Ed.), Sources in the History of the Modern Middle East, 2nd edition (2011) (pp. 158-160). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Institute for Curriculum Services. (2018a, June 4). ICS Episode 3: A place to belong. Vimeo. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://vimeo.com/273382658.

Institute for Curriculum Services (2018b, June 27). About Us. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://icsresources.org/about-us/#faqs.

Institute for Curriculum Services. (2019, September 9). ICS Episode 4: War and Peace. Vimeo. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://vimeo.com/358927133.

Institute for Curriculum Services. (2022a, February 23). Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://icsresources.org/curriculum/the-arab-israeli-conflict/.

Institute for Curriculum Services. (2022b, February 23). Lesson 1: Zionism and Arab Nationalism. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://icsresources.org/wp-content/uploads/ICS_Lesson1_Zionism.pdf.

Institute for Curriculum Services. (2022c, February 23). Lesson 2: Broken Promises.

Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://icsresources.org/wp-content/uploads/ICS_Lesson2_BrokenPromises.pdf.

Institute for Curriculum Services. (2022d, February 23). Lesson 3: The British Mandate

Era. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://icsresources.org/wp-content/uploads/ICS_Lesson3_The-Mandate.pdf.

Institute for Curriculum Services. (2022e, February 23). Lesson 4: From 1948 to the

Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://icsresources.org/wp-content/uploads/ICS_Lesson4_1948to1979.pdf.

Institute for Curriculum Services. (2022f, February 23). Lesson 5: The Continuing Arab-

Israeli Conflict & Peace Process. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://icsresources.org/wp-content/uploads/ICS_Lesson5_ContinuingConflict.pdf.

Responses to Chloe Daikh and the ICS Curriculum

Given the often-contentious nature of the subject discussed in the article above, editors for Teaching Social Studies solicited comments from teachers and preservice educators. Those responses are below.

Alysse Ginsburg, Uniondale (NY) High School: I am a 12th grade history teacher with 25 years of classroom teaching experience. The editors asked me to respond to this essay in 250-500 words. Of course, I can’t possibly respond thoughtfully or comprehensively to a 5,000 word essay in the allotted space, but I do have a few thoughts to share. Prior to reading the essay, I had not used ICS materials in my classroom. A colleague with experience using them had good things to say, so I investigated further. As a history teacher, I believe it is important to carefully examine the sources of content I might bring into my classroom to be sure they are accurate and align with standards and best practices. Here are a few things I concluded about ICS’s lessons:

The lessons on the Arab-Israeli conflict align well with both the New York Social Studies Framework and New Jersey’s Learning Standards for Social Studies (which are similar to the C3 Framework).
ICS’s lessons rely on primary sources representing different parties. For example, in the lesson on Jewish and Arab nationalism, I noticed the inclusion of primary sources from a mainstream Zionist thinker and a mainstream Arab nationalist thinker and documents from both the first Zionist Congress and the first Arab Congress. The number of sources provided seemed balanced and appropriate for the available time a teacher would have to teach the lesson.
ICS has been around for almost 20 years and has professional development partners in many state and local education agencies; 21,000 teachers have elected to participate in ICS programs; and ICS is a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Consortium Member.

I was honestly reluctant to submit this response without knowing even more, so I had a call with ICS and asked them to address some of the author’s comments directly. In addition to patiently answering my questions, they said they looked forward to seeing the essay (and even speaking to the writer) so they could understand her concerns and consider improvements, as they often do with teacher input. For example, they told me that they recently updated one of their PD sessions to further clarify the specific reasons why Palestinians and Arabs were opposed to the United Nations Partition plan. I’m an educator who believes in a growth mindset, so this pleased me. Though I had very limited space and time to respond to the essay, I was impressed by what I saw and heard from ICS, and I encourage you to look at their lessons and materials and judge for yourself. My main critique, which I told them, was that they should modify their materials for students at different reading levels. They said they were working on it.

Dianne Pari, former social studies chair, Floral Park (NY) High School: As an educator with experience as a social studies teacher, department chairperson, and currently a supervisor of student teachers, I have observed a growing hesitation among today’s teachers to address the Arab-Israeli conflict in the classroom. Many shy away from student questions about the current situation. Why? There are many complex reasons, but it cannot be overlooked that in today’s politically charged climate, even the most neutral or fact-based responses can be misconstrued, criticized, or politicized. There have been cases where educators have faced backlash from parents and school administrations simply for presenting information that challenges students’ or families’ existing beliefs or biases.

This makes it imperative that curriculum materials on this topic are balanced, historically accurate, and free of bias. I support Chloe Daikh’s assertion that the ICS curriculum on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict” lacks this balance, particularly in its limited inclusion of Palestinian voices and perspectives. Such omissions can unintentionally perpetuate a one-sided narrative, portraying Palestinians predominantly as aggressors and Israelis solely as defenders for example. The Daikh article provides a detailed evaluation of the ICS curriculum, and I agree with her conclusions. Unfortunately, she, nor the ISC, touch upon the issue I raised earlier, that teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict is so polarizing today, that it is often being avoided altogether.

If I were teaching this topic today, I would begin with two foundational lessons to establish historical context, especially of previous conflicts, and then transition to an analysis of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. To ensure a broad and balanced understanding, I would incorporate a range of news sources, including major American outlets and international media such as Al Jazeera that offer valuable resources for classroom discussion. Online, Al Jazeera provides “Israel-Gaza War in Maps and Charts: Live Tracker” (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker).

Students must be provided with balanced, credible, and comprehensive resources that foster critical thinking and informed discussion—especially when addressing complex and emotionally charged global issues such as this one and more importantly, teachers must be supported by school administrators when their lessons are challenged.

John Staudt, The Wheatly School, East Williston, NY: As a teacher and a historian, I largely agree with Chole Daihk’s analysis of the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) curriculum on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict.” There are several significant methodological and historiographical shortcomings, including biases that teachers should explore with students when teaching controversial topics.

The ICS prioritizes using state-centric sources while overlooking everyday experiences of the people most impacted by the actions of state characters. It leaves out numerous critical primary sources – most egregiously – from Palestinian voices and perspectives. The exclusive inclusion of mostly official documents is a prime example of what the scholar Edward Said called “textual imperialism.” Textual imperialism is a form of revisionist history written from the perspectives of the victors, while overshadowing the personal experiences of those who lost and suffered the most. (Said, 1993) By excluding Palestinian literature before the 1988 Declaration, the ICS distorts the history of Palestinian nationalism and erases decades of Arab political activism.

The exclusion of nineteen-years of actions, words and events between 1948 to 1967, reveals a broad gap in the literature and obscures crucial historical information including, among other things, evolution of early resistance movements, the formation of Palestinian political consciousness and the fate of Palestinian refugees. These omissions inevitably distort historically crucial links and obscures important continuities underlying present-day controversies and conflicts. These significant oversights also distort the First Intifada as PLO-initiated violence which minimizes its original non-violent, civic nature.

The geographic mapping options Daikh makes note of demonstrate significant bias. By incorporating political maps that legitimize military occupation, the curriculum normalizes settlements that are recognized as illegal under international law. When coupled with the absence of sources featuring Palestinian perspectives this further exacerbates the historical revisionism in the curriculum. By excluding alternative demographic and land-use maps, students do not grasp the circumstances — displacement, resource distribution, fragmentation — underlying Palestinian perspectives and reasons for resistance.

The ICC’s narrative makes Palestinian activism appear violently aggressive, while misinterpreting Israeli policy as almost entirely defensive. A good example of the problem is the exclusion of Israeli historian Ilan Pappé’s “1948 paradigm.” Pappe challenges the mainstream Israeli narrative of the 1948 war as a struggle for independence, instead arguing it was a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing to expel and displace Palestinians — a perspective he claims has been suppressed in historical discourse. The ICC approach further obscures the structural, settler-colonialism of the Israeli-Arab conflict (Pappé, 2006). I think it is significant to mention that Pappé was born in Israel after the 1948 war and is a Jew whose parents fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Pappé teaches in Great Britain after he was pressured to resign his position at the University of Haifa because of his confrontational views of official Israeli government policies.

As teachers, our goal is to provide students with a range of materials to analyze so they can reach conclusions based on evidence and share with colleagues in respectful conversations. By utilizing selected sources focusing on mostly one perspective of this deeply complicated issue, the ICC’s approach reenforces historical and geographical biases and does a disservice to students and the general public who are interested in learning more about this and other controversial topics. To counter these tendencies, historians and social studies teachers must employ meticulous attention to detail and incorporate perspectives that challenge an educator’s own arguments instead of following preordained interpretive templates.

Erin Smyth, Social Studies Education Student, Hofstra University: As a graduate student pursuing a degree in secondary social studies education, I was asked to review the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) curriculum on the Arab-Israeli conflict alongside Chloe Daikh’s critique of it. On the whole, I agree with Daikh’s analysis. The ICS curriculum fails to provide a complete historical account of the conflict. It leaves out essential historical events and excludes sources from individuals, particularly Palestinians, directly affected by the conflict. This omission hinders students from developing a nuanced understanding of a complex historical issue.

My biggest issue with the ICS curriculum is the absence of Palestinian-authored sources. Aside from the one late inclusion in the curriculum which Daikh notes, the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, there are no primary sources that focus on Palestinian perspectives, even though the curriculum repeatedly includes Zionist and Israeli sources. This imbalance results in a distorted narrative which is evident in the way the Nakba is covered. The curriculum gives little attention to the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 and omits oral histories, failing to convey how the Nakba is experienced by generations of Palestinians. As a result, students are denied the opportunity to understand one of the long-lasting impacts of the conflict on Palestinians.

These omissions not only negatively impact students’ ability to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, but shape how they understand power, legitimacy, and justice in history. The inclusion of oral histories and more balanced source material is crucial. Without doing so, students cannot fully understand the causes and consequences of the conflict, nor can they evaluate historical claims with the critical thinking skills the C3 Framework demands.

As a future educator, I believe I have a responsibility to teach with integrity and eliminate bias in order to give my students the most complete understanding of history I can. That means resisting overly sanitized or one-sided curricula and ensuring my classroom is a space where multiple narratives are included and analyzed. The ICS curriculum, in its current form, does not meet that standard.

Book Review: The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017

by Rashid Khalidi (New York: Holt, 2020)

Review by Alan Singer

A year after the brutal attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and the devastating Israeli military response that has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, I reexamined The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017 by Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, originally published in 2020. A reviewer for The Nation (Hawa, 2020) described it as “one of the best-researched general surveys of 20th and early 21st century Palestinian life, but it’s also a deeply personal work.” A review in The Guardian (Hughes, 2020) called it “informed and passionate. It pulls no punches in its critique of Jewish-Israeli policies (policies that have had wholehearted US support after 1967), but it also lays out the failings of the Palestinian leadership . . . An elegy for the Palestinians.” The New York Times (Anderson, 2020) reviewer was more critical arguing that Khalidi failed to spell out a resolution to the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and dismissing what he did offer as having an “increasingly fantastic quality.”

Rashid Khalidi’s main arguments are that during the 100-year war on Palestine, the dominant powers, including the United States, favored Zionist ambitions and either ignored or thwarted Palestinian nationalism and that Israel justifies inequality and its aggressive nationalism as part of its need for security. Khalidi’s response is that there are two peoples who legitimately occupy Palestine and there can be no resolution until they both acknowledge the legitimacy of the other. This would require removing external support for the discriminatory and unequal current arrangement. At best the United States has paid lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, but it never placed the needed pressure on Israel to make this possible (245-247).

Khalidi comes from a prominent Palestinian family, so the history of Palestine is interwoven with his family’s history and his own personal experiences. Khalidi was born and educated in New York City while his father was a United Nations official. He has lived and taught in Lebanon and frequently visited Palestine/Israel for research and family visits. His Palestinian family included generations of Islamic and legal scholars and government officials. One noteworthy relative warned of the threat of Zionism to Palestinians as early as 1899 (4). His grandfather was Hussain al-Khalidi, an advocate for Palestinian rights, a mayor of Jerusalem, and member of the Ottoman parliament. A paternal uncle, Husayn al-Khalidi, was mayor of Jerusalem from 1934 to 1937 when he was sent into exile by the British to the Indian Ocean Seychelles archipelago. He was not able to return to Palestine until 1943.

In The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, Rashid Khalidi writes a history of the region from a Palestinian lens and deconstructs what he considers to be myths about the founding of Israel and its rise as a regional military power. While Khalidi’s title has the history of the struggle of Palestinians for nationhood beginning in 1917, the book actually begins in the 1890s when Theodore Herzl offered a Zionist vision for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Herzl proposed a settlement plan based on the expulsion of Palestinians that continued to be implemented after the founding of Israel as an independent state in 1948. Herzl believed that European Jews had to “expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country” (4).

Yusuf Diya, the late 19th century Palestinian Mayor of Jerusalem, responded to growing Zionist sentiment in an 1899 letter to the chief rabbi of France. Diya argued that “Palestine is an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and more gravely, it is inhabited by others.” He concluded the letter “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone” (5). Herzl answered Diya’s letter acknowledging that a Jewish state in Palestine would be a European settler colony and argued it would “form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism” (10). In the 1920s, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a British World War I veteran who promoted a militaristic Zionism, called for military action to support a Jewish state. In 1925, Jabotinsky wrote “If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must find a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf . . . Zionism is a colonizing venture, and therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces” (51).

Khalidi believes that the British Empire was never motivated by altruism towards colonized people, but supported Jewish emigration to Palestine because it would buttress Britain’s position in the eastern Mediterranean and solve its own antisemitic “Jewish Problem.” At the same time during and after World War I the British were promising European Zionists a Jewish state in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration, they were also promising Middle Eastern Arab leaders that independent Arab states including a Palestinian state would be carved out of the Ottoman Empire (25). Balfour recognized the contradictory promises that were made, and in a confidential memo to the British cabinet he wrote “we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country . . . the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land” (38).

The hypocrisy of the British position continued when the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine issued in 1922 formalized British control over Palestine. It included a pledge to honor the Balfour Declaration’s promise of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine and while the mandate included a clause that “nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities,” it never directly referenced Palestinians as a people with a right to self-determination, something British and the Americans continued to do in Middle East peace talks into the 1990s (34).

In the 1930s, as Jewish migration from Europe to Palestine expanded, there was growing Palestinian nationalist resistance to the British Mandate including armed battles between the British military and Palestinian rebels that resulted in about one-sixth of the Palestinian male population killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. In response to the uprisings, a British Commission recommended the division of the mandate into two separate states with the formation of a small Jewish homeland on less than 20% of the territory from which the Palestinian population would be transferred, a euphonism for expelled. Khalidi argues that prior to and during World War II, the Palestinian nationalist movement was weakened by British repression and internal division while the Zionist movement was strengthened by British policy that included creating a Jewish Brigade that marched under their own banner in the British Army and arming and training Jewish settlers to help defeat a wartime Palestinian uprising (43-47). The Jewish Brigade and the armed settlers became the core of the Israeli army during the war for independence.

As the horrors of the Nazi extermination campaign became known, with increasing support from diasporan Jews living in the United States and the American and British governments, Zionists positioned themselves for creation of a post-war Jewish state either in a portion of the Palestinian Mandate or in the entire territory (61). After the war, the British Empire receded as the British were forced to accept Indian independence, faced armed colonial resistance in a number of areas, and Jewish settler opposed continuation of the Palestinian Mandate. Great Britain finally turned the future of Palestine over to the newly established United Nations which issued a proposal highly favorable to the Jewish settlers. The Jewish minority would receive over half of the mandate territory to establish an independent state while the much larger Palestinian population would receive a significantly smaller amount of land. The proposed revision led to the Nakba, the catastrophe, the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians from what would become the Jewish state and war between Israel and neighboring Arab states. Khalidi describes the forced removal of Palestinians from their land and villages as ethnic cleansing (72-75).

According to Khalidi’s chronology, the expulsion of Palestinians began in November 1947, six months before the declaration of Israeli independence in May 1948 and before the invasion of a well-armed Israel by virtually non-existent Arab armies, an invasion that Khalidi dismisses as ill-conceived at best and not necessarily intended to benefit Palestinians. It is a myth that a small and ill-prepared Jewish state defeated seven powerful Arab nations against overwhelming odds to secure its independence. The reality, according to Khalidi, is that Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen did not significantly participate, Egypt and Syria were overmatched, and Transjordan, later Jordan, used the Israeli war for independence as an opportunity to seize control over West Bank territory that was intended as part of an independent Palestinian state (75-77).

Israel’s military victory was aided by a shift in American foreign policy from balanced support for both a Jewish state and newly emerging Arab governments in the region, to near total diplomatic and military support for Israel. While elements of the American foreign policy establishment initially expressed concern that support for Israel would hurt American oil interests in the region, that did not manifest as a problem until the 1970s when the United States began sending Israel massive amounts of military aid. Decisions were often made because of domestic political concerns. President Truman reportedly told a meeting of U.S. diplomats “I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents” (79-80).

After independence, Israel treated the remaining Palestinians within its territory as second-class citizens subject to martial law. Dispossessed Palestinians within Israel were prevented from leasing or purchasing land that they had been driven off that was now reserved for Jewish settlement. Palestinians forced into refugee camps in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria were completely dependent on the United Nations for relief aid and for maintaining the most basic conditions for survival. They were never integrated into host countries and increasingly they identified as Palestinians with a desire to return to their traditional homes. Military incursions into Israel by Palestinian nationalist groups were met with disproportionate force and collective punishment by Israel which only intensified the desire for an independent Palestinian state (83-88).

One of Khalidi’s more controversial assertions is that justifications given by Israel for the 1967 preemptive strike that destroyed the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces are unfounded. Israel claimed that it faced an impending attack that threatened its existence. Khalidi cites a report by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to President Lyndon Johnson and Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban stating that no attack was imminent and that if the Arab states actually did attack Israel, they would be easily defeated by a far superior Israeli military. In support of his argument, Khalidi cites Lyndon Johnson’s The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971) and a Department of State analysis from 1967 (Foreign Relations, 1964-1968, Volume XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967). At the meeting, President Johnson added “All of our intelligence people are unanimous” that if Egypt did attack “You will whip hell out of them” (97). According to U.S. documents later published, General Earl Wheeler, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed the President “The UAR’s [United Arab Republic, Egypt and Syria] dispositions are defensive and do not look as if they are preparatory for an invasion of Israel” and a C.I.A. memorandum reported “Israel could almost certainly attain air superiority over the Sinai Peninsula in 24 hours after the initiative or in two or three days if the UAR struck first” (276). Despite U.S. intelligence reports and the meeting between Johnson, McNamara, and Eban, the head of the Israeli intelligence agency informed McNamara that Israel planned to go ahead with a preemptive attack and McNamara gave tacit approval (104). These documents undermine the myth that the preemptive Israel strike on its neighbors in 1967 was necessitated by survival.

Khalidi accuses the America media of being complicit with this country’s one-sided approach to repeated Middle Eastern crises and the treatment of Palestinians. He opens Chapter 4 with a quote from a 1982 communication between Thomas Friedman, at the time the New York Times Beirut Bureau Chief, with editors at the newspaper. Friedman accuses them of being “afraid to tell our readers and those who might complain to you that the Israelis are capable of indiscriminately shelling an entire city” (139), a telling complaint given Israel’s current bombing campaigns in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and Israel’s claims that the bombings are carefully directed at military targets.

Pointedly, United Nations efforts to mediate the conflict between Israel and its neighbors with Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967 made no mention of Palestinians except to call for a resolution of the refugee crisis. Ignoring the existence of the Palestinian people as a party to the conflict contributed to a claim by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in an interview published in the Sunday Times of London on June 15, 1969 (106). Khalidi quoted an excerpt from the interview; however, the full statement is worth citing because of its total denial of a Palestinian nationality. According to Meir “There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either Southern Syria, before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine, including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.”

Israel’s resounding victory in the 1967 war the exposed military weaknesses of the major Arab nations. Khalidi believes their failure to advance the Palestinian cause spurred a sense of political, literary, and artistic Palestinian nationalism and the emergence of Yassar Arafat, the PLO, and Fatah as dominant forces in Palestinian society. Israel countered this resurgence by continually equating Palestinian with terrorist in efforts to discredit the movement in the United States and on the international stage, although the Fatah and the PLO were never a military threat to Israel (110-119). The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, Khalidi considers them part of a United States Cold War strategy for pulling Egypt out of the Soviet orbit and effectively dividing the Arab bloc, excluded Palestinians from the negotiations (122). They established as a goal respecting the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” and the creation of civilian “autonomy” on the Israeli occupied West Bank, but not statehood, something Khalidi criticized in Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (Beacon Press, 2013) as “devoid of meaning and content.” Developments since the 1978 agreement bear out Khalidi’s view as Israel has absorbed East Jerusalem, built West Bank settlements that are illegal under international law, effectively blockaded the Gaza Strip, and it has continually blocked efforts to create an independent Palestinian state, even after the PLO and Fatah endorsed a two-state solution, accepting the legitimacy of a Jewish state (126).

Khalidi provides much greater coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, than the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In his view it was much more closely linked to the future of Palestine and argues that proponents of a “Greater Israel,” including Ariel Sharon, Menachim Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir, believed the battle to defeat Palestinian forces in Lebanon would destroy the PLO as an effective military force and severely weaken the Palestinian nationalist movement. He quotes former Israeli Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur’s explanation of the war to a Knesset committee that in the “Occupied Territories” it would provide Israel with “greater freedom of action” (142-143). Khalidi also believes that United States Secretary of State Alexander Haig had prior knowledge of the invasion and gave Israel tacit approval.

In an effort to prevent a broader war, the Reagan administration did propose limiting Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the creation of an autonomous Palestinian Authority, but not an independent Palestinian state (151). Despite warnings to Israel, the United States never limited its support for Israeli action in Lebanon, even after the Western press documented Israel’s role in massacres carried out by its local allies at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps (158-162). We see similar warnings by the U.S. today that continued Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon will lead to reduced U.S. support, but in both cases the United States took no action.

Unanticipated results of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon were the emergence of Hizballah as a new armed opponent of Israel, growing international sympathy for Palestinians, and increased militancy by Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza as they realized they could not rely on the either the major powers or Arab nations to mediate conflicts with Israel or to press for creation of the long promised Palestinian state. This new Palestinian awareness led to the spontaneous eruption of the First Intifada in 1987 in Gaza that then spread to the West Bank with street battles between largely unarmed young Palestinian protesters and heavily armed Israeli troops (168-169). The Intifada also exposed a growing rift between the PLO/Fatah leadership in exile and the local Palestinian population directly challenging the Israeli occupation although in 1988, the PLO did issue a Palestinian “Declaration of Independence “(178).

In his discussion of the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 and Oslo Accords meetings in 1993, Khalidi believes an important concession by Israel was acceptance that the Palestinians were a people and that the PLO were their legitimate representatives. However, the Palestinian delegation at Oslo was a delegation of exiles who had not been in occupied Palestine for decades; they were not well versed on conditions there and were ill-prepared for negotiations. In exchange for receiving limited administrative responsibility for scattered areas across the West Bank and the ability to return from exile, the PLO leadership conceded the continuation of the Israeli occupation. Arafat mistakenly believed that future negotiations based on the Oslo Accords would bring further concessions from Israel, something the Israeli’s were never prepared to do as they drew out the timeframe for reaching new agreements. The United States, solidly in the same camp as Israel, blamed the PLO and Arafat for any delays. U.S. bias and Israeli intransigence torpedoed the accords despite PLO willingness to acquiesce on virtually every front, acquiescence that further alienated the PLO from Palestinian activists on the West Bank and in Gaza (194-199).

Relocated to the West Bank headquarters, the PLO served at consent of the of the Israeli military, and in 2002, during a Second Intifada set off by Palestinian frustration and Israeli provocations, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority were forcibly closed (199-203). Khalidi views the Second Intifada as a setback for Palestinians because scenes of violence broadcast globally seemed to justify the Israeli intransigence that caused the violence (2019).

Following Oslo, the Israeli occupation completely sealed off the Gaza Strip. Awareness that Oslo agreements would never end the occupation eventually brought Hamas to power in the Gaza and created the conditions that ultimately forced Israel to close its settlements there and withdraw. Meanwhile, the United States in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, stiffened laws against terrorism making an even remote connection to an organization or individual on its terrorist list impossible to maintain, isolating the groups, reinforcing their alienation, and preventing any attempts to modify their goals or actions (221).

Khalidi cites instances where Israeli actions ran counter to U.S. policy goals, especially during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In these cases, the United States attempted to put a break on aggressive Israeli actions, however American governments were primarily concerned with its relationship with Arab governments and not with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Writing before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the Israeli response, Khalidi believed there was a gradual shift taking place in American public opinion recognizing the legitimacy of Palestinian grievances and aspirations. The problem, he saw, was that the political leadership in the country was non-responsive to this shift. The Republican Party was heavily dependent for votes on Evangelical Christian supporters that perceived the State of Israel as signaling the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and both parties relied on wealthy pro-Israel donors to finance election campaigns. Israel’s success in equating Palestinians with terrorists undermined sympathy for the Palestinian cause after al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001 and the Bush administration launched a war on terror that continued into the Obama presidency (228-232).

In his conclusion, Khalidi addresses possibilities for shifting public opinion in the United States to become more favorable to the Palestinian cause. One approach is to identify the Palestinian cause with other liberation movements by colonized indigenous people, specifically South Africa, Ireland, and Native Americans. However, this has been difficult because Zionism claims biblical roots in Palestine and that the ancient Jews are the indigenous population, not Palestinian Arabs. American perceptions of United States history and a positive view of settler colonialism have also made it difficult to change American views about Palestinian statehood (41-242).

A second tactic proposed by Khalidi is challenging the myth that Israel is David hoping for peace but prepared to fight against a powerful Arab Goliath. Khalidi wants to reverse the idea of who is powerful and who is victimized. He also wants to challenge the moral legitimacy of Israel, that it cannot be both Jewish and democratic. The Israeli charter ensures Jewish supremacy which makes it illiberal and discriminatory (243-244).

Khalidi believes that at this point the United States cannot be relied on to broker a fair solution and a massive campaign within the United States is needed to shift public opinion. Palestinians will also need to win support in Europe, Russia, India, China, and Brazil. In Arab countries, Khalidi argues Palestinians must appeal to sympathetic populations rather than unsympathetic regimes (252). It may also be possible to influence Israelis tired of decades of war and the intense fighting and hostage situation in the latest conflict. Palestinians, for their part, need to reject Oslo gradualism, demand an entirely new timetable, and insist on a set of conditions based on the initial United Nations decision to establish two independent states.

Khalidi’s coverage of most of the events in the hundred years’ war on Palestine are comprehensive, however there is almost no discussion of the 1973 Yom Kipper War. I think it is a significant omission because in that war neighboring Arab states did attack Israel in an attempt to regain territory seized by Israel in 1967, and at least at the start, Israel appeared to be vulnerable. For many American Jews and for Israelis the attack on Israel and the successful Israeli counterattack justified their belief that Israel’s survival as a small country was continually threatened by hostile neighbors, could only be ensured through a dominant military supported by U.S. aid, and that the occupation of Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank were essential for Israel’s defense. I can only conjecture that the 1973 war is of limited importance in Khalidi’s narrative because the United States was already committed to one-sided support for Israel in Middle Eastern conflicts and because it did not significantly change the situation for Palestinians in the occupied territories.

References

Anderson, S. (2020, January 28). “Is There Any Way to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/books/review/the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine-rashid-khalidi.html. Accessed December 23, 2024.

Hawa, K. (2020, August 10/17). “Present Absences, A century of struggle in Palestine,” The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/hundred-years-war-on-palestine-rashid-khalidi/. Accessed December 23, 2024.

Hughes, M. (2020, May 7). “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi review – conquest and resistance,” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/07/the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine-by-rashid-khalidi-review-conquest-and-resistance# Accessed December 23, 2024.

Marantz, A. 2023, December 2. “Columbia Suspended Pro-Palestine Student Groups. The Faculty Revolted,” The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/columbia-suspended-pro-palestine-student-groups-the-faculty-revolted. Accessed December 23, 2024.

Mashiach, I. (2024, November 30). “Palestinian-American Historian Rashid Khalidi: ‘Israel Has Created a Nightmare Scenario for Itself. The Clock Is Ticking,” Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-11-30/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/rashid-khalidi-israel-has-created-a-nightmare-scenario-for-itself-the-clock-is-ticking/00000193-7b6a-d1df-a79f-7beab0db0000. Accessed December 23, 2024.

Notes and Commentary 2023, December “Tenured Barbarians, On academic antisemitism,” The New Criterion, v. 42, n. 4. https://newcriterion.com/article/tenured-barbarians/ . Accessed December 23, 2024.

Shezaf, H. (2019, July 5) “Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs,” Haaretz

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-07-05/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-israel-systematically-hides-evidence-of-1948-expulsion-of-arabs/0000017f-f303-d487-abff-f3ff69de0000. Accessed December 23, 2024.

Israel, Russia, and International Law

Israel, Russia, and International Law

Lawrence Wittner

This article is reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus

Israel, Russia, and International Law

International law―the recognized rules of behavior among nations based on customary practices and treaties, among them the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights―has been agreed upon by large and small nations alike. To implement this law, the nations of the world have established a UN Security Council (to maintain international peace and security) and a variety of international courts, including the UN’s International Court of Justice (which adjudicates disputes between nations and gives advisory opinions on international legal issues) and the International Criminal Court (which prosecutes individuals for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression). Yet nations continue to defy international law.

In the ongoing Gaza crisis, the Israeli government has failed to uphold international law by rebuffing the calls of international organizations to end its massive slaughter of Palestinian civilians. The U.S. government has facilitated this behavior by vetoing three UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire, while the Israeli government has ignored an International Court of Justice ruling that it should head off genocide in Gaza by ensuring sufficient humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population. The Israeli government has also refused to honor an order by the International Court of Justice to halt its offensive in Rafah and denounced the International Criminal Court’s request for arrest warrants for its top officials.

Russia’s military assault upon Ukraine provides another example of flouting international law. Given the UN Charter’s prohibition of the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” when Russian military forces seized and annexed Crimea and commenced military operations to gobble up eastern Ukraine in early 2014, the issue came before the UN Security Council, where condemnation of Russia’s action was promptly vetoed by Russia. Similarly, in February 2022, when the Russian government commenced a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia again vetoed Security Council action. That March, the International Court of Justice, by an overwhelming vote, ordered Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine—but, as usual, to no avail. Unfortunately, these violations of international law are not unusual for, over many decades, numerous nations have ignored the recognized rules of international conduct.

What is lacking is not international law but, rather, its consistent and universal enforcement. For decades, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France) have repeatedly used their veto power in that entity to block UN action to maintain international peace and security. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of the world’s nations do not accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, while more than a third of the world’s nations (including some of the largest, such as Russia, the United States, China, and India) have resisted becoming parties to the International Criminal Court.

Despite such obstacles, these organizations have sometimes played very useful roles in resolving international disputes. The UN Security Council has dispatched numerous peacekeeping missions around the world―including 60 alone in the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union―that have helped defuse crises in conflict-ridden regions.

For its part, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) paved the way for the Central American Peace Accords during the 1980s through its ruling in Nicaragua v United States, while its ruling in the Nuclear Tests case helped bring an end to nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. In addition, the ICJ’s ruling in Chad v Libya resolved a territorial dispute between these two nations and ended their military conflict.

Although the International Criminal Court has only been in operation since 2002, it has thus far convicted ten individuals of heinous crimes, issued or requested warrants for the arrest of prominent figures charged with war crimes (including Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the leaders of Hamas), and conducted or begun investigations of yet other notorious individuals. But, of course, as demonstrated by the persistence of wars of aggression and massive violations of human rights, enforcing international law remains a major problem in the contemporary world.

Therefore, if the world is to move beyond national impunity―if it is finally to scrap the long and disgraceful tradition among nations of might makes right―it is necessary to empower the world’s major international organizations to enforce the international law that nations have agreed to respect. This strengthening of global governance is certainly possible.

Although provisions in the UN Charter make outright abolition of the UN Security Council veto very difficult, other means are available for reducing the veto’s baneful effects. In many cases ―including those of the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts―simply invoking Article 27(3) of the UN Charter would be sufficient, for it states that a party to a dispute before the Security Council shall abstain from voting in connection with that dispute. Furthermore, 124 UN nations have already endorsed a proposal for renunciation of the veto when taking action against genocide, crimes against humanity, and mass atrocities. Moreover, the UN General Assembly has occasionally employed “Uniting for Peace” resolutions to take action when the Security Council has failed to do so.

Improving the effectiveness of the international judicial system has also generated attention in recent years. The LAW Not War campaign, championed by organizations dedicated to improving global governance, advocates strengthening the International Court of Justice, principally by increasing the number of nations accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court. Similarly, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, representing numerous organizations, calls on all nations to ratify the Court’s founding statute and, thereby, “expand the Court’s reach and reduce the impunity gap.”

National impunity is not inevitable, at least if people and governments of the world are willing to take the necessary actions. Are they? Or will they continue talking of a “rules-based international order” while they avoid enforcing the rules?

Children Bear the Cost of War in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza

Children Bear the Cost of War in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza

by Alan Singer, Hofstra University

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/2/2274375/-Children-Bear-the-Cost-of-War-in-Ukraine-Sudan-and-Gaza?_=2024-10-02T18:27:44.000-07:00

Millions of children are suffering from severe physical, mental, and emotional, trauma, impacted by continuing wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza. They have lost family members, fled from their homes, and seen friends and siblings wounded or killed. The effects of mental and emotional trauma like PTSD, depression, and anxiety can last for decades and my never subside. According to UNICEF, more than half of Ukraine’s children were displaced in the first months alone following the Russian invasion in February 2022, about 500 were killed, and over 1,000 were injured by the Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities.

The latest civil war in Sudan, starting in April 2023, has placed 24 million children at risk of exposure to brutality and human rights violations. According to UNICEF, 3.7 million Sudanese children are acutely malnourished, including over 700,000 suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Schools and hospitals stopped functioning meaning children are denied an education and a vast majority of the population lacks basic health care. There are reports of children being killed, subjected to sexual violence as a weapon of war, and forced to serve as child soldiers.

UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, an Australian, describes Gaza as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child and day after day, that brutal reality is reinforced.” UNICEF estimates that over 850,000 Palestinian children lost their homes and were forced to relocate, sometimes multiple times. Over 20,000 children have lost either one or both parents. More than 14,000 children have died in Israeli attacks, but the mortality figure may be higher because of deaths from starvation and disease.

Ulrike Julia Wendt, an emergency child protection coordinator with the International Rescue Committee and a member of the German Parliament, estimates that “There are about 1.2 million children who are in need of mental health and psychosocial support. This basically means nearly all Gaza’s children.” Based on her own visits to Gaza, she reports that Palestinian children are having nightmares and wetting their beds because of stress, noise, crowding, and constant change.

Another casualty of the war in Gaza is the education system. Following the Hamas assault on Israeli on October 7, 2023, Israel responded with a massive bombing campaign and a military invasion, forcing the closing of all schools. More than 800 schools were bombed or destroyed by the Israeli Airforce during the first five months of the war. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian students have had no formal education for the past year or a safe place to spend the day. Many end up in the street sifting through ruble trying to find things to sell that will help support their families.

The 18-member UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) accuses Israel of severe breaches of the 1989 global treaty protecting children’s rights that Israel signed. It argues that Israel’s military actions in Gaza are having a catastrophic impact on children and are among the worst violations in recent history. Bragi Gudbrandsson of Iceland, vice chair of the committee, describes “the outrageous death of children” in Gaza as “almost historically unique.” Israel attended United Nations hearings in Geneva, Switzerland in September on its actions in Gaza where its representatives claimed Israel respected international humanitarian law and that the Children’s Rights treaty did not apply in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli public views very managed coverage of events in Gaza on television and reads similarly edited reports in its press so it is largely unaware of the depth of the trauma suffered by Palestinian children. Reports focus on military operations, the negotiating demands of the Netanyahu government, and concern with Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Israeli psychologists report Israeli children are suffering childhood trauma following from the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, that resulted in over 1,200 deaths and hundreds of hostages. Despite disruptions caused by continuing air raid alerts and fear that the small country could be overrun, life for Jewish children in most of Israel has not been interrupted in the way it is in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza and Israeli mental health professionals, with support from the government and non-profit organizations, have been able to provide children with needed counseling and support.