The geography textbook that I recently mentioned was filled with anti-Israel lies was the fourth edition of World Regional Geography.
In response to my initial criticism, the main author released this statement:
OK, let’s look at the sixth edition.
It doesn’t include some of the more egregious lies (like blaming Jews for modern terrorism,) but it still has plenty.
Here are the major errors – all against Israel – that can be seen in its three main pages on the topic. (Click to enlarge the pages.)
1. There was no “Palestinian” land to shrink. The area of British Mandate Palestine was British, then Israeli/Egyptian/Jordanian. It was never “Palestinian.”
2. Who, exactly, forced them into refugee camps? It certainly wasn’t Israel. Why does the text not mention how Arabs have discriminated against Palestinians for six decades?
3. Under Israeli law, they are equal, certainly since 1967. One can claim that there is de facto discrimination against Arabs by the Jewish majority, but saying that the state discriminates against Arab Israelis is not true.
4. To blame the second intifada on the settlements is simply false.
5. The Golan Heights is not “Palestinian territory” under any definition.
6. The term “occupied Palestinian territories” was not coined nor used by the UN until the 1990s. The Palestinian Arabs were not mentioned once in UNSC 242.
7. See above. UN 242 had nothing to do with any Palestinian state, and it was not even envisioned when it was written – it was for peace between Israel and the Arab states, especially Egypt and Jordan. Interestingly, the text here does not mention that Israel and Jordan are at peace, and only implies Israel’s peace agreement with Egypt.
8. Not a word about Hamas coup, and their rockets and terror, that caused the closure of Gaza. Instead, the authors say that Israel “negated” its withdrawal. This is an outrageous assertion.
9. Thousands of Palestinians were not displaced by settlements. Essentially all settlements outside Hebron and Jerusalem were built in areas where no one ever lived before, and the numbers of Arabs displaced in those two cities is quite small, not to mention that the purchase of the houses was done legally.
10. This number, claiming 30,000 farmers separated from their land by the security barrier, is absolute fiction. I would be surprised if the number of landowners affected by the fence is 1% of that number.
There is more. A couple of pages later the authors claim that the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s was a spillover from the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is false. And then the authors claim that regional stability would naturally follow a peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians (plus an end to Syria’s civil war.)
Plus, students who purchase the book have access to videos mentioned in the text, and who knows what errors are in those.
But these three pages show quite clearly that at least this college textbook is riddled with errors – nearly two dozen in only three pages – and all the errors seem to be in one direction, against Israel.
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