Israel Matzav

Israel's moonbat education minister orders textbooks to use pre-1967 maps

Many of you outside Israel have probably never heard of Yuli Tamir. Tamir, a moonbat who is a member of the Labor party and a (former?) member of Peace Piece by Piece Now, is now trying to re-educate Israeli children to believe that Israel's borders are the same as they were on June 4, 1967, the day before the Six-Day War broke out. Just like in Mother Russia, she wants to brainwash our children.

"There have been many complaints that the Israeli map which appears in textbooks does not have any borders," said Tamir to Ynet Tuesday morning, "I've looked into the matter and indeed, there is no reference to the Green Line. For example Gaza is still included as part of Israel."

...

Tamir is not worried about the expected criticism: "Taking the Green Line out of the maps is also brining politics into schools. You can't draw Israel's borders without brining in politics. There are some things like Gaza that just need it. You can't help it that reality changes."

Haaretz adds:

Tamir said Israel could not demand of its Arab neighbors to mark the June 4, 1967 borders, while the Israeli education system erased them from its textbooks and from children's awareness.

Professor Yoram Bar-Gal, head of Geography and Environmental Studies at Haifa University, said Tamir's directive to bring the Green Line back to the maps would be hard to follow. He said that most study books were issued by private publishers, who would not be keen on changing the plates at their expense.

...

Her main findings included the disappearance of the Green Line and Arab cities in Israel from the maps in these books, and their presentation of sites and settlements in "Judea and Samaria," rather than in the "West Bank," as an integral part of Israel. [The real names are Judea and Samaria and have been for thousands of years! CiJ]

Reaction from opposition - and for that matter, coalition - MK's has been fast and furious:

MK Zevulun Orlev (NU/NRP) declared that Tamir was imposing a "Peace Now" ideology on the Education Ministry.

Former education ministry director-general Ronit Tirosh (Kadima) said Tamir's was a political move which deviated from her authority as education minister.

A minister can't interfere with textbook production, she said, adding that Tamir should have consulted other Knesset members first and calling on the education minister to revoke the decision.

Tirosh later told Army Radio that she took issue not with Tamir's desire to give children as much information as possible, but rather that the education minister wanted to publish borders that had not yet been finalized.

And for those who are wondering why now, look no further than Israel's leftist media:

Haaretz journalist Akiva Eldar was not only the one whose query prompted the change, but also the one who broke the story this morning. In an op-ed accompanying the news article today, Eldar wrote that MK Yuval Shteinitz (Likud) says he knows Egypt is not bent on peace with Israel because "the maps in most of its textbooks show 'Palestine' in place of Egypt. It will be interesting to see," Eldar continued, "how Shteinitz and his friends on the right will react to Education Minister Yuli Tamir's instructions to... ascertain that the new textbooks demarcate the Green Line. Tamir says we cannot demand of our Arab neighbors to note the June 4, 1967 borders if our own educational system [does not recognize them]."

The Eldar/Tamir comparison overlooks the fact that while the Arab textbooks erase an entire recognized political entity, the Israeli maps simply take a position on areas that are in dispute. In addition, Egypt has signed a peace treaty with Israel recognizing its sovereignty in world-accepted borders, while the Palestinian Authority has no legal standing at all regarding the June 1967 borders.

Despite the above, Minister Tamir - a founding member of Peace Now who was active in the far-left Ratz party in the early 1980s - has instructed that the textbooks make the change.

Someone needs to remind Tamir that the English version of UN Security Council resolution 242 is binding, and that it says "territories" and not "the territories:"

A key part of the case in favour of a "some territories" reading is the claim that British and American officials involved in the drafting of the Resolution omitted the definite article deliberately in order to make it less demanding on the Israelis. As George Brown, British Foreign Secretary in 1967, commented:

I have been asked over and over again to clarify, modify or improve the wording, but I do not intend to do that. The phrasing of the Resolution was very carefully worked out, and it was a difficult and complicated exercise to get it accepted by the UN Security Council. I formulated the Security Council Resolution. Before we submitted it to the Council, we showed it to Arab leaders. The proposal said 'Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied', and not from 'the' territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories. ^[10]

Lord Caradon, chief author of the resolution, takes a subtly different slant. His focus seems to be that the lack of a definite article is intended to deny permanence to the pre-1967 border, rather than to allow Israel to retain land taken by force. Such a view would appear to allow for the possibility that the borders could be varied through negotiation:

Knowing as I did the unsatisfactory nature of the 1967 line, I wasn’t prepared to use wording in the Resolution that would have made that line permanent. Nonetheless, it is necessary to say again that the overwhelming principle was the ‘inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war’ and that meant that there could be no justification for the annexation of territory on the Arab side of the 1967 line merely because it had been conquered in the 1967 war. The sensible way to decide permanent ‘secure and recognized’ boundaries would be to set up a Boundary Commission and hear both sides and then to make impartial recommendations for a new frontier line, bearing in mind, of course, the "inadmissibility" principle. ^[11]

Eugene V Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in 1967 and one of the drafters of the resolution, draws attention to the fact that the text proposed by the British had succeeded ahead of alternatives (in particular, a more explicit text proposed by the Soviet Union), although it should be noted that none of these included the phrase "the territories":

... paragraph 1 (i) of the Resolution calls for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces 'from territories occupied in the recent conflict', and not 'from the territories occupied in the recent conflict'. Repeated attempts to amend this sentence by inserting the word 'the' failed in the Security Council. It is, therefore, not legally possible to assert that the provision requires Israeli withdrawal from all the territories now occupied under the cease-fire resolutions to the Armistice Demarcation lines. ^[12]

The USSR and the Arabs supported a draft demanding a withdrawal to the 1967 Lines. The US, Canada and most of West Europe and Latin America supported the draft which was eventually approved by the UN Security Council. ^[13]

Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338... rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to 'secure and recognized borders', which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949. ^[14]

He also points out that attempts to explicitly widen the motion to include "the" or "all" territories were explicitly rejected

Motions to require the withdrawal of Israel from ‘the’ territories or ‘all the territories’ occupied in the course of the Six Day War were put forward many times with great linguistic ingenuity. They were all defeated both in the General Assembly and in the Security Council.[1]

Rostow's President, Lyndon B Johnson, appears to support this last view:

We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of June 4, 1967 will not bring peace. ^[15]

What was true in 1967 is true today. A return to the 1967 borders is suicidal. Israel's children need to know that more than anything else.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:15 PM