History and Memory in the Israeli Educational System: The Portrayal of the Arab-Israeli Conflict in History Textbooks (1948-2000)

History, Memory and Textbooks

Forging the nation's collective memory is an integral part of the process of nation building. The powerful link between history and memory is especially salient in the educational system, which is responsible for implanting knowledge and values in the younger generation. The successful completion of this task, it is assumed, will turn young people into loyal citizens and will help instill a shared identity.

Interestingly enough, historians and sociologists generally fail to note the political and social links between school textbooks and collective memory. Scholars dealing with the tools used by the state to create its own collective memory--such as historiography, literature, cinema or national commemorations--tend to overlook the role played by textbooks. At the same time, scholars in the field of textbook research barely analyze them in the context of the attempts to build a collective memory, usually ignoring the social environment that helps shape textbook content as well. ¹

Since in many Western democracies, and certainly in nondemocratic societies, the state controls the educational apparatus, it can shape the nation's collective memory by determining what is to be included and what excluded from the curricula and from textbooks. Such a course of action opens the way for the manipulation of the past in order to mold the present and the future. ² In this respect, the school system, and textbooks, become yet another arm of the state, agents of memory whose aim is to ensure the transmission of certain "approved knowledge" to the younger generation. Textbooks thus function as a sort of "supreme historical court" whose task is to decipher "from all the accumulated 'pieces of the past' the 'true' collective memories which are appropriate for inclusion in the canonical national historical narrative." ³ In constructing the collective memory, textbooks play a dual role: on the one hand, they provide a sense of continuity between the past and the present, transmitting accepted historical narratives; on the other, they alter--or rewrite--the past in order to suit contemporary needs. ⁴

The manipulation of the past often entails the use of stereotypes and prejudice in describing the "other." ⁵ Carried to the extreme, stereotyping and prejudice foster delegitimization--the "categorization of groups into extreme negative social categories which are excluded from human groups that are considered as acting within the limits of acceptable norms and/or values." ⁶ Common means used for delegitimization, according to Daniel Bar-Tal, are dehumanization, outcasting, trait characterization, use of political labels, and group comparison. ⁷

It is common knowledge that textbooks in social sciences and humanities do not merely convey an objective body of information. Textbooks, according to Howard Mehlinger, are the modern version of village storytellers, since they "are responsible for conveying to youth what adults believe they should know about their own culture as well as that of other societies." In his opinion, none of the socialization instruments can be compared to textbooks "in their capacity to convey a uniform, approved, even official version of what youth should believe." ⁸ According to Michael Apple, though textbooks pretend to teach neutral, legitimate knowledge, they are often used as ideological tools to promote a certain belief system and legitimize an established political and social order. In other words, the selection and organization of knowledge for schools is an ideological process that serves the interests of particular classes and social groups. ⁹

It is difficult to establish the exact role played by textbooks in comparison to other socialization instruments. The growing exposure of the younger generation to the electronic media has undoubtedly diminished the centrality of the textbook as an instrument of education. Still, most scholars tend to agree that textbooks have remained crucial. In his analysis of European history textbooks in the last hundred years, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer came to the...