is a professor of language and education at the hebrew university of jerusalem following the death of her thirteen year old daughter in a suicide bombing in one thousand nine hundred seven she became an outspoken critic of the israeli occupation book due out in november two thousand and eleven is entitled palestine in israeli schoolbooks ideology and propaganda in education she argues that the textbooks used in the israeli school system marginalize palestinians and are designed to prepare israeli children for military service she analyzed israeli textbooks studying their use of images maps layouts and language in the subjects of history geography and civic studies alternate focus spoke with about her research we first asked how she became interested in studying israeli textbooks when i started i saw that question off their presentation of palestinians since quite boys and girls who are educated on supposedly very enlightened humanistic values and up being such horrible monsters in the army and i thought that can be found in textbooks because our textbooks are books that students must read for the examination whether they like it or not so and i don't think they  many students that on are interested in getting information about history and things like that in others from other sources this is not in their interest so the only thing they know is what they find in textbooks  after high school so they go with this knowledge into the army and since they never or hardly ever meet palestinians face to face or speak to them although they may live a fifty two hundred meters from them this is what they now i read a lot about the way the third world is represented in other textbooks in the in the world in europe or here like indians first nations and i came across a european artists in the eighteen or nineteen century which come to present anybody who really lives in is where but wherever they speak about the citizens of the state of the arab what they call the arab citizens this is what you flooded street in a poor neighborhood with no people in this trailer this is the palestinian problem or you can see an aerial photograph off some shanty town and they tell you this is a p great land of israel if you see even the names of the books never in juggle never the state of israel but the land of israel which is which is different so i think we have like three generations of students who don't who live in the place where they are they're not represented it on some maps tell you for example their population maps in geography textbooks for the whole world what you should  say that i studied very profoundly very deeply sixteen books published after the oslo agreement i wanted to see if there is something and there was some change in the ninety's but it's going backwards and backwards and backwards and hard most recent history school books are really you can say military manifest and color for example is very very very important whenever they show palestinian villages or israeli arab villages you see them in natural colors which is olive green yellow you know and these cars are the callers they're arouse fear and only a nation and israelis the natural colors of the of the country whenever they show jewish settlements they show them like swiss religious you know progress and the european western colored brought by the jews very interested in in seeing and studying the concept of death how is death presented to these children because israelis are really educated who to worship death to sacrifice themselves for the country or for whatever and to see nothing wrong in the death of palestinians or maybe not not seen anything wrong but to see it as the lesser evil if it brings any good consequences to us so i wanted to see into that and i studied how for example  have what i should call or become logical logic like you know oedipus killed his father but he saved the city something like that so yes unfortunately many people were killed but it was the government t for a jewish state with a jewish majority for example the massacre of cuba which was headed by ari and so on and his notorious demolished all the houses on their on the families and after describing this the school books say that this and other such reprisals was not the only one restore the dignity and the mirage to the army and the confidence to the jewish citizens so you always have this kind of make a logical logic yes unfortunately and they give you some reasons like the soldiers didn't know the people were hiding in their houses back nyc where would they be whore the loudspeaker didn't work so they didn't hear us calling them to leave their houses which is exactly the same are broken for example that we were less and they were more these things are a little bit you know clarified but i think there are studies that show that it doesn't matter when after the children read necessary again for a jewish sequence and a jewish state with a jewish majority and then those who stayed there always say that they were allowed to stay we don't know some books that are more the gratitude and more rightwing they say we don't know why they moved to just left way we told them they can stay and so on so for that then those who stayed received their rights and so on and so what they don't tell you about land confiscation an equal rights or the fact that since forty eight not even one was allowed to be built by palestinians not to mention their village or a city but they do tell you in geography books that they build without a license because they don't want to pay did they are clannish and their unwilling to give any land for the public good unlike the jews there presented this people who was the and the thing is that these books especially geography are presented as scientific and therefore objective in your trial and you don't suspect that they're not objective or that this is another way to do it and so on and so forth and the whole thing is to really present them as as now because they don't call them palestinians they call them arabs they make them part of the great arab nation which is of course our cetera but also they convey the idea that since they are part of the arab nations they have so many other countries they can go to why should they live with  that we put up with them something like that type and they do it the come to school and they do these lectures and they also have during high school whole weeks that they spend in military camps and they get military education to get a feel of it there was this book now where that was published and according to the prophet to the curriculum they had to give two points of view of some things regarding the refugee problem they view now this book really brought the palestinian point of view and it was completely authorized immediately collected off the shelves ground and the condition to get people but some iraqi written by teachers or people in the them much want to know history teacher joshi teachers and so on so for now they can write the book and then they have to put it up to authorization ministry is replaced by a right wing ministry they grew rind some books at least and one that was ground was by it was a history teacher and they said that he does not authorised taken off the shelves ground i think the put it in machines and they grind it i don't know because i asked for the ground book and the second one and that in the in the in the publishing house books will end up burning people and showing their crystal night and that's a crystal light and so on and so forth it's very very dangerous and i must say that i have students you know from all parts of society but i had one student who and one that is called building a nation in the middle east that was published by the show's institute for jewish studies it was ground nine two thousand and nine in july and was  published in a new version september so they didn't lose the academic year you say they wanted to sell it to high school this was the main thing so they they complied very quickly very quickly and i know personally some of the writers of the books and sometimes i challenge them and so how could you write that because i had to be authorized because i had to be authorized how can you write that the kid be a massacre we store the confidence of the citizens this is what you have to know teachers when they see that they cannot ignore it any more say and i see from the term papers how they really see the things and i believe that change comes from below you know increasing racism not only towards arabs but of course mainly mainly towards for example in the college where i teach they used to put a christmas tree every year for the arab students were christians  for the last two or three years i can see as you say things like that you suddenly realise it's very frightening i think it's frightening what's happening there