Wouldn’t Arab & Palestinian advocates have found and publicized whatever evidence might support such a notion, if it had existed, by now? The fact that examples of Israeli educational incitement to hate Arabs have not made any headlines argues strongly against any such equivalent parallel behavior on the part of the Israeli curriculum.

But now we have the imprimatur of none other than the Minister of Education himself, Yossi Sarid of the Meretz party, of self-proclaimed leftist and liberal leanings. In a letter, on official Ministry of Education stationary Mr. Sarid has unequivocally denied the existence of any similar incitement in the Israeli national school curriculum:

Since the Israelis are now officially ‘not guilty’ of similar incitement, why not raise the issue at every Peace Pow Wow, and demand that it be a reciprocal condition for any concessions. Why not make the cessation of the daily, state sponsored educational indoctrination of 800,000 Arab Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews the most desired item on their wish list. Can one imagine the scope of the media’s moral outrage if the object of this vicious rhetoric were African Americans, Asians or Latinos instead of Jews?

But why fault the Israelis when the complacency seems to be an overall Jewish epidemic. "So what’s new they’ve always hated us, we have more important issues to worry about like the.Hamas terrorists," a local Rabbi interjected at the Shabbos table, and a fine lady in our sisterhood interrupted saying "leave me alone with the hatred in the textbooks I’m more worried about the hatred of the Nazis now. (this on the week of the LA JCC kids’shootings).

Is it really such an illusive issue? Isn’t the fact that the Arab anti Discrimination Committee in Washington deems it important enough to create a series of talking points to answer our accusations a sign that they are worried about the issue? Isn’t it significant that they want M.A.T.C.K.H’s activities monitored and reported? Why can’t we see that the ‘child abuse’ aspect of teaching children to hate is a very bad public relations image for them and that they would do anything to curb our activities other than change their curriculum? And why don’t we make a huge issue of it at every juncture? There is nothing more American than motherhood, apple pie, and protecting innocent children from consuming a daily diet of violence and hatred. (Note how we are still obsessing over the cultural influences that may have caused the Littleton and Springfield school killings).

We have to use every opportunity to demand that the intolerable situation of having hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinian children raised on our doorstep to hate and kill us be halted.

We should publicize the irony of the situation that brought about the recent inclusion of incitement in the textbooks, how the naive granting of educational autonomy brought it about:

After the Six Day War in l967, when Israel took over the administration of the West Bank and Gaza, they ‘cleansed’ the existing Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks of their anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli content. It was only in l993, on the White House lawn, after the ‘peace’ handshake between Mr. Arafat and Mr. Rabin, with the signing of the Oslo accords, when the Palestinian Authority was established, and with it the Palestinian Ministry of Education, that the hate-filled, violent material was reinstated.

We should denounce the fact that the Arab Palestinian members of the Trilateral Anti-Incitement Committee created by the Wye Accords have rejected the numerous American offers to subsidize the reprinting of new textbooks.

We should continue to fight for the elimination of hatred and violence from the education of school children because it is the only basis upon which to build true peace and, practically speaking, it is the only issue upon which all people, regardless of character, politics or religious inclinations seem to agree.