Two years ago today, following my attending a three-session, 16-hour LA Unified School District (LAUSD) Salary Point Workshop titled "Teaching about the Arab World," I wrote about my experiences of this anti-Israel brainwashing scheme.
I came open minded, knowing there is much to learn about the Arab World - from culture to language, geography, archeology, history, mathematics and calligraphy, to name just a few areas of personal interest. Like me, teachers came interested in the subject matter, expecting to broaden their horizons and learn something new. Attendance, participation and follow up projects would entitle the participants to a professional staff credit, which eventually translates into a salary bonus.
I did not know, but was soon to learn, that everything throughout the Arab world is somehow connected to the very existence of Israel - the Jewish Homeland - in an area so small relative to the vast lands of the Arab World that one immediately realizes this is not a territorial conflict.
When the Workshop ended I was in a dire need for an outlet: How can I help the poor palestinian children in the occupied territories and throughout their homeland? What can I do to stop the imperialist Zionist war machine?
Training a Christian Audience
The content of the workshop described Israel, at least in one instance, as the new Nazi regime. Interestingly, the stories presented were about Bethlehem, a "Ghetto" in present day palestine. It was by design not coincidence, that Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, was chosen. A very calculated move to address the local Christian audience who does not know that Christians cannot survive under Muslim rule, as is evident in Lebanon, under the PA rule in Bethlehem, and elsewhere throughout the world.
I took the time on Christmas Eve, 2008, to visit Bethlehem. I can attest that Israel Ministry of Tourism's effort in welcoming both local and foreign pilgrims were so successful that I could not discover, despite my persistent efforts, the connection between the stories told to the teachers and reality.
Sadly, the following day, the Archdiocese in New Zealand published an article about Christmas in Bethlehem 2008. It explained my inability to substantiate the stories of the Workshop: "a result of 'extraordinarily efficient' propaganda from Israel, the message going out internationally from Israel is very biased and does not represent what is happening on the ground."
Since I was personally in Bethlehem the night before, I realized a total eclipse must have occurred, causing me to become "momentarily" blind for the duration of my visit. Thus, unbeknownst to me until the following day's article, some three quarters of a million "refugees," mostly Muslim, have become – as a direct result of Israel's 60 years of occupation - intermingled in Christmas Day, 2008.
This extraordinary chain of events was successfully captured by the article's author and presented to worshipers of Christianity on their most spiritual day of the year.
The Power of a Picture in the Context of Israel-Bashing
Back in LA a year and a half earlier, the world seemed to be full of like miracles. If the story does not match reality, tell it anyway. If anyone dares to contest the information, discredit and attack the person rather than the merits, and when all else fails, change the subject.
The presenters know that the most effective instrument of delivery is a visual. How many of us, when asked what are the most famous pictures of the Holocaust, will not think about the young boy with his arms up in the air and a German storm trooper pointing a gun at him?
My father was a young boy at that time, possibly not much younger than the boy in the picture. He managed to escape the Warsaw Ghetto, where the picture was taken, before the uprising. This picture became an icon, as did the spirit of the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, whose brave stance against the Nazi war machine astonished even the Nazis themselves.
Today, the picture serves as another source of inspiration: associating the Jewish Homeland with the very same acts carried out by the Nazis. Interestingly, some deranged individuals claim the Holocaust was only a hoax to legitimize the Jews' claim for the small piece of land in the Middle East. They have no problem to make this claim then use falsified images that force us to make the parallelism to that era.
One of the magazines given to all participants of the Workshop depicted a very similar picture on its outer cover: An Israeli soldier pointing a gun at a palestinian boy. The boy, his hands raised, was looking intensely at the soldier. There is a complete series of such pictures and one-to-one comparisons now circulating the internet.
The organizers of the Workshop were very well aware of the different observers and other participants in the Workshop, so the specific word "Nazi" was not used. If the description and references were not crystallized in one's memory, the word "Ghettoization," for instance, appeared vividly in one of handouts given out and in at least one of the websites to which the teachers were referred.
One must not belittle the usage of descriptions within a certain context. Both were so clear that it was no surprise to find the actual words in the written material.
Evaluating the Workshop Series
The main purpose, it seems, of this workshop was not to educate teachers about the Arab World. Rather, it was to try and utilize our own system of education and freedoms to push sanity one step backward, until it trips and eventually succumbs. If, along the way, one or two innocent bystanders (teacher) are actually moved to do something for and on behalf of the palestinian people, it would be considered a fringe benefit, but not the real purpose.
The success of the series starts by the fact it was held in the first place, continues in the fact that it was allowed to be held repeatedly year after year, and culminates now in the quest to attain even great heights: pushing the frontier to a point of no return.
The failure of different advocacy organizations, like the Anti Defamation League and Stand With Us, to effect meaningful change and prevent the series from taking place is a result of the same organizations holding workshops of their own. Thus, decisive action was mellowed down, diluted to a written protest, to be "on file" so to speak.
If there is no place in the curriculum for workshops about the Holocaust, Fighting Hate or Israel Past and Present, then they should not be allowed as part of the program. However, to admit a program which is an anti-Israel scheme disguised as an educational tool about the Arab World should not be tolerated.
Bias and trickery, deceit and hatred should be banned from the LAUSD playing grounds and its headquarters building should not be a host to this Workshop. Imagine the public outcry if a workshop titled Fighting Hate would teach that the all the faults of a crumbling economy are related to People of Color. An outrage could not be contained, riots could result and the workshop scrapped in an instant. Doing the same but exchanging the labels to target Israel is apparently permissible.
A Tour of Palestine (Jordan and Israel)
Two years have past. The workshop continues and is apparently quite successful. A sixteen-day study tour of Jordan and Palestine - including Israel - is proposed to all past participants, almost free. Touted as "the occasion to probe further and deeper into the many topics covered in the 'Arab World' workshops and to experience these directly and personally," this unusual opportunity is subsidized by the generous will of a teacher and curriculum specialist who visited the Middle East, became fascinated by Arab history, culture and contemporary problems, and apparently had left in her will funds for educational projects.
To commemorate the enthusiasm of that person, LAUSD teachers who participated and completed one of the "Arab World" workshops are urged to join. An experience of a lifetime awaits them, including a preparatory background reading and an orientation session prior to departure and follow-up projects they will need to complete.
What an ingenious way to penetrate the very fabric of society that is most impressionable and to shape and mold attitudes of teachers who influence young minds in their classrooms with hatred toward Israel. This is not a workshop about the Arab World, for there is much more in the Arab World than cartoons for children in which every symbol of the West is satanic. This is an attempt at using a system that should focus on algebra and arithmetic, music and physical education, science, English and languages and not on planting the seeds of hatred.
The organizers must be congratulated. The trip to Israel promises not to end with the return to Los Angeles. Each participant will have to present "lesson plans, reports to colleagues and students, articles for community groups and assisting with future 'Arab World' workshops." Is our tax money going to be used also to pay for additional bonuses to these teachers?
The phenomenon of using our own system and the vast freedoms it affords against the West must be stopped. Let us go back to basics before we turn the LAUSD and other school districts across the country into battlegrounds much like the universities are today.
