By David Singer ——Bio and Archives--January 21, 2020
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The decision by Pearson Education Limited (Pearson) to withdraw Hilary Brash's text book —The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change, 1917- 2012— comes after trenchant criticism by blogger David Collier.
Collier questioned—among many other criticisms—why two timelines did not mention the Holocaust and why references to massacres of Jewish communities had been branded as "clashes". "It is almost impossible for the untrained eye to pick apart fantasy from fiction."A spokesman for Pearson said:
"An independent review of the texts by an educational charity found no overall evidence of anti-Israel bias. It identified some areas where the balance of sources could be improved and we are updating the texts and offering existing customers the option of replacing them for free. "We always welcome feedback and are committed to creating engaging, accurate and objective content. We are the only awarding body that tackles this subject matter at both GCSE and international GCSE level. We do it as we think it is an important topic, even though it is likely to provoke emotive responses."Pearson is the UK's largest organisation offering academic, vocational and work-based learning qualifications. Brash's book was a textbook for Pearson Edexcel General (GCSE) and International (iGCSE) Certificate of Secondary Education studies.
“As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.”McGraw-Hill's action followed criticism received by “MSNBC Live” after earlier airing the same series of maps. Host Kate Snow and her then guest Middle East expert Martin Fletcher subsequently acknowledged that they realized after they went off the air that the maps were not factually accurate and regretted using them. The worst source of false information on the Jewish-Arab conflict is the United Nations Study titled “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1988” (“Study”) which has disseminated false information on the Arab-Jewish conflict since its first publication in 1978. The Study is published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
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David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International—an organization calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at: jordanispalestine.blogspot.com