Working Paper No.1, the first in a new series by the Moshe Dayan Center, was written by Dr. Chelsi Mueller and Prof. Uzi Rabi. It critically examines the textbooks commonly used to teach about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in university classrooms.
Abstract
Until now, there has been no attempt to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of textbooks that are used to teach about the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflict in colleges and universities. With that in mind, we designed and carried out a project to identify the textbooks that are most commonly used to teach about the Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We identified some of the most popular textbooks on the conflict, developed a set of criteria to assess the quality of historical narratives in textbooks, analyzed a set of seven textbooks according to the criteria and formulated recommendations for their use in the classroom.