Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan

November 20, 2015

Textbooks for Peace in Israel and the West Bank


                As published at The New Yorker online
A small, sad record was set on Thursday, for the largest number of deaths in a single day in the two-month rash of scattered attacks by Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. Five people died, two by stabbing in Tel Aviv and three by automatic gunfire near Alon Shvut, a Jewish settlement. In the shadow of the attacks in Paris, however, this everyday violence has slipped nearly out of sight. It has become so routine that it remains in our peripheral vision.

No peace talks are scheduled, and even if they were they would need to reach more deeply into ordinary beliefs than negotiators can usually manage. Those beliefs are shaped in schools, which fail to teach children to think sympathetically about the other’s past and recent history. As touchy-feely as this might seem, education has grown into an unavoidable obstacle to co-existence, for it misinforms perceptions across the lines of conflict.    Continue reading at The New Yorker.

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