Sunday, May 04, 2003

Revisionist textbooks - Now available in Europe

There has been plenty of discussion of palestinian textbooks, as well as the textbooks of other Arab countries. The discussion will generally rewrite the history of the Arab-Israel conflict such that there is no state of Israel, or Israel was the agressor of all the Arab-Israel wars, or that the Arabs won all the Arab-Israel wars, or focus on the various barbarisms committed by Israel. Or the textbooks will advocate violence or whatnot against Israel. Of course all of these charges have been disputed by various Arab groups.

There has also been a lot of controversey over the various Zionist and post-Zionist historiography. This trend in politically correct historical revisionism has apparently caught on. Europe is now on the bandwagon, where there was genuine resistance against the Nazis and the vikings were skilled traders. History is now drab, and PC. School children grow up with a distorted sense of their past and a messed up sense of others' past.

This issue is generally much greater than one of simple history. There is genuine cultural revisionism, and no sense of others. History and all scholarship is truly the creation of the writers. There must be accountability.

One may of course ask, why worry about the past? Maybe the myths we tell our children are more important than the facts we pass on. I am not sure what to answer to that, other than the wondering if you would want your history rewritten?

Added note: Here is a good book about the politically correct censorship that goes on in the US.

Those who are interested in India and what they are doing to their text books might want to read this article.

(I found both of those links here.)