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Israel Bars Book From Schools Due To Its Discussion Of “Intimate Relations Between Jews and non-Jews”

RNS-BOOK-ISRAELWe recently discussed the concern over the criminalization of speech in Israel. Now there is an added concern after Israel’s Education Ministry disqualified Dorit Rabinyan’s award winning “Gader Haya” (literally “Hedgegrow,” but known in English as “Borderline”)from being used in high schools. The reason? The novel describes a love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man. The Education Ministry decided that the novel threatened “the identity and the heritage of students in every sector,” and the belief that “intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity.”

It is a truly disappointing decision from a nation founded by people who survived book burning and censorship laws. The Education Ministry insisted that “young people of adolescent age don’t have the systemic view that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation.” Wow. Miscegenation?

Recently published in Hebrew by Am Oved about a year and a half ago, the novel tells the story of Liat, an Israeli translator, and Hilmi, a Palestinian artist, who fall in love in New York. The couple eventually moves back to Tel Aviv and the West Bank city of Ramallah. It is now the romance that the Education Ministry dares not speak its name.

The decision reverses the view of a professional committee headed by Prof. Rafi Weichert from the University of Haifa and including academics, Education Ministry representatives and career teachers. The panel recommended the use of the book. The panel’s role is to advise the ministry on various educational issues, including approval of curriculum.

I have long admired Israeli educational standards and its remarkable educational system. It is therefore particularly disappointing to see such anti-intellectual and intolerant views emerge over the assignment of such books. It is ignorance and intolerance that threatens Israel not concepts considered by some to be offensive like miscegenation.

Ironically, the effort to block the book has led to a surge in sales in Israel.

Source: New York Times

70 thoughts on “Israel Bars Book From Schools Due To Its Discussion Of “Intimate Relations Between Jews and non-Jews””

  1. Valid question from Karen:

    “What about doctors and lawyers? If 2% of the population is Jewish, but the percentage of Jewish professionals is higher than that, doesn’t that correlate to success? I don’t know why one industry is chosen over any other as indicative of any dire purpose.”

    If we are talking about dentistry it might be a great point, or orthopaedics.

    But if you ARE talking about lawyers, or even more important, film and television, then you are talking about professions that affect IDEAS and CULTURE.

    Please consider the importance of these two sectors and their top heavy dominance by Jews in this country.

    Don’t get me going on Wall Street lawyers either, like Joe Flom. Read the book by Malcolm Gladwell, “Outliers,” for how important his Jewish upbringing was and his huge effect on Wall Street.

  2. while the jewish lead civil rights movement was for decades pushing against American anti-miscegenation laws, eventually struck down by Loving V Va, they did nothing to affect their Israeli cousins racist attitudes towards goyim.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NBO8E_CK18

    Sauce for the goose, not the gander right?

  3. What about doctors and lawyers? If 2% of the population is Jewish, but the percentage of Jewish professionals is higher than that, doesn’t that correlate to success? I don’t know why one industry is chosen over any other as indicative of any dire purpose.

    Every population has its own pressures. Asian cultures heavily emphasize education and success, for example. So much so that universities now penalize Asian applicants who are over achievers. The high percentage of Asian doctors, for example, merely points to cultural pressures for success. The same may be said in some Jewish communities. Persians, too, have a high percentage of successful professionals – in science especially.

  4. Jew Noam Chomsky talks about Israeli “RACISM” towards Palestinians, blames it on Europe of course… but he didn’t fail to recognize that it is very real. Read genius Chomsky, at least he is that much more honest that most Israel-firsters

    https://chomsky.info/dissent01/

    “QUESTION: You mentioned racism vis-à-vis the Palestinians. To what extent, if any, have Israelis of Ashkenazic origin absorbed German racial attitudes toward not just Arabs but even to the Oriental Jews, the Sephardim, is there anything in that?

    CHOMSKY: I wouldn’t call it particularly German.

    QUESTION: European?

    CHOMSKY: Yes. It’s part of European culture to have racist attitudes toward the Third World, including us, we’re part of Europe in that respect. Naturally the Jewish community shared the attitudes of the rest of Europe, not surprising. There certainly are such things inside Israel. My feeling is they could be overcome in time under a situation of peace. I think they’re real, but I don’t think they’re lethal, through slow integration they could probably be overcome. The one that probably can’t be overcome is the anti-Arab racism, because that requires subjugation of a defeated and conquered people and that leads to racism. If you’re sitting with your boot on somebody’s neck, you’re going to hate him, because that’s the only way that you can justify what you’re doing, so subjugation automatically yields racism, and you can’t overcome that. Furthermore, anti-Arab racism is rampant in the United States and much of the West, there’s no question about that. The only kind of racism that can be openly expressed with outrage is anti-Arab racism. You don’t put caricatures of blacks in the newspapers any more; you do put caricatures of Arabs.

    QUESTION: But isn’t it curious that they’re using the old Jewish stereotypes, the money coming out the pockets, the beards, the hooked nose?

    CHOMSKY: I’ve often noticed that the cartoons and caricatures are very similar to the ones you’d find in the Nazi press about the Jews, very similar.

    QUESTION: What dimension does the Holocaust play in this equation? Is it manipulated by the Israeli state to promote its own interests?

    CHOMSKY: It’s very consciously manipulated. I mean, it’s quite certainly real, there’s no question about that, but it is also undoubted that they manipulate it. In fact, they say so. For example, in the Jerusalem Post, in English so you can read it, their Washington correspondent Wolf Blitzer, I don’t recall the exact date, but after one of the big Holocaust memorial meetings in Washington he wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post in which he said it was a great success. He said, “Nobody mentioned arms sales to the Arabs but all the Congressmen understood that that was the hidden message. So we got it across.” In fact, one very conservative and very honest Zionist leader, Nachem Goldman, who was the President of the World Zionist Organization and who was detested towards the end because he was much too honest — they even refused to send a delegation to his burial, I believe, or a message. He’s one of the founders of the Jewish state and the Zionist movement and one of the elder statesmen, a very honest man, he — just before his death in 1982 or so — made a rather eloquent and unusual statement in which he said that it’s — he used the Hebrew word for “sacrilege” — he said it’s sacrilege to use the Holocaust as a justification for oppressing others. He was referring to something very real: exploitation of probably the world’s most horrifying atrocity in order to justify oppression of others. That kind of manipulation is really sick.”

  7. bam bam also says:

    “Po, your grasp of all things Jewish is, for lack of a better term, laughable. News flash–Jews hail from various races and ethnic backgrounds, and they have every color of skin, eyes and hair under the sun. Use of the term “racist” may be freely tossed about, but Jews belong to various ethnic and racial groups. Your small and fragile mind also doesn’t seem grasp that or the fact that the religion admonishes Jews to treat a convert to Judaism as if he or she had been born into the faith…”

    you must never have heard of the COHANIM

  8. when I talk about a jewish Hollywood, I speak about facts. here is actor and lawyer ben stein on topic:

    “Do Jews Run Hollywood? –
    You Bet They Do…& What Of It?
    By Ben Stein EOnline.com
    3-13-2

    “Hollywood is run by Jews; it is owned by Jews–and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering. Because…we have seen…the greaseball, we’ve seen the Chink, we’ve seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap, we have seen the wily Filipino, we’ve seen everything but we never saw the kike. Because they knew perfectly well, that that is where you draw the [line].”

    –Marlon Brando on Larry King Live

    A few days after Marlon Brando scandalized the airwaves by referring to the Jews who worked in Hollywood as “kikes,” I got a call from an editor at 60 Minutes. The woman wanted to know how I felt about Brando’s use of words and his allegation that Hollywood is “run by Jews.”

    She suggested the desired answer by noting that her researchers had conclusively proven that Jews do not run Hollywood.

    Crafty 60 Minutes had studied the top slots in town. Their research showed that “only” about 60 percent of the most important positions in Hollywood were run by Jews. What did I think?

    I managed to disqualify myself by saying that while Hollywood was not really “run” by anyone (it’s far too chaotic for that), if Jews were about 2.5 percent of the population and were about 60 percent of Hollywood, they might well be said to be extremely predominant in that sector.

    That was far too logical and un-PC an answer, and I never heard from her again…..”

  11. Hence why free speech must be protected – to prevent this kind of censorship.

  12. Ah, yes, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier–all secret Jews and part of some conspiracy. Hysterical.

  13. Po, your grasp of all things Jewish is, for lack of a better term, laughable. News flash–Jews hail from various races and ethnic backgrounds, and they have every color of skin, eyes and hair under the sun. Use of the term “racist” may be freely tossed about, but Jews belong to various ethnic and racial groups. Your small and fragile mind also doesn’t seem grasp that or the fact that the religion admonishes Jews to treat a convert to Judaism as if he or she had been born into the faith. Yes, there are the ultra-Orthodox, who demand that the required time, instruction and effort be put forth to declare a conversion legally acceptable, since many of the Reform rabbis will simply convert someone on a whim, at a moment’s notice and without any preconditions. The time and effort demanded by the more religious rabbis stems from a desire to only convert those for whom the choice has been one that has been carefully weighed and considered. I can only suppose that the Imam at your last CAIR conference, from whom you glean your knowledge of all things Jewish, didn’t know that, along with many other purported facts that you misquote. Are you as incensed that most, if not all, Protestants and Catholics, alike, have no interest in marrying you, a Muslim man, as you are that a Jewish person has no interest in marrying you? Is that racist, as well? It appears as though you have a quite developed inferiority complex, which guides you in deeming personal decisions and choices regarding marriage as racially motivated and prejudiced when, in actuality, those same individuals are seeking to promote and uphold their respective faiths. It all boils down to Islam’s intolerance for all who
    refuse to buckle and submit to its quest for domination, whereby infidels dare to steadfastly stick to their own religious principles and laws and seek to shun Islam. Calls of racism will, hopefully, continue to fall upon deaf ears.

    1. Bam, you embarked upon a nice long rant but still did not counter any of my points, which are, to summarize:
      1- Judaism is both ethnic and religious, therefore it is unlike Catholicism and Islam, which are solely religious and not ethnic, and are therefore open to anyone without any ethnic requirement.
      Arabs, for example, make up only 20% of Islam.
      Some of the greatest current american islamic scholars are white or blacks, most of whom are converts.
      Some of them are also former Buddhists.

      2- Israel has a sociai/political/religious structure that is based on the idea, publicly stated, that Jews are more valuable human beings and Arabs are subhumans (to quote you.) It is also based on the aim, publicly stated, to cleanse arabs from not only Israel proper, but also from Palestine. Intermarriage Arab/Jew, therefore challenges those two aims and must be, therefore stamped down.

      3- Your point of virulent antisemitism in the ME is valid, so is my point of virulent anti-Arabism in Israel.
      Both places teach hatred of the other in schools.

      Finally, I never wanted to pull this card out but since you are questioning my marital worth, me, this handsome, tall and chiseled chocolate god, I must, and thereby will shut you and Nick up, forever I hope.
      My wife is Jewish (per Jewish birth rule, she isn’t for only her father is, per conversion rules, she is, since she identifies as jewish! By the way, her mom is catholic.)
      Which makes my children…yes!…No!…yes?!

      Now you have only two options hereon:
      1- deny that my wife is Jewish in order to continue accusing me of antisemitism
      2-Claim that I hate my wife (and kids if you consider them Jews).
      Which is it 🙂

      By the way, speaking religiously only, I have more claim to Judaism than you do. Not only do I know more about the religious legacy of Judaism, I honor all the prophets of Judaism and live my life in better concordance with the laws of Moses than you do.
      No pork, no alcohol, pray regularly, uphold the value of every human being, keep halal/kosher…

  15. its ok for Hollywood jews to ram “who’s coming to dinner” style propaganda down the throats of americans reluctant to intermarry, but for Israeli Jews the matter is forbidden. Standard Jewish hypocrisy.

  16. Does the Catholic Church deem those of other religions to be of “lesser” value or ” lesser” importance when priests require that couples, consisting of one who is Catholic and one who is not Catholic, guarantee and/or acknowledge that the resulting offspring from said union be raised as Catholics? I remember hearing that such promises or declarations were necessary before these couples could get married in a Catholic church. Does that still occur? If so, where is all the name calling, the outrage, the charges of racism, where a faith–Catholicism–is doing nothing more than trying to promote and protect the continuation of the faith? That’s the price that one pays to have a marriage sanctified by the Catholic Church, or, at least it used to be if it is still not in effect as a church policy. Nothing obscene or racist about that, just as there is nothing obscene or racist about a Jewish state, called Israel, wanting to exclude materials which don’t support the continuation and survival of its people. It gnaws at people like po because the Jewish people have, for thousands of years, survived, while their oppressors, far more numerous and powerful, have fallen into the ash heaps of history.

    1. Bam, what you keep trying to obscure is not only the ethnic realm of Judaism, but also the racist structure of Israel.
      Your parallel to Catholicism would have been valid had Catholicism been based on ethnic characteristics.
      It’s not. Israel’s structure is one where non-Jews are second class citizens, and Palestinians are lower than beasts (to quote quite a few secular and religious leaders.)
      There really is no choice in Judaism, fundamentally. One is a true Jew by birth. Therefore one can be a atheist Jew, while one cannot be an atheist catholic.
      One can convert to Judaism, but according to many religious scholars, that one is not really a Jew. Whiole everyone can convert to Islam or Catholicism and be a full, legitimate Muslim or catholic.
      So, when we talk about Judaism, what are we talking about? The religion or the ethnicity? or both?

      Regarding the racist structure of Israel, there is no doubt that the national view is that Palestinians are lesser human beings than Jews (they also view that everyone is a lesser human being than Jews), so you cannot deny that rather than just protecting a religion that many do not practice, the aim is to protect an ethnicity that all share.
      In light of all that, the ban is not equivalent to those other cases you mention the ban is another symptom of the greater disease, the one caused by the view that Palestinians are, yell all together now, subhumans (to quote our friend bam.)

      Bam would have banned romeo and Juliet…and Nick woulda supported it 🙂

      And regarding your comment about school books in ME countries… how about this:
      —————————-
      Israeli Textbooks and Children’s Literature Promote Racism and Hatred Toward Palestinians and Arabs
      By Maureen Meehan
      Israeli school textbooks as well as children’s storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray Palestinians and Arabs as “murderers,” “rioters,” “suspicious,” and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks.

      Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University studied 124 elementary, middle- and high school textbooks on grammar and Hebrew literature, history, geography and citizenship. Bar-Tal concluded that Israeli textbooks present the view that Jews are involved in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refuses to accept and acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel.

      “The early textbooks tended to describe acts of Arabs as hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair, with the intention to hurt Jews and to annihilate the State of Israel. Within this frame of reference, Arabs were delegitimized by the use of such labels as ”˜robbers,’ ”˜bloodthirsty,’ and ”˜killers,’” said Professor Bar-Tal, adding that there has been little positive revision in the curriculum over the years. http://www.wrmea.org/1999-september/israeli-textbooks-and-childrens-literature-promote-racism-and-hatred-toward-palestinians-and-arabs.html

  17. I had a brief and tempestuous “round the world” relationship with a tiny otherwise engaged Jewish girl named Cindy way back in 1990–I outweighed her by a factor of three, but it was all I could do to hang on, frankly, like the rodeo had rolled into Pittsburgh. Alcohol was involved, and she never returned my calls–er, call. I would be flattered to hell (if Jews have hell, do they?) to be considered a threat to “the identity and the heritage of students in every sector,” How cool would that have been?

  18. By the way, Nick, you are the confirmation of bam’s words. based on you, I am forced to refute inter-marriages.

  19. IN HEBRON ‘EVEN THE KIDS HAVE NUMBERS’
    http://www.middleeastrising.com/in-hebron-even-the-kids-have-numbers/
    Israeli army introduces a new system of identification numbers for the 30,000 Palestinian residents in the city.
    ————————–
    Reminds you of anything, bam? I mean, I understand, if I too thought that a human being is a cockroach, a subhuman, a barbarian, all based on an ethnicity he chose not, I sure would not want my daughter to marry him 🙂
    Such hatred!
    Such hatred!

    Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923: “Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection of a power independent of the native population – an iron wall, which will be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is our policy towards the Arabs…”

    Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism (precursor of Likud), The Iron Wall, 1923: “A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!… Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important… to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonizing.”

    . Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department in 1940. From “A Solution to the Refugee Problem”: “Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries – all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left.”

    David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben- Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978: “We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.”

    . Martin Buber, Jewish Philosopher, addressed Prime Minister Ben Gurion on the moral character of the state of Israel with reference to the Arab refugees in March 1949. “We will have to face the reality that Israel is neither innocent, nor redemptive. And that in its creation, and expansion; we as Jews, have caused what we historically have suffered; a refugee population in Diaspora.”

    Moshe Dayan (Israel Defense and Foreign Minister), on February 12 1952. Radio “Israel.”: “It lies upon the people’s shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire.”

    Martin Buber, to a New York audience, Jewish Newsletter, June 2, 1958: “When we [followers of the prophetic Judaism] returned to Palestine…the majority of Jewish people preferred to learn from Hitler rather than from us.”

  20. …one whose Muslim brethren routinely, across the Middle East, have brutally and barbarically sought to wipe out, with a vengeance, any and all who are not Muslims….
    …by these Muslim barbarians…

    bam, you are getting (even more) unhinged!
    Unsurprisingly, the mere mention of Israel (and by the way, everything I said is factual and has been said by Israeli Jews before me. Just prove any of it wrong!)
    How many of those “muslim barbarians”have been doing such as you mention? Out of 2 billion? And yet everyone is responsible for the actions of a few? While you bend backward trying to show that the extremes of Judaism only concern individuals, not the whole?
    By the way, i agree with you, the Muslims committing those horrors are barbarians, and I, along with most Muslims deem them not Muslims at all.
    Rather interesting however that the only ones to insist those barbarians are muslims are themselves and the likes of you 🙂

    …our resident Muslim and apologist for all that is inhumane and despicable in the Muslim world. ..
    Where and when have I ever justified all that is inhumane and despicable in the Muslim world?
    Unlike you, I condemn everyone equally.
    Interestingly, you spend an inordinate amount of time justifying and explaining all that is inhumane and despicable in the Jewish world.

    …whose only, singular crime, in this particular article, is to dare to exclude a book from an educational curriculum which appears to promote intermarriage in a society plagued by that very intermarriage threatening the survival of its people….
    I could not help notice the qualifying of “particular article””, which seeks to restrict the range of all that is inhumane and despicable in the Jewish world to this specific topic. Yet you go off trying to list all that is inhumane and despicable in the Muslim world, outside of this topic!
    Are you aware, am not sure you realize it, that you are justifying attempts to prevent intermarriage in a society? Are you aware, I am not sure, in that, you are again on the wrong side side of history, among those who fought japanese/Chinese marriage, GERMAN/jEW marriage, black/White marriage, Afrikaner/Xhosa marriage…. Are you aware, I know, you aren’t aware, that, I must reiterate this, YOU ARE JUSTIFYING PREVENTING MARRIAGE BETWEEN 2 PEOPLE BECAUSE ONE IS DEEMED LESSER THAN THE OTHER!!!!!!!!!

    No intention to wipe out another population, no kidnapping, no raping–an attempt, however feeble it may be, in trying to keep a religion and a people intact, where the rate of intermarriage is skyrocketing…….There is a huge difference between the two above-referenced examples, which, not surprisingly, is ignored and somehow equated by those intent on vilifying the State of Israel and the Jewish people….
    By the way, the state of Israel is NOT the Jewish people, and the Jewish people is NOT the state of Israel. try as you may, criticizing Israel is not criticizing the Jewish people. I agree that there is a difference between the two examples, because only one is relevant, the one about this topic, Israel’s racist policies.

    … Because we hold these Muslim subhumans to a far, far lower standard than the one imposed upon all other civilized human beings? Let’s chat about the school books, prevalent in Muslim schools, which indoctrinate the very young to murder and kill in the name of Allah, all Jews, wherever they may be. No?
    Are you, bam, aware of Jewish history? Have you heard of Nazism, and holocaust, and of the term “Jewish subhuman…””?
    What is wrong with you that the single most important lesson of the Jewish people went through is COMPLETELY lost on you?
    How much hatred must reside in you that what makes you so fundamentally Jewish is that which you subject other to?
    Speaking of book, which one, I wonder between your book and mine deems all people equal?
    Which one, between your book and mine allows Muslims to marry Jews?

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