A few histories attempt to tell the story from different points of view. If nothing else, it can be a wonderful exercise in dialog for partisans of each side to tell the story from the poiit of view of the other (see for example Jerusalem: Changing Sides in the Middle East). Mark Tessler's text, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, highlights Arab or Palestinian views versus Zionist or Israeli views. More recently, Paul Scham, Walid Salem, and Benjamin Pogrund have written Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue. The book discusses views of history of the two sides including Zionist settlement, the Balfour declaration, the War of Independence and Israeli and Palestinian views on the Holocaust, Jerusalem, and refugees. It is probably a "must read" if you are interested in Israeli-Palestinian history and in peace, but I admit I haven't read it yet.

Israeli-Palestinian Procon is a Web site that gives opposing views on each issue, without critical analysis. It has much to recommend it, but as we shall see, this approach has serious pitfalls.

As reviewed in the Beirut Daily Star recently, an Israeli and a Palestinian, Dan Bar-On and Sami Adwan, have written school texts that give both Palestinian and Israeli narratives. Their work illustrates both the values and the pitfalls of this approach. It is very good for analyzing the propaganda of each side, and for informing each side, as well as outsiders, about the different types of myths believed by each side. It explains why we are angry at each other, and it informs people of the kinds of stories we invent to justify the anger and perpetuate it. It doesn't always tell people what really happened even to a reasonable approximation. For textbooks aimed at students, that is a very bad idea, only slightly better than telling them only one biased side of the story.

This approach seems to assume that the only thing that matters is what people believe about history, rather than the facts of what actually happened. Any historical narrative can include three types of elements - events that really took place, events or statistics about which we are not certain, and total invention. The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been subject to so much political controversy, necessarily contains many elements of the third type. These must not be incorporated as anyone's "narrative." Believe it or not, reality is out there. If you don't believe that reality is out there, don't write history. Write novels or propaganda, tell children about Santa Claus coming down the chimney, Elijah coming into your house on Passover and the tooth fairy, but don't call it "history."

While history may be multifaceted, all the parts of it that happened really happened, and all the myths that were invented didn't happen. It cannot be right to include propaganda, myths and editorializing alongside facts, and offer them all up as equally valid. It can't be proper educational practice to put these unedited narratives into the hands of unsuspecting schoolchildren.

Consider two versions of the same event:

The American version:

Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda movement organized a terrorist action that destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City.

The version believed in some parts of the Middle East:

The Mossad and the FBI destroyed the Twin Towers and blamed it on the Muslims.

Or again:

The version of a certain government:

Communists set fire to the German Reichstag.

The version of the allies:

The Nazi party set fire to the German Reichstag, on the orders of Adolph Hitler.

Are we doing a service to anyone in each case by juxtaposing the two versions as equally valid?

Each set of myths is labeled in the texts as "Palestinian" or "Zionist." Therefore, when Moishe, the Israeli student, reads about the Palestinian narrative that includes the Deir Yassin massacre or Sabra and Shatilla, he will dismiss those facts as "Palestinian propaganda and incitement." When Muhamed, the Palestinian Arab student, reads about the Nazi career of the Palestinian Grand Mufti, Hajj Amin El Husseini or the Kfar Etzion massacre, in the "Zionist" narrative he will dismiss those facts as "Zionist propaganda and myths." Muhamed would not think of internalizing the narrative with the "Zionist" label instead of or in addition to the Palestinian one, any more than he would think of taking the coat that is labeled "Moishe." Moishe wouldn't think of adopting the Palestinian narrative either, because it is not his. If you read, "This is what earth people believe" and "this is what Martians believe," which version will you accept as true?

History should not be a set of myths and superstitious beliefs that shape behavior. It is supposed to be based on a narrative of facts. Most ancient historians seem to have believed that history should be written as a collection of edifying fables, given versimilitude by an admixture of plausible facts. They invented speeches, they invented ancestors and they omitted whatever was inconvenient. It was OK for Thucydides and Titus Livius. Then was then and now is now. Those who write such fables today are generating propaganda, not history, and if they insist on teaching those stories to our children, they are teaching lies.

Consider the following example, given from the texts of Bar-On and Adwan, concerning the Balfour Declaration. Here is the "Zionist" version:

"The Zionist movement was born in the major centers of Jewish population in Europe, and its purpose was to return the Jewish people to its land and put an end to its abnormal situation among the nations of the world. The first time any country expressed support for Zionism was in a letter sent by Lord
Balfour, to help establish a Jewish political entity in the land of Israel."

It is more or less correct as far as it goes, except that children might get the wrong impression that there was a poltiical entity or defined geographical area called "Israel" in 1917. Of course, it doesn't go far enough. It tells half the story. It omits the conflicting promises of the British and the effect of the declaration on the Arabs. It doesn't tell us that many Jews, like Edwin Montagu, were opposed to the declaration and to Zionism, and it omits many other facts. That is the story that Moishe will remember, because the texts told him that it is his story by labeling it "Zionist Narrative." In any case, that is the story he is learning right now. Nothing gained and nothing lost.

Here is the Palestinian Arab version:

"With the rise of nationalism [in Europe], Zionism appeared as a drastic international solution to the Jewish problem, transforming the Jewish religion into a nationalist attachment to a special Jewish homeland and a special Jewish state ... British imperialism found in Zionism a perfect tool to
attaining its own interests ... the Balfour Declaration is a conspicuous example of the British policy of seizing another nation's land and effacing ... a native people's aspirations for national liberation."

This is presumably the version that the Palestinian child will take home. It has his name on it, after all. He probably hears about the same story at home and in the media in any case.

What is a "drastic international solution?" Was it more international than the Ottoman Empire or more drastic than the formation of Arab states out of that empire? The wording can be misconstrued to mean that Zionism was not a movement of Jews, but a scheme of the entire world, or the European countries, to dump their Jews in the land of Israel or Palestine. How do these adjectives, "drastic" and "international," help understanding?

Zionism did not "transform the Jewish religion into a nationalist attachment.' To understand Zionism, for better or worse, Palestinian students have to understand that the Jews called themselves "the Nation of Israel" 2,500 years ago or more. Jewish nationalism was not invented in Vienna or Odessa. The treatment of "British imperialism" in the above is also an example of "edifying history" - editorializing to schoolchildren who are perhaps not old enough to separate opinion from fact. A hundred years ago, the reverse sort of bumf was popular, and the above might read, "example of the selfless British policy of spreading civilization and enlightenment to all the peoples of the world." In fact, the land in question was part of the Ottoman empire, which worked exactly like the British Empire. The land that was seized by the British did not "belong" to any nation at the time. It had belonged to the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Before it belonged to the Ottomans, the land was part of the Mameluke empire, the Crusader empire, the Arab empire and the Roman empire. None of them had any objective claim to moral rectitude. The Arabs were quite happy to take advantage of British imperial ambitions in order to free themselves from the Ottoman Turks, and the Zionists were likewise trying to take a ride on British imperialism.

There may be many truths, but there are also many lies. We do not serve any purpose by giving equal time to lies and half-truths in the name of "balance" or "objectivity" or "dialogue." It is even less constructive to tell schoolchildren "This is your story, that 'version' is the 'story' of the other side." If it really happened, then both Mohamed and Moishe have to know about it. If it is not true, it should not be taught as anybody's version.

There are far too many people engaged in inventing and disseminating myths and biased histories of the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we are to make any progress against propaganda and one-sided renditions of events and history, we must work towards producing a single, unified and agreed-upon version of history, rather than perpetuating the myths and misconceptions. We will need to raise a generation of Israelis and Palestinian who see the whole truth, and accept the whole truth as "their own" narrative.

Ami Isseroff