Title Remarks on a Critical Theory of Israeli School Education Author: Julian Culp Institutional affiliation: Goethe University, Frankfurt, Department of Political Science, Leibniz Research Group “Transnational Justice” Address: Max-Horkheimer-Straße 2, Fach EXC 6, 60629 Frankfurt, Germany Telephone: +49 (0) 69 / 798 – 31559 Email: Culp@em.uni-frankfurt.de Biographical note: Dr. Julian Culp is Lecturer and Research Associate in Political Philosophy and Theory within the Leibniz Research Group “Transnational Justice” at the Department of Political Science of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany. Prior to that he was the Postdoctoral Fellow in Normative Theory of the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Global Justice and Development (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and of several articles on human development, global justice and education in journals such as The Journal of Global Ethics, Third World Quarterly and The European Journal for Political Theory. 1 Remarks on a critical theory of Israeli school education1 Abstract: This article first of all illustrates how Israeli history schoolbooks fail to represent or misrepresent the culture of Palestinian-Israeli citizens, and then explains the ways in which such mis- or non-representation hinders the cultivation of vital democratic virtues like empathy. Following that, the article identifies three obstacles for rendering Israeli school education more democratic: Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state, socio-political domination of Palestinian-Israelis outside the educational system, and the unwillingness to recognize the creation of Israel as a moral dilemma. The article concludes that overcoming these obstacles is crucial for improving democratic education in Israeli. Keywords: education, schoolbooks, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, critical theory, history 1. Introduction In this paper I will offer a few tentative remarks on a critical theory of Israeli school education. The aim of such a theory is twofold. The first goal is to analyze critically the ways in which Israeli school education contributes to the socio-political domination of “Arab-” or “Palestinian-Israeli citizens” in Israel.2 The second goal is to offer an explanatory account as to why this is the case. Thus I will attempt to identify the obstacles that could hinder the reduction of this socio-political domination and thereby determine the changes that are 1 This paper develops further the ideas that were discussed in my presentation “Multicultural Education under Conditions of Severe Inequality – Blessing or Curse?” at the “Production of Inequalities – Realities and Prospects for Change in Jerusalem” conference at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, Palestine, on December 5, 2016. For the discussion of my ideas I owe many thanks to Shukri Abed, Katarina Pitasse Fragoso, Louis Larue, Refia Kadayifci, Anton Leist, Awad Mansour, Dima Nusseibeh, Maha Samman, Sibyl Schwarzenbach, Pierre-Etienne Vandamme, Bruno Verbeek and Said Zeidani. 2 In this article the term “Palestinian-Israeli citizens” will be used in order to include the non-Jewish Israelis citizens who themselves have been living in the territory of the state of Israel prior to the creation of this state or who happen to be their descendants. 2 necessary for socio-political emancipation. Throughout this paper socio-political domination and emancipation will be framed in terms of a concept of democratic justice. That means that socio-political domination will be viewed as a socio-political order that systematically fails to meet the standards of fundamental democratic justice. Socio-political emancipation will be seen as processes that are conducive towards a greater realization of these standards of fundamental democratic justice which require that all individuals enjoy an equal socio-political status and are able to participate as equals within the socio-political affairs of the country.3 (cf. Forst 2012, Chs 3 and 7; Forst 2014, Ch. 2; Culp 2014, Ch. 4) And by using these standards the socio-political domination takes place when the citizens do not enjoy an equal socio-political status and are unable to participate as equals within socio-political affairs. Socio-political emancipation, by contrast, occurs through processes that empower citizens to participate as equals within socio-political affairs.4 The criticism laid out in this paper does not constitute a fully developed critical theory of Israeli school education and does not provide a comprehensive analysis of how Israeli school education contributes to socio-political domination in Israel. Instead the paper diagnoses the ways in which Israeli history schoolbooks fail to facilitate a well-balanced multicultural education. Such a diagnosis is a relevant element of a critical theory of Israeli school education, because multicultural education can play a crucial role in the promotion of democratic arrangements through school education. And as I will explain in Section 2 a multicultural education is important for the cultivation of the democratic virtues of empathy and sympathy. The scope of this paper is somewhat limited insofar as I rely strongly on Nurit 3 A theory of democratic justice defends these standards on the basis of the moral idea that all persons should be regarded as equal normative authorities that have an equal moral right to justification. 4 In this article simply assume that Palestinian-Israeli citizens suffer from this kind of socio-political domination; I provide neither concrete examples nor a systematic account of this sort of domination. 3 Peled-Elhanan’s Palestine in Israeli School Books (2012) in my brief analysis of the ways in which Israeli history school books fall short of providing an appropriate multicultural education. The observations which are outlined in Section 3 reveal that the Israeli history schoolbooks either fail entirely to represent the Palestinian-Israeli citizens or represent them solely in negative ways, for example as refugees, terrorists or a major economic burden. In Section 4 some potential explanations are given for this kind of non- and mis-representation of the Palestinian-Israeli citizens. They refer to the identity of Israel as a Jewish democratic state, the socio-political marginalization of Palestinian-Israelis and the general difficulty of recognizing the existence moral dilemmas. Section 5 brings the argumentation to a closing summary. 2. The democratic case for multicultural education Philosophers of education such as Martha Nussbaum (1998, Ch. 4; 2010, Ch. 2) argue for the democratic importance of multicultural education in the liberal societies of North America and Western Europe. They maintain that due to the conditions of social diversity brought about through processes of transnationalization, a shared national ethnic identity can no longer represent the glue of a democratic ethos at the domestic level.5 And since social diversity appears to be an ever present fact, a democratic ethos must be supported through a democratic education in ways which do not rely on the idea of an ethnically understood national identity. Since democratic arrangements on the domestic level require that citizens engage seriously with one another’s points of view and cooperate effectively with each other, it is mandatory to ensure that there is a sufficient amount of empathy and sympathy despite one another’s cultural difference. Nussbaum regards it as necessary therefore that institutions of formal education place great emphasis on multicultural learning so as to ensure 5 Waldron (2003) argues correctly, however, that social diversity is not just the result of recent processes of transnationalization, but a permanent feature of human relations. 4 that – despite these cultural differences – citizens nevertheless come to adopt these kinds of democratic virtues. Empathy is one of the important democratic virtues, because it is required in order to “step into the other citizen’s shoes” and reconstruct as best as possible that citizen’s reasoning (cf. Vandamme 2013). Such perspective taking is crucial for a democratic deliberation, which is meant to facilitate public opinion- and will-formation on terms that are generally and reciprocally acceptable (Habermas 1996, Chs 3 and 8; Bohman and Rehg 1996; Forst 2012, Chs 1 and7).6 If the democratic arrangements are understood, at least in part, in a deliberative fashion, individuals must engage then in an exchange of deliberations through which they collectively determine how to arrange the basic structure of their sociopolitical order. According to such an understanding all individuals should become joint authors of the socio-political orders which they inhabit. Any democratic arrangement which ascribes at least some importance to such deliberative reasoning must rely on the citizens’ capacity for empathy. Multicultural education is meant to promote this capacity of perspective taking by equipping the individuals with the basic knowledge of the essential facts and narratives which characterize the citizens’ diverse cultures. But empathy is not sufficient. Citizens must possess also a certain modicum of sympathy vis-à-vis each other. Sympathy involves taking an interest in the fulfillment of other citizens’ interests. It is necessary, because otherwise citizens will often not accept public policies whenever they do not fulfill sufficiently their own interests, even if these policies have been 6 The criterion of reciprocity can be defined more concretely by distinguishing between the reciprocity of content and the reciprocity of reasons (Forst 2012, pp. 6, 20, 49). The former requires fulfilling the specific claims that one also expects others to meet. The latter forbids stipulating that others endorse the same interests and values one acknowledges oneself as well as postulating some objective ethical truth that is in fact not intersubjectively accepted. 5 generally and reciprocally justified.7 After all, in order to realize the public policies as they have been agreed upon through democratic decision-making processes, at least some individuals will have to withhold the pursuit of the projects that they would otherwise pursue. For example, if a society decides democratically to expand its system of public transportation, then those who reside close to the construction sites have to endure the noise and other related unpleasant results. And by acting out of sympathy citizens may learn to refrain from hindering the realization of the system of public transportation, even though they find the construction sites very annoying. In this way sympathy can be very helpful and useful for sustaining the democratic decision-making processes. Multicultural education can facilitate such sympathy across cultural groups, since it enables people to recognize each other as needy persons who must cooperate with one another in order to overcome the shared obstacles that everyone has to face. (cf. Nussbaum, 1997, Ch. 2; 2010, Ch. 3; 2013, Ch. 1) The recognition of something in common, which is shared, becomes a cause to motivate persons to promote one anothers’ interests. This is because such recognition transforms an abstract moral imperative to cooperate with others into a particular moral impulse to cooperate with specific others who are in a certain sense like myself after all. Hence the study of other cultures helps us to ascertain the commonalities 7 I prefer to leave it open as to which particular kind of motivation is best required for maintaining democratic arrangements over time. I have found that there are two sources of motivation that are equally effective in principle and which are not mutually exclusive. The first one is the expansion of the circle of concern beyond oneself and one’s family and close friends towards one’s national political community and perhaps even all of humanity might be one way in which individuals could be motivated to uphold democratic arrangements. Nussbaum (2013) pursues this approach. The second one is the way in which individuals become properly motivated for maintaining democratic arrangements by developing a sense of justice which includes all of those with whom they should, or in fact already, are interacting with on democratic terms. 6 of the human experience, despite the fact that different cultures have developed different ways in their manner of addressing the shared problems that are part of that experience. There are of course many other ways in which multicultural education contributes to the development of empathy and sympathy. And even more so, there are other democratic virtues in addition to empathy and sympathy – including epistemic modesty, self-reflexivity and tolerance, for example – which multicultural education helps to cultivate. This section did not offer an exhaustive account of the ways in which multicultural education can promote democratic virtues, but explained why multicultural education is of vital importance in fostering democratic arrangements through the development of the democratic virtues of empathy and sympathy. 3. Palestinian-Israeli citizens in Israeli history schoolbooks Based on this understanding of the normative importance of multicultural education for realizing democratic arrangements, we can identify an important problem of the Israeli school education system. This problem is due to the type of the most history schoolbooks used in the secondary education schools. These books fail to properly introduce Israeli citizens to the culture of the Palestinian-Israeli citizens. But let us keep in mind that Israel is but just one more example of a country in which the school system fails to meet the ideal of a wellrounded multicultural education. For example the German public educational system with which I am personally familiar also falls markedly short of adequately preparing German citizens for democratic engagement in a culturally diverse society based on a good multicultural education. Now let us focus on the Israeli school system in a rather limited manner by going through an analysis of Peled-Elhanan’s monograph Palestinians in Israeli School Books (2012). Peled-Elhanan analyzes many commonly-used history school books: Avieli-Tabibian (1999), 7 Journey into the Past: Chapters in History for Grades 8–10; Avieli-Tabibian (2001), The Age of Horror and Hope: Chapters in History for Grades 10–12; Bar–Navi (1998), The 20th Century: A History of the People of Israel in the Last Generations for Grades 10–12; BarNavi (1999) Modern Times Part II: The History of the People of Israel for Grades 10–12; Blank (2006), The Face of the 20th Century; Domka et al. (2009) Nationality: Building a State in the Middle East; Inbar (2004), 50 Years of Wars and Hopes; Naveh (1994), The 20th Century: The Century that Changed the Order of the World; Naveh et al. (2009), Nationality in Israel and the Nations: Building a State in the Middle East; Yaakoby et al. (1999), A World of Changes: A History Book for 9th Grade. Her analysis reveals that the basic problem of these history schoolbooks is that they either do not at all represent the Palestinian citizens or present them in a way that suggests that they are the root cause of several societal problems. Peled-Elhanan (2012, p. 16) describes this phenomenon as follows: “The Palestinian citizens of Israel do not have their relative share or rather any share at all in any report that concerns them in the textbooks studied here; they are practically absent from the texts, except as negative phenomena: a primitive lot which is a developmental burden or a security and demographic threat.” (p. 16) Peled-Ellahan (2012, p. 49) goes on to explain that the failure to represent the culture of Palestinian-Israeli citizens is brought about by the absence of references to a whole array of aspects relevant for understanding the culture and lifeworld of Palestinian-Israeli citizens: “neither literature nor poetry, neither customs nor traditions are ever mentioned.” Instead many negative associations with Palestinian-Israeli citizens are commonly found in the schoolbooks. And Peled-Ellahan (2012, p. 49) observes further that the “[schoolbooks] 8 represent them in racist icons or demeaning classificatory images such as terrorists, refugees and primitive farmers”.8 The problem of this sort of non- and mis-representation from the point of view of a conception of democratic justice is that it fails to cultivate the democratic virtues of empathy and sympathy. This becomes especially noticeable when we observe some of the political attitudes of Israeli-Jewish high school students. It is estimated that more than half of these students believe that Palestinian-Israelis should possess an inferior social-political status. As Peled-Ellahan (2012, p. 58) reports, “50 per cent of Israeli-Jewish high school students believe [Israeli-]Palestinian citizens should not be granted equal civil rights and 56 per cent believe they should not be allowed to be elected to the Knesset.” These reports indicate clearly that in the eyes of the Israeli-Jewish high school students the Palestinian-Israeli citizens should not be considered as highly as the other Israeli citizens are. While these kinds of beliefs cannot be attributed exclusively to the way in which Israeli history schoolbooks are designed, it seems also hard to deny that these schoolbooks are at least to some extent responsible for these beliefs. The students tend to perceive history schoolbooks as historical truth and do not question the authority of schoolbooks. As Wineburg (2001, p. 76) observes: “[F]or students, reading was not a process of puzzling about author’s intentions or situating texts in a social world but of gathering information.” Students, and to a certain degree also teachers, tend not to question whether or not the representation of Palestinian-Israeli citizens as a “negative phenomena” is adequate and well 8 Peled-Elhanan (2012, p. 54) characterizes the (non- or mis-)representation of the Palestinian-Israelis in this way: “In 50 Years The Palestinian non-terrorists, called ‘The Arabs of the Territories,’ are only mentioned as cheap labor and a threat to Israeli agriculture, or as ‘infiltrators’ who come from Jordan and Egypt to commit terror acts in Israel. The chapter ends with a photograph of fully armed, masked people wearing kaffiyah on a vehicle. This is the only photograph of Palestinians in the whole book, placed at the bottom centre, as if concluding the report.” 9 balanced. Peled-Elhanan (2012, p. 45) explains this by remarking that the “[s]chool books are not overtly ideological. For teachers and students they possess the authority of unbiased truth, being presented as objective neutral reports of ‘the bare facts’ and scientific data.” Thereby teachers and students fail to appreciate that in schoolbooks, as White (1978, p. 67) puts it, “the choices of plot structure and the choice of paradigms of explanations [are] products of […] an interpretive decision: a moral or ideological decision.” Hence it seems not implausible to claim that the selection of the contents of history schoolbooks is at least partially responsible for the socio-political domination of the IsraeliPalestinian citizens, since the selection contributes to the dissemination of the belief that these citizens are of an inferior socio-political status. In the following section I will sketch an account explaining why the history schoolbooks are designed in a way which does not facilitate multicultural education. And now I will move from illustrating how socio-political domination occurs through school education to explaining why this socio-political domination exists. Such an explanation is useful for facilitating socio-political emancipation and for appreciating why emancipation is so difficult to achieve. 4. How to explain the failure of democratic education In this section I will consider three factors which explain the failure of multicultural education in Israeli education. They are based on the identity of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state, the socio-political marginalization of Palestinian-Israelis and the difficulty of recognizing the existence of moral dilemmas. The Identity of Israel as Democratic and Jewish State 10 The democratic and Jewish identity of the Israeli state brings along a certain instability and tension, because it seems questionable that a democratic state can rigidly maintain over time a particular ethnic or religious identity. Among the defining features of a democratic state is that its citizens grant each other certain civic and political liberties. Among these liberties is the liberty of conscience to decide freely which religion, if any, one would like to pursue in one’s life. The full realization of such a liberty of conscience means that it cannot be guaranteed that the majority of the population, or just a certain share of less than half of the population, will actually embrace one the way of life of one particular religion or ethnicity. It is just as easily possible that the majority of the population will decide not to pursue that particular way of life. Rawls (2005, 54–8) has coined the term “burdens of judgment” in order to provide an account of the reasons as to why individuals eventually choose a way of life that differs from each other and that may also differ from the way of life that is dominant within the society. These burdens of judgment state that people live through distinct experiences, differ on which empirical information they deem relevant for practical judgment and have to rely on interpretation of moral and political concepts that are underspecified. It is because of these burdens that within democratic social and political institutions which allow their members to think and judge in the way that they see fit. And the exercise of reason creates the plurality of views as to which way of life they want to pursue becomes a permanent feature of the social and political world. And so to the extent that citizens in a democratic state grant each other the liberty of conscience to decide for themselves which way of life to adopt, it cannot be guaranteed that Israel, as a democratic state, will maintain its predominantly Jewish identity. This is so if by that Jewish identity – for simplicity’s sake – we simply mean that the Jewish identity is the way of life that is chosen by the majority of Israeli citizens. However, if the state of Israel attempted to restrict the exercise of liberty of conscience in order to prevent that there is no longer a majority of Jewish citizens, then in virtue of that restriction the Israeli state would 11 lose its character as democratic state. This is because it is part and parcel of the idea of a democratic state that it represents a society whose members are autonomous and thus free to decide which way of life they want to adopt. This is why there seems to be a certain instability or tension that goes along with the fact that the Israeli state is both Jewish and democratic. Now, the reason as to why this instability or tension character of the Israeli state is responsible for the deficits in multicultural education is simply that maintaining Israel’s Jewish character requires undertaking measures that suppress the emergence and diffusion of nonJewish ways of life, such as the Palestinian one. Or, in other words, if Israel were to offer a multicultural education that effectively promoted the recognition of the equal socio-political status of all of its citizens, then the Israeli state would thereby risk increasing the number of Palestinian-Israeli citizens who do not identify themselves as Jewish. And once the way of life of the Palestinian-Israeli citizens would be socially recognized as just as legitimate as the Jewish-Israeli way of life, then the former could eventually attract more followers. Thus, by representing the Palestinian-Israeli citizens in history schoolbooks in negative ways, it seems unlikely that students will seriously consider adopting the way of life of these citizens. And that will remain the case as long as Palestinian-Israeli citizens are predominantly perceived as refugees, terrorists or economic burden. So it seems improbable that citizens would freely choose to adopt their non-Jewish way of life. And this, in turn, facilitates the maintenance of the Jewish character of the Israeli state. The Marginalization of Palestinian-Israeli Citizens Another factor which accounts for the existing practice of Israeli school education is the fact – which I simply assume without further argumentation – that Palestinian-Israeli citizens are suffering from socio-political domination. To the extent that Palestinian-Israeli citizens suffer from discriminations in different walks of life, there is a widespread belief that these 12 citizens have an inferior socio-political status, which makes it seem appropriate to represent them in this way in history schoolbooks. Of course it would be naïve to hold the view that formal educational practice could critically distance itself from the social and political practices and their underlying normative beliefs that are dominant in a given society. Instead the formal educational practices more often than not simply reflect or reproduce the power relations that exist within society at large. (cf. Bourdieu and Passeron 1964) This implies that as long as asymmetric power relations in Israel do not change, it is unlikely that the representation of Palestinian-Israeli citizens will change. The reason for this is simply that the non-Palestinian-Israeli citizens will use their greater political power in decision-making processes about educational policy in ways that will ensure the maintenance of their power. As Jenkins (1991, p. 26) explains, this is simply because history schoolbooks are the “products [that] correspond to a range of power bases that exist at any given moment and which structure and distribute the meanings of histories along a dominant-marginal spectrum”. Therefore the history schoolbooks are not a factually adequate account of past events but rather a particular way of forming the self-understanding of social groups by way of construing the past and its memorization in a particular manner. (cf. Tyack 2000, Podeh 2002, Wertsch 2002) Another closely related reason why it is unlikely that the representation of PalestinianIsraeli citizens in schoolbooks will change as long as Palestinian-Israeli citizens suffer from socio-political domination is that under such conditions it is very difficult from a social epistemological point of view to adopt the belief that these citizens possess an equal sociopolitical status.9 As Allen Buchanan (forthcoming) has recently argued, it is very hard to endorse the belief that women should enjoy equal human rights when one lives in societies in which women are constantly denied an equal status within social and political affairs. This is because women living in such societies will often regard themselves as being of an inferior 9 Cf. Buchanan (2010) on the importance of social epistemology for moral and political philosophy. 13 status and also act accordingly. Under such conditions it is not only convenient but also not entirely implausible to endorse the belief that there are certain natural differences between men and women that justify ascribing different rights to them. The behavior of men and women in inegalitarian societies will be profoundly different, which makes it seem not entirely implausible to endorse the view that there are certain natural differences which not only account for the differences in the observable behavior, but which also justify ascribing different human rights to men and women. Consequently it is difficult for members of such societies to endorse the belief that women should be granted equal social and political status, when their everyday experience suggests that there might be natural differences between men and women that might justify ascribing a differential status to them. Applied to the case of Israel, this means that as long as IsraeliPalestinian citizens suffer from socio-political domination, it is improbable that those who work in the field of education will develop multicultural curricula that are meant to disseminate the belief that these citizens possess an equal socio-political status. The Unwillingness to Recognize Moral Dilemmas Finally, another factor which accounts for the deficits in multicultural education in Israeli schools is the unwillingness to recognize the creation of the state of Israel as constituting a moral dilemma.10 Ethical thinking that suggests there is exactly one right solution to a moral problem nourishes this unwillingness. Following this kind of thinking it is impossible that two opposing courses of actions are both morally permissible, or that a certain course of action is both permissible and prohibited. There are good reasons, however, to believe that a moral dilemma fuels the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the reluctance to recognize this dilemma, 10 Cf. Nussbaum (1986) on the relevance of moral dilemmas. 14 explains not only the intractable nature of this conflict in general, but also the problematic aspects of multicultural education in Israeli schools in particular.11 The moral dilemma relates to the Holocaust in Europe and especially in Germany. After all, due to the Holocaust the creation and maintenance of the state of Israel with a democratic and Jewish identity in the territory that is now the state of Israel seems permissible. The European Jews desperately needed a refuge. But, on the other hand, the violent expulsion of the Palestinians that were living in this territory in that period seems impermissible. Therefore, to the extent that the creation of the Jewish state of Israel was impossible without the violent expulsion of the Palestinians, the creation of the state of Israel appears both permissible and prohibited. In that sense the creation of the state of Israel seems to constitute a moral dilemma. Yet it is difficult for all parties concerned, the nonPalestinian Israeli citizens, the Palestinian-Israeli citizens, the Palestinians living outside of Israel, and the citizens of European states to recognize this moral dilemma. For the JewishIsraeli citizens and the European citizens the recognition of this moral dilemma would mean to put into question the moral legitimacy of the state of Israel. By contrast, for the PalestinianIsraeli citizens and the Palestinians living outside of Israel the recognition of this moral dilemma would involve questioning the moral illegitimacy of the state of Israel. For both sides it is therefore more convenient to deny the existence of a moral dilemma and argue either that the state of Israel is legitimate or that it is illegitimate, respectively. This denial and these corresponding ways of arguing, however, put the concerned parties in stark opposition to each other, which in turn keeps the conflict going. So the reluctance to accept or at least allow for the possibility that the creation of the state of Israel constitutes a moral dilemma obstructs the realization of a more balanced 11 I remain agnostic as to whether a sound moral theory must necessarily make room for the existence of moral dilemmas. In this article I focus merely on the case of the creation of the state of Israel and suggest that there are many pro tanto reasons for believing that it constitutes a moral dilemma. 15 multicultural education in Israeli schools in the following way. If multicultural education were to become more balanced, then it would have to teach explicitly that the Palestinian-Israeli citizens refer to the creation of the state of Israel as the “Al-Nakba”, by which they mean the catastrophe. While the schoolbooks that Peled-Elhanan analyzes already discuss the violent expulsion of the Palestinians from the territory of the present state of Israel, they do so in way that conceals the systematic way in which violence had to be used, and which moves the expulsion in the direction of the category of ethnic cleansing. They thereby fail to account for the catastrophic character that the expulsion had for the Palestinians. Peled-Elhanan (2012, p. 79) argues: “None of the books studied here conceals the fact that there was some official expulsion; however none of them states there was a plan of ethnic cleansing. The exodus is attributed to the failings of Palestinian leadership, the lack of Arab help and to the natural outcomes of the war, which made Palestinians ‘abandon’ their villages and cities.” So the characterizations of the creation of the state of Israel in Israeli schoolbooks seem to avoid highlighting accurately the violent aspect of the expulsion and do not use the language of ethnic cleansing.12 Apparently this is necessary in order to avoid the recognition of the moral dilemma that the creation of the state constitutes. This means, however, that Jewish-Israeli citizens will have a hard time appreciating the self-understanding of the Palestinian-Israelis, since for them the Nakba is an event that is profoundly formative for their identity. As Ben Amos (2010) puts this idea pointedly: 12 The characterization of the Palestinian expulsion found in the schoolbook texts re-printed in Adwan, Bar-On and Nave (2012, p. 108), however, clearly refers to the brutal aspects of the violence used by the Israeli military. 16 “A crucial condition for the progress towards peace with the Palestinians is the recognition not only of what had happened in 1948 but also of the Nakba as a legitimate point of view. The policy of Israeli ministry of education, to deny this point of view puts spokes in the already faltering wheels of the negotiations. [This policy] relies on an archaic simplistic way of history teaching. If we wish our students to be critical thinkers we must teach them that our point of view is not the only one, that there are several points of view – all of which are not less legitimate that ours.” Representing more fully the way in which Palestinians perceived the creation of the state of Israel would require considering the possibility that this creation constitutes a moral dilemma. But apparently there is a tendency to avoid recognizing the existence this moral dilemma. Therefore it seems not altogether implausible to suspect that the reluctance to accept the existence of this moral dilemma seems to be an important consideration for explaining as to why the Palestinian-Israeli citizens are represented in Israeli schoolbooks in the way characterized above. 5. Conclusion In this paper some of the essential elements of a critical theory of the Israeli school education have been sketched out. It was illustrated as to how Israeli history schoolbooks misrepresent the culture of Palestinian-Israeli citizens or do not even take the effort to represent them at all. Such mis- or non-representationcontributes to socio-political domination, since it fails to provide the kind of multicultural education that would be capable of nurturing the democratic virtues of empathy and sympathy. Yet the development of such virtues is a mandatory requirement for the proper functioning of the democratic decisionmaking processes within culturally diverse societies. This is because, as explained by 17 reference to the works of Nussbaum, public deliberation requires the capacity for mutual perspective taking, and the efficacy of public decision as well depends upon the existence of sympathy among all co-citizens. And so it is problematic from a democratic point of view that Israeli history schoolbooks represent the Palestinian-Israelis in such a negative manner. Finally, I have articulated three major reasons that are able to explain why and how socio-political domination occurs through the school education system. They include the identity of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the socio-political domination of Palestinian-Israelis and the unwillingness to recognize the creation of the state of Israel as a moral dilemma. These reasons could represent points of reference for future social research into the question as to why the Israeli school system is responsible for fostering sociopolitical Israeli domination. References Adwan, S., Bar-On, D. and Naveh, E (eds). 2012. Side by Side. Parallel Histories of IsraelPalestine. New York: Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME). Amos, Ben. 2010. Haaretz, October 5, 2010. Avieli-Tabibian, K. 1999. Journey into the Past: Chapters in History for Grades 8–10. Tel Aviv: The Centre for Educational Technologies. 18 Avieli-Tabibian, K. 2001. 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