Posted: 6/5/2017 5:32:00 PM
Author: Rachel Frommer
Source: This article orgiinally appeared in The Algemeiner
Texas Public High School Reportedly Teaches Students That Israel Was to Blame for Outbreak of 1948 War of Independence
by Rachel Frommer
Bellaire High School in Texas. Photo: Henry Han via Wikimedia Commons.
A public high school in Texas reportedly offered a tenth-grade lesson on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that claimed the 1948 War of Independence was precipitated by the fact that “Jews do not want two states,” the Elder of Zion blog reported.
The line was allegedly included in a Bellaire High School (located in the Houston area) slideshow presentation on “decolonialization,” in a slide titled, “The Solution????”
Einat Wilf, a former member of Knesset and outspoken defender of Zionism, dismissed the claim "simply false."
“The Zionist leadership clearly accepted and said yes to the United Nations 1947 partition resolution,” Wilf told The Algemeiner, adding that those at the helm did so “despite all the drawbacks,” which included “receiving only half of what was initially promised by the 1922 Mandate of the League of Nations (the predecessor to the UN), mostly desert, without Jerusalem (that is without the ‘Zion’ in ‘Zionism’) and without Judea (the ‘Jude’ of ‘Judaism’).”
Wilf said Zionist leaders agreed to the plan, because “it did mean that the Jewish people would thus have a sovereign state of their own in their ancient homeland and could liberate and govern themselves.”
In contrast, she said, “the Arabs clearly and openly rejected the plan — there is no fudging the historical record here — arguing that they will not accept any form of a Jewish sovereign presence in the land.”
The surrounding Arab states then launched a war on the newly-established Jewish state, explained Wilf.
According to the Elder of Ziyon report, in another slide — titled “Conflict: Pride and Land” — the claim was made that, “Migration of European Jews to the area begins about 1918, they buy best lands from the Arabs.”
Small waves of European Jews had immigrated to modern-day Israel throughout the 14-19th centuries, with the period under Ottoman rule known as the “Old Yishuv.” Moves motivated by Jewish nationalistic ideals began as early as the mid-to-late 1800s.
The city of Petah Tikva, which today boasts a population of some quarter of a million people, was founded in 1878 and is known as “Em HaMoshavot,” or “Mother of the Moshavot.”
Bellaire High School representatives did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner‘s requests for comment.
