How one side sees the other

 

The German-Israeli Textbook Commission presents its first findings and recommendations.

 

“The purpose of school textbooks is to create a corrective to public opinion and media representations,” says Professor Wolfgang Sander of the University of Giessen and a member of the “History Textbooks” Working Group attached to the German-Israeli Textbook Commission. However, the images of Israel in German school textbooks are almost exclusively to be found in the context of the Middle East conflict, and tend also to “have reduced complexity” and be shaped by the mass media. Images of Israelis as soldiers or as Orthodox Jews tend to be used in an emotionalising manner and often as stereotypes. While maps tend to be inaccurate or in part actually wrong. The history of Israel, of Israeli civil society and aspects such as demographics, business, science and nature hardly get mentioned. German-Israeli relations are likewise not grasped as an opportunity for a case study in democracy formation. Such is a brief summary of the findings and recommendations described at the presentation evening held by the German-Israeli Textbook Commission (DISBK) on 23 June at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin.
 

Between 2011 and 2014, DISBK examined over 400 German and Israeli school textbooks from a variety of subjects: History, Geography and Civics with a view to how the respectively other country is presented. The focus here was on how the respective other country is described, its history and society, and the portrayal of the Holocaust and remembering it. DISBK consists of three bilateral working groups, one each for the subjects of History, Geography and Civics. They are made up of academics, professional educationalists and teachers from both countries. At the German end, the project is funded by the Federal Foreign Office and coordinated by the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig. At the Israeli end, the project is lead managed by the Ministry of Education, with coordination devolving to the MOFET Institute for the research and development of programmes in teacher education in Tel Aviv. For more on the history and mission of DISBK please visit the Georg Eckert Institute Website.
 

After welcoming addresses by Professor Maria Böhmer, a member of German Parliament and Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office, by Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, Ambassador of the State of Israel to Germany, and by Dalia Fenig, Pedagogical Secretariat Vice Chair, Israeli Ministry of Education, Professor Simone Lässig, Director of the Georg Eckert Institute, Dr Michal Golan, Director of Mofet Institute, and the academic coordinators Dr Dirk Sadowski, and Dr Arie Kizel, presented the work done by the German-Israeli Textbook Commission. The next point on the programme was the presentation of the German-Israeli Textbook Commission’s findings and recommendations for school textbooks for History, Geography and Civics.

 

Israeli school textbooks were also examined. A key finding was that German post-War history and German-Israeli relations are hardly mentioned at all. In general, however, the image of Germany conveyed to Israeli pupils is not per se negative: “We can say in general that Germany is not present in Israeli Civics textbooks as a central or outstanding topic. This is true of textbooks for junior high school and for high school. At those points where Germany gets mentioned, the country tends to be described as a progressive, Western and democratic state. Obviously, such a generalized description is not satisfactory and does not do justice to the country’s status and its role on the international stage.”

 

The complete publication is available here in German and Hebrew and can be downloaded here