Mandatory Dutch High School Textbooks Rife With Anti-Israel Bias

Israel’s embassy in the Netherlands has highlighted passages in a state-mandated Dutch history textbook that provides false representations of Israel’s history in its pages.

The book, Geschiedeniswerkplaats (History Workplace), was first brought to the attention of the public after leaders within the Dutch Jewish community spoke out against its slanderous material.

A Dutch Jewish student’s father wrote to the Israeli embassy, after his son revealed the contents of the textbook to his family. “What’s clear is that the person who wrote this book is a hater of Israel, and sadly there isn’t a lack of those here,” he said, according to JNS.org. 

History Workplace is a mandatory textbook for a number of high schools in the Netherlands, according to reports.

The textbook states that Israel declared statehood in 1948 after “Jewish militias carried out murders in Arab villages, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled and settled in refugee camps across the borders.”

While demonstrating a false narrative in the aforementioned statement, the book also does not note that Israel declared statehood in the midst of Arab aggression against the Jewish population of what was then the British mandate for Palestine, the Times of Israel reports.

The book also describes former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin–who received a Nobel Peace Prize after signing a long-term peace treaty with Egypt– as a “terrorist and extremist.”

History Workplace also shows a picture of a young Palestinian throwing a rock at an IDF tank with the caption, “Small opposition against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 2000.” However, the book does not mention that 2000 was also the year that saw a Palestinian terrorist uprising that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocents.

Israel’s Embassy in Holland commented:

We are acting on the subject in several areas. We are looking into the outrageous statements to identify any factual inaccuracies and the possibility of incitement.

Emmanuel Nahshon, Israel’s chief diplomat in Berlin, commented, “The ministry attributes utmost importance to the fight against the falsification of history and the slandering of Israel in textbooks.”