Textbook Treatment of the History of Palestine/Israel Question in Western Universities

What is it about?

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the purported influence of a pro-Israeli environment in the West on the production of academic knowledge about the Palestine/Israel question. The most popular college textbooks on the history of the question were analysed through textbook and context analysis in order to answer the key question of the research: ‘How the knowledge of the history of the Palestine/Israel question presented in Western academia, and why has it been presented in that particular way. The results of the textbook analysis (Historical Narrative Analysis) support the conclusion that textbook knowledge on the question is mainly pro-Israeli in bias. In relation to the ‘Why’ question, the context analysis offers the ‘Jewish pro-Israeli producer’ as being the main factor for the bias in the products. An additional factor identified is that the relevant knowledge has been produced in a certain, American or Israeli, national and educational environment.

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Why is it important?

A world Class expert in the field of Israel Studies, whom I criticized his popular textbook, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, in my PhD thesis, delivered an opinion about this article: 'It provides a great deal of useful information. I would have said some things differently, and I share very many but not all of your underlying assumptions. But overall, it's clearly a very solid and useful contribution, and I hope it gets read widely'.

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