Penn Foster High School is a US for-profit high school for distance learning. They offer accredited online high school diplomas from home.
My friend Shoshana alerted me to the fact that a friend of hers using the program to homeschool was horrified to discover the way the Arab-Israeli conflict is portrayed. So I decided to investigate further. The following is what I found (thanks again to Shoshana).
One of the books Penn Foster uses is called Essentials of World Regional Geography (3rd edition), published by McGraw Hill.
Here is the first excerpt from it I want to discuss:
Here, the idea of a Jewish homeland is connected to the Holocaust, without any mention of the rich Jewish historical and religious connection to this particular land. While the Arab rejection of the Partition Plan is mentioned, their violent reactions are not.
There’s also mention of the UN being “dominated by European and Western powers” as the primary reason for the UN creating the state of Israel in 1948, playing into the idea that Israel is a White colonialist project. The truth is something else entirely; UN General Assembly resolution 181 adopting the Partition Plan was essentially adopted due to Zionist lobbying. And if you look at the ‘for’ votes, the most came from Latin America and the Caribbean, more so than those from Europe. Not to mention the fact the UN did not create Israel in 1948 – Ben Gurion declared independence in 1948, based on UN GA resolution 181 from the year before.
On to the next excerpt, which is even more problematic:
Note the mention of the “Palestinian people”, even though at this time the Jews were referred to as the “palestinians” and the palestinian Arabs were referred to as “Arabs.” Worse than this, they are referred to as the indigenous people, which they are clearly not. And the Jews did not force out “about 80%”; while there is much debate regarding how many fled and how many were expelled, the amount expelled would not be close to 80%. Furthermore, why not at the very least present some of the differing views?
Note also there is no mention of the 800,000 Jews forced to leave Arab and Muslim lands. Nor the context of the Jews fighting for their very survival, and not fighting a war of expansion as is intimated here.
We see the same lack of context in the following excerpt dealing with the Six Day War, which was essentially a preemptive war of defense for Israel:
This also seems to place most of the blame for a lack of a resolution on Israel, which “did not leave the lands it occupied”, making no mention of the fact we were willing to but the Arabs issued the 3 No’s at Khartoum: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with it….”
More historical revisionism on the next page:
The French embargo on Israel had nothing to do with them seeing us responsible for the Six Day War; they had placed an embargo before the war after the expulsion of France from North Africa in 1962 led to France wanting to improve relations with the Arab world, and adopting a more conciliatory attitude toward the Arab nations and a correspondingly harsher tone toward Israel.
Jumping forward to Oslo and beyond, and the book omits any mention of the Camp David summit in which Ehud Barak made a generous offer to Arafat, one which the latter rejected and responded to with violence, launching the second Intifada (also not mentioned):
Next, the book points to this video:
Again, Israel’s taking over territory is portrayed as a land grab, rather than a matter of survival; the PLO is portrayed as an organization that arose in response to Israelis settling in Gaza and the so-called West Bank, which is amazing considering it was formed 3 years before the Six Day War and objects to the existence of the entire Jewish state; and the Hamas terrorist organization is referred to benignly as a “political movement”
The final part to which I would like to draw your attention is this section, which asks students to consider whether Israel’s very existence is a good idea:
So there you have it: historical fabrication most horrid being taught to US high school students exposed to the Penn Foster curriculum.
Please join me in contacting them here to voice your concerns.
Update: It has been pointed out to me that we should also contact McGraw Hill, who have published this book (which might be in use at other schools). It is a fair point.
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