This year Israel’s Ministry of Education released a new civics textbook, which has now become an object of controversy. Although it was compiled by a staff of educators and specialists, its creation was in part a response to right-wing criticism of the 2000 edition. Peter Berkowitz examines the Israeli left’s complaints about the new textbook, and similar debates about civic education in the U.S.:

The 2016 To Be Citizens of Israel, according to its left-wing detractors, elevates the state’s Jewish character while blurring its democratic character. It neglects the narrative of the large Arab minority that is 20 percent of Israel’s population. And it barely acknowledges the central divide in Israeli politics: [the fate of the West Bank]. . . .

[In reality], To Be Citizens of Israel, is written in [an] old-fashioned liberal spirit. It is built around Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, in which Israel’s founders pledge to “foster the development of the country for the good of all its inhabitants”; to safeguard “freedom, justice, and equality as envisaged by the prophets of Israel”; and, appealing explicitly to Arab inhabitants, to provide “full and equal citizenship.” More than a third of the book is devoted to theories of democracy. More than a quarter deals with the structure of Israeli government.

The book persistently directs students’ attention to the ambiguities and strains to which Israel’s founding principles give rise. . . . The new volume bears little resemblance to the tendentious monster of its detractors’ imaginations. . . .

[In fact, it] equips students to grasp the Israeli-Arab conflict in its fullness and complexity as well as to understand the subtleties of debates about minority rights and class conflict. Not least, the textbook enhances students’ appreciation of the blending of principles out of which Israel arose and which continues to sustain it.

In the U.S., Berkowitz writes, conservative critics of California’s new civics curriculum are similarly imbued with an old-fashioned liberal spirit that “grounds the teaching of U.S. history in study of the nation’s founding principles and constructs the curriculum around the debates about those principles”—and are provoking similarly tendentious attacks from those to their left.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.