Mideast conflict fails to reach classrooms 
5/14/2002 
Sawsan Morrar 
Campus Editor 

It’s everywhere: dominating the front-page news, remaining as the lead story on CNN and most local news stations. It’s the Middle East conflict, and for the last few months, it was nearly impossible to avoid the topic. 
Except in school. 

The curriculum in Laguna Creek High School, along with most other schools, does not cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict thoroughly enough for students to understand it. 

Social Science Department Head, James Collins, believes that the Middle East isn’t covered like other parts of the world. 
“Most of the standards are based on Western Civilization. They don’t deal with Africa and Asia, and the Middle East is between Africa and Asia,” Collins says. “So we do a good job on European History, but (Africa and Asia) are only discussed in terms of colonization.” 
Social Science teacher, Jim Harper, agrees. “There is a tendency to be less focused on third world issues, and much of the curriculum tends to be euro centric.” 
And here we have the root of a major problem. Looking for answers through a media which often plays the role of denouncing the Palestinian people, students will only find themselves misunderstanding the conflict even more since many are not taught the 
conflict in school. And people are susceptible to becoming ignorant when they do not understand the war in the Middle East, especially the Palestinian point of view. 

Who said it was an easy conflict to understand anyway? It isn’t. And that may be the very reason that schools refrain from teaching it. 
But I must argue: This is one of the largest and longest conflicts in history and we are expected to ignore it? 
Knowing the importance and effect that this war has on today’s world, we should learn about it-and we are expected to by the government. 
The California Curriculum Standards for public schools states that in 10th grade, students should “understand how the forces of nationalism developed in the Middle East, how the Holocaust affected world opinion regarding the need for a Jewish state, and the significances and effects of the location and establishment of Israel on world affairs.” Collins points out, as does the curriculum, that the Middle East conflict should be taught, especially since 12 percent of the state history tests’ questions are based on the Middle East, meaning that there may be a few questions concerning the Middle East on tests such as STAR. 
“The war in the Middle East is an effect of the Holocaust,” Collins says. 

Yet, the Holocaust is studied intensely and thoroughly in World History, and suddenly…history ends there. 
And we wonder: Where did some of those oppressed Jews go? Is it so hard for us to learn that the United Nations created Israel out of Palestine, and the Israelis inflicted the oppression they received from the Nazis on the Palestinians? 

We are told that we study the Holocaust so that it shall never be repeated. How ironic, because we failed to learn in school that some of the very people who suffered in the Holocaust caused Palestinians to suffer as well. 

Oppression, identification cards, refugee camps, village massacres, genocide, permanent exile from the country. Massacres in the Sabra and Shatila camps were recently repeated in Jenin. (The UN called for inspectors to visit the camp’s atrocities, but Israeli officials have repeatedly delayed the investigation until its cancellation). No, the Nazis didn’t do this to the Palestinians-the Israeli soldiers did. 

It is impossible to deny the similarities between the oppression of the Jews in World War II and the oppression of the Palestinians since 1948. We know about how the Jews were thrown into concentration camps and killed, but how much do we know about the Palestinians who lived in refugee camps and then later killed? 
“It is important that we realize that there are two sides to the conflict,” Harper says, referring to the lack of knowledge of the Palestinian cause. He does point out, however, that people are becoming more aware. “I think until recently the average American knew more about what goes on in Israel than what is going on in Palestine,” he says. 

If students can’t find answers to their questions in school, the media is usually their next resort. However, the media merely analyzes the conflict, expecting the average American to already be familiar with the background. 

America is also Israel’s largest ally, which undoubtedly has a great impact on the media’s standpoint on the conflict. 
If people actually knew more of the region’s history rather than current events-including that of the Palestinians, many would reconsider their views. 
Why aren’t students taught that a land called Palestine did exist, but became Israel in 1948? Why aren’t students taught that today’s Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is currently being charged in Belgium with the 1982 mass genocide of approximately 
2000 people in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps? Or that in October of 2001, Sharon said, “We control America, and the Americans know it”? 
If we weren’t taught that, I guess we wouldn’t “know it” would we? 

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