College Insurrection regularly reports on courses in which aspects of American history are altered to promote a progressive agenda.
However, this distortion is not confined to the history of our coutry.
One Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) substitute teacher, who has a degree in history and is an expert in the Old World, is appalled at the anti-Israel bias presented as fact in the textbooks used in LAUSD courses.
He writes under the pseudonym Tom Durustarici, to protect himself from retaliation. “These textbooks aren’t history, they’re propaganda,” explained Durustarici. “And since many teachers don’t have my knowledge of the area and the history, they have to go by the text.”
This intrepid instructor conducted a detailed analysis of World History-California Edition:The Modern World by Elizabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Esler. He compared and contrasted what was written to what should haven been written from a decidedly more balanced perspective.
Here is a sample of what was written:
Modern Israel was born in 1948 on land that Arabs claimed as their own. Conflicting claims to this land led to repeated violence. After the 1948 war that followed Israel’s founding, Israel and its Arab neighbors fought three more wars, in 1956, 1967, and 1973. In these wars, Israel defeated Arab forces and gained more land. Between the wars, Israel faced guerrilla and terrorist attacks. Repeatedly, the United States tried to bring about peace.
Durustarici offers this more historically accurate version:
Modern Israel was born in 1948 on land that Arabs claimed, with little justification, as their own. Conflicting claims to this land, and Arab intransigence, led to repeated violence.The Arabs attacked Israel when it declared its independence. This was after a legal, (and very unfavorable to Israel), UN approved, partition of the area into Israeli and Arab states. The Arabs lost this war that they had started, although it cost Israel the lives of 1% of its population….The Arabs also carried out 3 other major acts of war, causing conflict in 1956, 1967, and 1973. In these wars Israel defeated Arab forces, gaining land in 1967. Between the wars, Israel faced guerrilla and terrorist attacks.
(His full analysis can be found HERE).
“I’ve been trying to get people to listen — no-one seems to take it seriously,” reports Durustarici. “I have had several teachers read [the analysis]. They all told me it was too pro-Israeli. The problem has gotten so ridiculous that if you try to tell the story properly people think you’re taking sides.”
Historically, this section of the world has been a continuous hotbed of unrest…politically, religiously, and otherwise. In fact, I am co-hosting a Canto Talk program (Jan. 10th, 7 pm PST/10 ppm EST) that focuses on the Crusades with noted military historian Barry Jacobsen (whose featured appearances include Themopylae and The Real King Arthur).
As Barry Jacobsen notes in his “Politically Incorrect View of the Crusades“:
“Today, a new generation in the West faces a resurgent and militant Islam, watching in horror as the ”Arab Spring” devolves into a Fundamentalist winter. It is therefore an appropriate time to take a critical look at the events that are presumed, by many, to have initiated the cycle of hatred and distrust between Islam and the West..As is so often the case when historical facts conflict with “political correctness”, facts are twisted to fit the dogma. So is the case with the Crusades.”
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” wrote philosopher George Santayana. In today’s media and educational environments, it is very difficult to remember it correctly.
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