Panel votes no to including 'Nakba' in school curriculum

By EHUD ZION WALDOKS
The Knesset Education Committee on Monday voted against Education Minister Yuli Tamir's proposal to include discussion of the "Nakba" (catastrophe), the Palestinian version of the events of 1948, in the school curriculum. The committee voted six to one against, with one abstention. "The Education Committee rejects presenting two perspectives in textbooks of the events of the War of Independence and the creation of the state and the reasons for the creation of the refugee problem," the committee said in a statement. "The inclusion in the curriculum that the Arabs view the creation of the state as a disaster is serious and leads to a process of alienation of the Arab community from the state and damages coexistence."