« Back to story "VOA News - US Lawmakers Urge Obama to Press Saudis on School Book Hate Content"

Comments for VOA News - US Lawmakers Urge Obama to Press Saudis on School Book Hate Content »

Posted By reallypsst 7 months ago in Political News

(from left) Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Joe Crowley (D-NY) with poster showing excerpt from Saudi school book Lawmakers in the U.S. Congress say Saudi Arabia has failed to remove offensive material from textbooks used in the kingdom's schools, including language promoting hatred of and violence against Jews. Three House Democrats used a news conference coinciding with U.S. President Barack Obama's stop in Saudi Arabia to draw attention to the problem and urge the president to press Saudi leaders on the issue.

Read Full Story at voanews.com »

RSS Join the Discussion

+ Add Comment
Comments So Far: 15
- Display
  • Neutral
    hyperbola7 months ago

    This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

    Well, as usual, the demo-zionists spread the same sort of hatred as the neocons. Pretty clear that her first loyalty is NOT to America. Here is an honest american jew.

    Congresswoman brags of checking with Zionist Organization president before she signs on to legislation

    From the JTA report on the Zionist Organization of America's lunch on Capitol Hill last week. Best moments belong to Shelley Berkley. Emphasis mine:

    Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) joked that she always brings [ZOA President] Mort Klein her ZOA membership check each time our Mission is in Washington but that today she had left her checkbook in her car. She said that “being Jewish is a lifelong occupation. ...

    Remember, she's a Democrat.

    http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/03/cong...

    (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
    Reply
    loading loading ...
    • Neutral
      hyperbola7 months ago

      This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

      And, of course, Anthony Weiner is another one who has no business being in the American Congress since his first loyalty is NOT to America.

      The Zionist Power Configuration Defeats Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, the White House and the Pentagon

      ...Bush and Gates went ahead and sent the bill to Congress authorizing the $20 billion sales to Saudi Arabia, a trillion dollar economy with a two-bit military wholly dependent on its US military protector.

      Immediately the ZPC rounded up its automatic 190 members of the House of Representatives to sign a letter opposing the sale. The ZPC formulated the position embodied in the letter and oversaw its draft with the collaboration of its co-religionists in Congress. Zionist Congress members Shelley Berkeley and Anthony Weiner teamed up with Michael Ferguson. The Zion-Cons claimed justifiably that they could mobilize over three quarters of the Congress on any issue affecting Israel’s ‘security’. Zionist lawmakers claimed, “the sale would undermine Israel’s superiority in the region”. Every major independent military think tank would dispute this argument since Israel is the only nuclear power in the region, has the biggest and most technologically sophisticated air force and missile system, while Saudi Arabia and all the Gulf States have trouble even controlling local ground level bomb throwers.

      .... The issue is not whether the US should or should not sell arms to Saudi Arabia (I oppose all arms sales and the MIC and BO around the world). The fundamental issue is whether we, the citizens, the elected representatives and the trade unionists in the United States, can be free of foreign colonization to decide the issue. The issue is whether we are or can be a free and independent nation or a subject of a tiny powerful elite acting for a foreign power....

      http://eldib.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/the-zionist-...

      (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
      Reply
      loading loading ...
      • Neutral
        most_reasonable7 months ago

        This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

        Saudi Arabia's financial support of Madrassahs world wild which maintains an active program of hate and prejudice, claimed in 2006 that they would remove the Textbooks from the Saudi school system.

        Still there, still lies, still an attractive place for Hyperbola to quote from.
        BTW Hyperbola, don't bother resonding you are on "member blocked".

        (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
        Reply

        1 Reply

        loading loading ...
        • Neutral
          hyperbola7 months ago

          This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

          Can't face up to zionist lies, racism and hypocrisy?

          A textbook case of Israeli propaganda

          A NEW Israeli army “study” charges that Palestinian school textbooks contain “systematic education to delegitimise the existence of the state of Israel, fanning the flames of hatred and violent revenge to destroy the country” (“Palestinian schoolbooks fan the flames of hatred,” Haaretz, June 28, 2002).

          Such claims, which have been made by Israel and its extremist supporters in the United States for years, are simply an attempt by Israel to find some alternative explanation to the understandable rage felt by Palestinians who have suffered through decades of continuing dispossession, occupation, disenfranchisement, violence, torture and humiliation at the hands of Israel.

          An independent study of Palestinian textbooks by Professor Nathan Brown of George Washington University in Washington, DC, notes that “virtually every discussion in English on Palestinian education repeats the charge that Palestinian textbooks incite students against Jews and Israel”. Brown states that: “It may therefore come as a surprise to readers that the books authored under the PNA are largely innocent of these charges. What is more remarkable than any statements they make on the subject is their silence — the PNA-authored books often stubbornly avoid treating anything controversial regarding Palestinian national identity, forcing them into awkward omissions and gaps.”

          Brown, while not uncritical of the Palestinian textbooks, concluded that “the Palestinian curriculum is not a war curriculum; while highly nationalistic, it does not incite hatred, violence and anti-Semitism. It cannot be described as a peace curriculum either, but the charges against it are often wildly exaggerated or inaccurate.” (“Democracy, History and the Contest over the Palestinian Curriculum,” an independent report prepared for the Adam Institute, 2002 [http://www.nad-plo.org/textbooks/nathan_textbook.... Nationalism, whatever its drawbacks, underpins almost every country's school curriculum, not least in the United States and Israel.

          How can we explain the glaring discrepancy between Brown's findings and those of the Israeli army propaganda unit? ....

          http://www.pcdc.edu.ps/textbook_case_propaganda.ht...

          (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 3) (recursion depth : 2) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
          Reply
          loading loading ...
        • Neutral
          hyperbola7 months ago

          This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

          And, of course, this lot thinks nothing of zionist ethnic cleansing of christians in Palestine. Are these traitors acceptable representatives of America in our Congress?

          Palestinian Christian Decline: Whose Fault?

          On June 8, US Reps Michael McCaul and Joe Crowley published a draft resolution on the subject of Palestinian Christians, beginning with a dramatic headline:

          Help Save the Oldest Christian Community in the World
          Co-sponsor a resolution recognizing the plight of Palestinian Christians

          .... McCaul and Crowley follow Weiner’s lead in attributing Palestinian Christian problems solely to increased Islamism in Palestinian society, while totally ignoring complaints by Palestinian Christian leaders against the Israeli occupation. In fact, this perspective actively seeks to discredit these leaders, who have received sympathetic hearings in a number of mainline churches...

          ..Further criticisms have come in the wake of the proposed resolution, and Forward gives voice to some of the sceptics (link added):

          Daphne Tsimhoni, a professor at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and a leading scholar on Christian minorities in the Middle East, told the Forward that almost all the bill’s assertions are either exaggerations, misrepresentations or sheer fabrications.

          …”This, to me, is like trying to drown a fish in water,” said Afif Safieh, who heads the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission to Washington. Safieh, a Roman Catholic with scores of relatives in the West Bank, said that the incidents of which he is aware are ones that can be attributed to “lawlessness from which the entire population suffers.” He added that the PLO always has been “extremely open-minded and fair toward the Christian community.”

          Christians, he said, are overrepresented in the Palestinian political system and in the P.A.’s bureaucracy. He added that, despite his political differences with the ruling militant Hamas organization, he must admit that the Islamist movement has not taken any steps to discriminate against Christians and has not imposed Islamic law....

          (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
          Reply

          1 Reply

          loading loading ...
          • Neutral
            hyperbola7 months ago

            This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

            the response of the Palestian Christian organisation Open Bethlehem to the resolution:

            In response to Texas congressman Michael McCaul’s resolution on the plight of Palestinian Christians, Open Bethlehem’s chief executive Leila Sansour, a Christian from Bethlehem, has sent a letter to congress expressing her community’s shock at the gross misrepresentation of the real threat facing Christians of the Holy Land and has urged congress to pay heed to the real threat to the oldest Christian community in the world.

            …By perpetuating the misconception that it is their Muslim neighbors and the Palestinian Authority who are creating this crisis, rather than policies imposed by the Israeli government, congressman McCaul is further entrenching the problems facing the Christian community rather than helping to address them…

            http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2006/06/24/palest...

            (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 3) (recursion depth : 2) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
            Reply
            loading loading ...
          • Neutral
            hyperbola7 months ago

            This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

            And, of course, we should never forget that Jerusalem had a Christian majority until the zionists ethnic cleansed them.

            Palestinian Christians: An Historic Community at Risk

            ... over 50 percent of Jerusalem’s Christians were expelled from their West Jerusalem homes, the largest single numerical decline of Christians in Palestine in history. Hadawi’s study concluded that in Jerusalem a higher proportion of Palestinian Christians became refugees after 1949, a ratio of 37 percent of Christians to 17 percent of the Muslims. The higher ratio of Christians was due in part to the fact that the majority lived in the wealthier western Jerusalem districts seized by Israel during 1948-49. Further, approximately 34 percent of the lands seized by Israel were owned by Palestinian Christian churches, and they were simply taken by force with no compensation given to the previous owners. ...

            http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfu...

            (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
            Reply
            loading loading ...
            • Neutral
              most_reasonable7 months ago

              This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

              You're talking to yourself, Hyperbola, put down your Mein Kampf book and take your pills.

              (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
              Reply

              2 Replies

              loading loading ...
              • Neutral
                hyperbola7 months ago

                This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

                Actually it never fails to surprise how much of nazi ideology zionism has adopted.

                Hitler: "aryan master race" vs subhumans, "lebensraum" (living space) for the master race, and ethnic cleansing/genocide for the subhumans.

                Zionists: "jewish master race" vs subhumans, "god-given" right to living space, and ethnic cleansing for the subhumans.

                We should never forget that zionism has it roots in the same atheistic, racist colonialism of eastern europe as both nazism and stalinism. Here are honest american jews to whom we should be listening to rather than zionists.

                The Zionist Attack on Jewish Values

                http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/03/22/the-zion...

                Even before the Balfour Declaration was announced the danger to Judaism inherent in the Zionist state orientated ideology was sensed and critiqued by insightful Jewish individuals. They would describe their anxiety in varied ways, sometimes using political, or moral, or religious argument. All of them, however, could draw on a tradition of Jewish tolerance and humanitarianism...

                .... A negative transformation of Jewish values is further encouraged by the Zionist emphasis on the idea of covenant as a source of those values. As applied to Israel, the primary interpretation of covenant involves God, the land and the creation of a tribal state. That is, following divine instruction, Jews are given the land of Israel and possess it as an exclusive Jewish community. Most of today’s Jewish rituals, holidays, liturgy, and religious education have served to reinforce this position. Within the context of this defining relationship of the Jewish “nation” and God as it now acts itself out in contemporary history, those principles of the Talmud (for instance peace and tolerance) that tend to the universal are necessarily trumped, or subject to reinterpretation, by the particularism of state building and its foundational religio-tribal ideology. ...

                ...The continuing disagreement as to what constitutes the real values of the community has, in effect, split Judaism into majority and minority parties. The majority element, which controls the religion’s institutional manifestations, openly identifies itself and its ethics with the expansionist, brutalizing policies of the Israeli tribal state. They have given themselves and their religion over to the Zionist dream of a Jewish state. What they have inherited, however, is the very worst aspects of nationalism that comes when nationhood is pursued not in a pluralistic spirit, but in a tribal one: chauvinism, aggressiveness, and xenophobia.

                (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 3) (recursion depth : 2) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
                Reply

                1 Reply

                loading loading ...
            • Neutral
              hyperbola7 months ago

              This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

              Finally, we should also never forget that this whole "textbook" campaign was something started by extremist zionist "settlers" in the West Bank over ten years ago to try to cover up their own crimes.

              If these traitorous hypocrites really wanted to do something about resisting the spread of hatred, they should start with their own racist zionists.

              Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1999
              Special Report

              Israeli Textbooks and Children’s Literature Promote Racism and Hatred Toward Palestinians and Arabs

              Israeli school textbooks as well as children’s storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray Palestinians and Arabs as “murderers,” “rioters,” “suspicious,” and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks.

              Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University studied 124 elementary, middle- and high school textbooks on grammar and Hebrew literature, history, geography and citizenship. ..

              ... Dr. Eli Podeh, lecturer in the Department of Islamic Studies and Middle East History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says that while certain changes in Israeli textbooks are slowly being implemented, the discussion of Palestinian national and civil identity is never touched upon....

              ...Cohen also researched 1,700 Israeli children’s books published after 1967. He found that 520 of the books contained humiliating, negative descriptions of Palestinians. He also took pains to break down the descriptions:

              Sixty six percent of the 520 books refer to Arabs as violent; 52 percent as evil; 37 percent as liars; 31 percent as greedy; 28 percent as two-faced; 27 percent as traitors, etc. ...

              http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0999/9909019.html

              (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
              Reply
              loading loading ...
              • 100%
                reallypsst7 months ago

                This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

                hype the question is simple do the Saudis still promote the text or not,and do they control the education monopoly on such books throughout islam ?

                (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
                Reply

                1 Reply

                loading loading ...
                • Neutral
                  hyperbola7 months ago

                  This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

                  My question would be why Voice of America is spreading zionist hate propaganda domestically to Americans. ESPECIALLY from this group of lying hypocrites. The double standards that the zionists try to force on americans are amply demonstrated by this group. Many American jews (like this one) object to the zionist propaganda campaigns in america.

                  Undermining the Prospects for Middle East Peace - Obama's Double Standard

                  Like the majority of Palestinians and Israelis, Barack Obama says he supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Given the relentless pace of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, it may already be too late for a two-state solution. But whatever solution emerges, it will only come about through negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli leadership.

                  That leadership includes Hamas, which won an uncontested majority in the Palestinian legislature in 2006. When that happened, the Bush Administration imposed sanctions on the people of Gaza and iced Hamas out of any diplomatic process. The policy was seamlessly carried over by the Obama Administration.

                  Today, the US continues to insist that Hamas meet three conditions before it can be part of negotiations: renounce violence; abide by past agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; and recognize Israel.

                  Interestingly, Israel is not required to meet any of these conditions. Clearly, Israel has not renounced violence. Just a few months ago, its soldiers killed 960 civilians, including 288 children, in Gaza. Those Israelis who do renounce violence by refusing to do military service in the Occupied Territories are thrown in jail.

                  Neither has Israel honored past agreements with the Palestinians. By continuing to build illegal settlements on occupied territory, Israel has violated every diplomatic accord that it has signed with the Palestinian Authority. Remember the “Roadmap”? Annapolis? The Wye River Memorandum? How about the Oslo Accords, which promised Palestinians a state by 1999?

                  Indeed, just as Hamas has not recognized Israel, the Israeli government refuses to recognize an independent Palestinian state. In fact, right now, Hamas is closer than Israel to meeting Obama’s three conditions: at least it accepts the two-state solution. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu does not.

                  If President Obama is serious about reinvigorating a peace process, he should end his double standard in the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

                  http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/06/04/undermin...

                  (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 3) (recursion depth : 2) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
                  Reply
                  loading loading ...
                • Neutral
                  Mutainia7 months ago

                  This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

                  Wow, hyperebola really had to type a lot here. Trouble is, thanks to Mr. (pbuh) saying "war is deceit", and, thanks to Quran 3:28 and 16:106 (which allow the Muhammadan to lie if "under compulsion"...yeah, RIGHT), AND thanks to Muhammad saying: "(Verily) we smile for some people, while our hearts curse (those same people)." Sahih al Bukhari, v4, p45 publishers Uthmania, Egypt that Abu al-Darda' said he heard the
                  Prophet (s) state:"...well, guess what? I'm not reading ANY of what he posts, ever, because it CAN'T be trusted.

                  (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
                  Reply
                  loading loading ...
                  • Neutral
                    VocalOp7 months ago

                    This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

                    I'm sure the Saudis would just point Obama in the direction of the daily negative and racists post on AOL each and everyday. Then sadly, they'd have to tell him to clean up in his own back yard first. Hmm, my sentiments exactly.

                    (comment_max_expanded_depth : 100000) (comment depth : 2) (recursion depth : 1) (max_comment_reply_depth : 40) (comment_max_render_depth : 100000)
                    Reply
                    loading loading ...

                    Add a Comment

                    Sign In With Your Propeller Account

                    Forgot your password?

                    Please keep your comments relevant to this story.

                    To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.