Biases and the Question of Palestine/Israel: Textbook Treatment of the Question's History in Western Universities

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the purported influence of a pro-Israeli environment in the West on the production of academic knowledge about the Palestine/Israel question. The most popular college textbooks on the history of the question were analysed through textbook and context analysis in order to answer the key question of the research: ‘How the knowledge of the history of the Palestine/Israel question presented in Western academia, and why has it been presented in that particular way. The results of the textbook analysis (Historical Narrative Analysis) support the conclusion that textbook knowledge on the question is mainly pro-Israeli in bias. In relation to the ‘Why’ question, the context analysis offers the ‘Jewish pro-Israeli producer’ as being the main factor for the bias in the products. An additional factor identified is that the relevant knowledge has been produced in a certain, American or Israeli, national and educational environment.