Apartheid

230
responsibility for a basic human right being denied to a whole nation’s children. 539
On top of all that, more than a quarter of all Palestinian children now live in poverty
and growing numbers are being forced out of school to work, according to Palestinian Central
Bureau of Statistics director Hassan Abu Libdeh. ‘Among the most important reasons for this
rise is the overall drop in the standard of living of Palestinians,’ He said a survey conducted in
2000 showed more than 25 percent of children in the Palestinian-ruled parts of the West Bank
and Gaza Strip lived in poverty and almost six percent of those aged between ten and
seventeen were in the labor market. As the Intifada broke out later that year, things went from
bad to worse. In June 2001, the International Labor Organization, ILO, reported that a quarter
of the Palestinian adult work force was out of work and this forced even more children out to
work, although there was hardly any to be had. They missed school all the same. Later in the
same month, the Palestinian Labor Minister estimated an overall unemployment rate of 50 per
cent. By March 2003, that figure had risen to a staggering 53 per cent, as estimated by the
traditionally pro-US, and indeed US-created, World Bank. 540
Meanwhile, the relatively ‘over-funded’ schools for Jews were also becoming
increasingly ideologized. A column criticizing the changes in education content under prime
minister Ariel Sharon, published in the Swiss newspaper, Berner Zeitung, made further
headlines when a complaint filed against it was taken up by the Swiss Press Council in 2002.
The organization, ‘David (Center against Anti-Semitism and Denunciation)’, had filed the
complaint, accusing the column of being ‘unambiguously anti-Semitic’. But the complaint
was not upheld by the esteemed, independent council, which considered acceptable the Berner
Zeitung column’s criticism of Sharon’s insistence on more teaching in Israeli Jewish schools
from the Bible’s Book of Joshua. The column had described the book on the legends of
Moses’ successor as the ‘most bloodthirsty’ and most ‘martialist’ book in the Bible and as
approving in its description of the genocidal slaughter of the indigenous Cana’anites by the
invading Jews. 541 We shall return to the lasting and onerous impact of the Book of Joshua and
other apparently pro-genocidal holy texts, on both Jews and non-Jews, in Chapter II.9.3.
539 N.N: Thousands of Palestinian Children Denied Access to Schools, October 2, 2002; N.N.: Israel Curfews
Hurt Palestinians’ Schooling-UNICEF, October 2, 2002
540 Heinrich March 5, 2003; N.N.: Poverty Forcing Palestinian Children to Work, April 10, 2000; Nebehay:
Closures Mean Crisis for Palestinian Workers - ILO, 2001; Drees: Rising Palestinian Unemployment Is Burning
Fuse, 2001; Ass’adi: Palestinian Boy Struggles to Make Ends Meet, 2001. The latter is a description of a day in
the life of eight-year-old Ahmed Shqeir, who sold coffee by the cup at the Israeli army checkpoint at Qalandiya
in the West Bank. Ahmed was the sole provider for his family of ten. His ten-year-old brother used to do the job
but was hit by a car and lost his spleen. Their father was banned from working in Israel for ‘security reasons’. He
was even jailed for four months for working inside the Jewish state without a permit. (The article did not say
what happened to those who employed him.) Ahmed wanted to be a mathematics teacher when he grew up, and
was quoted in the article as saying: ‘I dream of having at least one day off.’
541 N.N.: Kritik an Israels Erziehungspolitik in der Schweiz Nicht Unzulässig: Presserat Weist Antisemitismus-
Beschwerde Zurück, January 22, 2002. In the 1993 documentary film about his life and work, ‘Manufacturing
Consent – Noam Chomsky and the Media’, directed by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, Chomsky (himself a
Jew, ex-Zionist, and son of a Zionist) goes further and calls the Bible ‘one of the most genocidal books ever
written’, also most likely with the Book of Joshua in mind, without any legal or paralegal repercussions known
to me. The genocide carried out by Joshua and his followers, by the way, is described in the Bible as well
premeditated, since Moses, before he dies, instructs the Israelites to kill all the people who reside in the Promised
Land, in Deuteronomy 5:1-7:16. See also Chapter II.9.3., below.