Can you really negotiate peace, when you teach your children that the other side is the devil incarnate? This is a question President Clinton no doubt neglected to ask Syria's president Hafez al-Assad when they met in Geneva on Sunday March 26, but it certainly would have been appropriate.
A disturbing new monograph by Meyrav Wurmser of MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute), The Schools of Ba'athism, chronicles the rampant anti-Semitism peddled to Syrian schoolchildren by Assad's regime. Syrian schools equate Zionism with Nazism and depict Israel as part of a Western plot to keep Arab states divided and backward. A 5th grade geography book calls on students to resist Israel with "all means available, including an armed struggle." While its leaders talk peace with Israel, Syria's textbooks still extol the path of martyrdom. Great rewards await those who follow that path, but "there is no forgiveness for whoever avoids Jihad in the cause of Allah for the purification of Palestine from the Jews."
One wonders what will be the outcome of peace negotiations with a Syrian president, who is quoted in tenth grade textbooks pondering, "What is the difference between the essence of Nazism and Zionism?" (Not much, if you were wondering what his answer was.) As long as Syrian schools teach hatred of and permanent war with Israel, it's hard to be optimistic about the outcome of peace negotiations.