Nurit Peled-Elhanan

Peled-Elhanan’s academic work concerns language education and the verbal and visual representation of Palestinians in Israeli educational materials.[2] The biographical note accompanying her 2012 book identifies her as a Lecturer in Language Education in the Faculty of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and as a writer and speaker on Israeli education and the effects of the occupation on Israelis and Palestinians.[2]

She is married to Rami Elhanan, and their daughter Smadar was killed in a Jerusalem suicide bombing in 1997.[1] She is also Miko Peled’s sister.[6] Her public activities include membership in Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Parents for Peace and participation as one of the founders of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in 2009.[2] In 2001, she was a co-recipient of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Human Rights and the Freedom of Thought.[2][7]

In October 2003, at the Palestinian Authority’s request, Peled-Elhanan presented a version of her paper on Israeli history and geography textbooks to a Council of Europe political committee subcommittee concerned with revising Palestinian and Israeli schoolbooks.[4] The paper, titled “The Presentation of Palestinians in Israeli Schoolbooks of History and Geography 1998–2003,” examined seven textbooks.[4] As of the publication of a 2006 critique, that paper had not appeared in a scholarly journal.[4]

Her subsequent publications included “Legitimation of Massacres in Israeli School History Books,” published in Discourse & Society, volume 21, issue 4, in 2010, pages 377–404.[8] In 2012, Tauris Academic Studies published her English-language book Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education in London as part of the Library of Modern Middle East Studies series; the illustrated volume comprises 268 pages.[3][9]

The book examines history, geography, and civic-studies textbooks, concentrating on their portrayals of Palestine and Palestinians rather than attempting an account of Israeli education as a whole.[2] Its scope includes representations of Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians living under military rule in the occupied territories since 1967.[2] Its chapters address representations of Palestinians, multimodal analysis of geography textbooks, page layout, and the legitimation of massacres in reports.[2]

Peled-Elhanan selected ten history books, six geography books, and one civic-studies book published between 1996 and 2009, taking their popularity among teachers into account.[2] Her approach combines social-semiotic, multimodal, and discourse analysis, treating a page or double-page spread as a unit in which words, images, and layout interact.[2] She explicitly distinguishes this analysis of discourse, rhetoric, and semiotic means from an effort to verify the historical facts presented in the textbooks.[2]

In her conclusions, she argues that the selected mainstream textbooks present Israeli-Palestinian relations from a single committed perspective and that their verbal and visual choices can legitimize exclusion and discrimination against Palestinians.[2] She interprets their narrative as conveying that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews and should remain Jewish.[2]

Beyond her academic writing, Peled-Elhanan translated into Hebrew Georges Perec’s 1980 book about his visit to Ellis Island with photographer and filmmaker Robert Bober.[10] Her political writing has included a 2001 opinion article in which she interpreted Israeli-Palestinian violence in the context of the occupation and described Israeli and Palestinian parents as victims of politicians.[7] In 2015, she criticized a campaign against Breaking the Silence, characterizing it as part of a broader process of intimidation and suppression of information.[11]

Peled-Elhanan’s work appears in later discussions of Israeli textbooks, including a 2016 report that cites both her 2010 article and her 2012 book.[8] Library catalog subjects associated with the book encompass Israeli textbooks, teaching about the Arab-Israeli conflict, educational aims, nationalism and education, public opinion, and Jewish-Arab relations.[3]

The library catalog’s subject page associates her with 12 books, 12 articles, and two miscellaneous items; these figures describe catalog holdings rather than a complete bibliography of her work.[12] Her family’s bereavement also appears in discussion of Colum McCann’s novel Apeirogon, which portrays her as holding Israeli government policies responsible for Palestinian suicide bombings.[1]

A 2006 critique challenged the scope and interpretation of Peled-Elhanan’s seven-textbook study, arguing that its sample could not sustain her broad conclusions.[4] It disputed her argument that Palestinians were portrayed as “a group which is a threat, a problem to be solved, or a developmental burden,” pointing instead to textbook discussions of Palestinian national demands, the Intifada as a national uprising, and refugees’ hardships; it also alleged that her treatment of maps and images omitted relevant context.[4]

A later report examined 123 Ministry of Education-recommended textbooks for grades 7–12 covering academic years 2000–2017, excluding independent and semi-independent Haredi curricula and state Arab and Druze curricula.[13] It argued that ethnocentrism and a siege mentality had decreased substantially since the 1990s, and that the books generally presented peace as desirable, acknowledged Palestinian presence and aspects of Palestinian national identity, and included Palestinian cities on maps.[13] It nevertheless identified ethnocentrism and narratives presenting Jews and Israel primarily as victims in some books; its conclusions and Peled-Elhanan’s interpretations constitute differing assessments rather than an independently resolved scholarly verdict.[13]

Her political language has also attracted criticism: a 2016 opinion article condemned as antisemitic her statement that “All of the sickening characteristics the anti-Semitic world attributes to Jews exist in the leaders of the State of Israel.”[5] The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs classified her in 2014 as publicly pro-BDS, while a Jerusalem Post opinion article criticized her characterization of racism in Israel and Palestine as enabling apartheid.[14][15]