When 11-year-old Nathan Bentolila opened his Ancient Civilizations history textbook at the start of the current school year,
Polite but committed: Nathan Bentolila
he quickly noticed that something didn’t look quite right. The section about China featured a photograph of the Great Wall and linked it to the present with a photo of the modern dams there today. Similarly, the section about Greece spoke on ancient and modern Olympic Games.
But when it came to Israel, the spotlight was on war. Rather than focusing on Israeli advances in “green technology,” water conservation or Nobel Prize winners, the book said simply that “today, one of the fiercest and longest conflicts has been between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis.” The biased article also featured an illustration of an ancient war scene and a modern photograph of three Israeli military jeeps in a battle-torn Arab area.
So Nathan, a sixth-grade student at Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy a yeshiva day school in Los Angeles, wrote to Glencoe- McGraw Hill, the book’s publisher, with a polite, but solid letter stating that there of the 70-plus active conflicts going on in the world today, only Israel’s was presented in the book. He also challenged the factual accuracy of the presentation, and requested fair and accurate treatment for Israel. “Israel should be treated with the same respect that other countries receive and it should not be singled out but rather praised for its accomplishments that benefit humankind. It is not fair,” he wrote.
The reply arrived quickly: Robert Kohan, a senior editor at Glencoe-McGraw-Hill, agreed with Nathan’s critique. “We agree with your assessment,” Kohan wrote, “and will change both the photo and extended caption in future editions.” The editor even offered to consider Nathan’s suggestion for replacing the page with Israel’s advances in irrigation and water desalination.
