The new revised textbook, according to an early proof, rewrites the characterization if Israel from being the only functional democracy in the mid-East to:

In the peace of the mid-East, which is Islam, Israel remains a cankerous sore, its brutal militaristic government seeking the horrific genocidal destruction of the indigenous Palestinean Muslim whose population, although increasingly herded into "refugee" camps, nonetheless continues to increase unabated at 10-20% per annum.

Posted by: Lisa at March 20, 2006 2:22 PM

And it's the truth...so what are they apologizing for????

Posted by: freewoman at March 20, 2006 2:29 PM

Kissing the floor stick your butt in the air supplicating - Salami Salami Baloney (was the name of an old Popeye cartoon)

Muslims kiss floor and hoist butt in air for Allah and you must do the same for them. The best of people. Who are Allah's mini-me representatives on planet Earth

Posted by: dennisw at March 20, 2006 2:32 PM

Remember the (stupidly wrong/meaningless ) bumper sticker that went something like : "The World Will Be a Better Place When the Pentagon Holds Bake Sales To Fund Wars. Support Our Schools" ?

I propose this: The World Will Be A Far Far Better Place When We Don't Apologize For Teaching Our Children Truthfully".

Posted by: Daisytoo at March 20, 2006 2:49 PM

dennisw ..

I'm hoping you might be something of an expert on Popeye. Do you recall a character called Agnes the Jeep (I think) ? Was she covered in a hijab or am I way off base?

Here's hoping you can help with this less than earth-shattering matter :) !

Posted by: Daisytoo at March 20, 2006 2:53 PM

And he spent a couple of thousand euros, too, did he not? What a deal!!! I'll bet he even got a couple of brownie points thrown in, too! Wowweee!!!

Good heavens, he probaby even agreed with them "off the record" that the United States is going to "get its comeuppance" while he was collecting those brownie points!!

Posted by: pythagoras at March 20, 2006 2:55 PM

Where did common sense go? Where did honesty go?

If the Muslims don't like the way history portrays them, and it's not lookin' good, why don't they change it? It shouldn't be the world that sugarcoats their history to make it palatable.

Posted by: freewoman at March 20, 2006 3:00 PM

I guess that next, the UN will apologize for any reports they publish that show Arab/Muslim countries in an unflattering light with regard to human rights, womens' suffrage, human development or literacy too, unless they cite external causes for the deficiences.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at March 20, 2006 3:22 PM

Definitely waterdragon, it's NEVER their fault. THEY are not responsible for their own actions.

Posted by: freewoman at March 20, 2006 3:25 PM

OT/

Mr. Spencer and ibn Warraq on "Janet Parschall's America" www.jpamerica.com

Posted by: eve_anne_gelical at March 20, 2006 3:56 PM

Perhaps the regional manager would also like to offer his wife to the assistant under-secretary?

Posted by: Infidel33 at March 20, 2006 4:32 PM

"If the Muslims don't like the way history portrays them, and it's not lookin' good, why don't they change it?"

I believe that's what they are trying to do. Rewrite history. How 'bout throwin in a few more muslim "achievements" while we're at it?

Posted by: Infidel33 at March 20, 2006 4:33 PM

daisytoo

I'm sorry but that Popeye character doesn't ring a bell.

Posted by: dennisw at March 20, 2006 4:35 PM

Thanks anyway dennisw .. and like I said .. less than earth- shattering :) Maybe it was Alice the Goon? hmm? I'll check it out..

Posted by: Daisytoo at March 20, 2006 5:22 PM

Pearson Education Company

A competitor of ours. Curses be upon them.

Posted by: Interested at March 20, 2006 6:02 PM

It comes down to blame everyone else but not accept responsiblity.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at March 20, 2006 6:24 PM

What's interesting is that this textbook was being used in a private American school in Dubai. The Ministry of (re)Education didn't like that the truth offended the arab and muslim students enrolled there. (Funny how they keep wanting American educations these people.) Now the Ministry of (re)Education wants to monitor EMBASSY schools, which are supposed to be hands-off from host country intrusion. Pages 599 to 614 needed to be conspicuously torn out and handed out in a plain brown wrapper. The sanitized single paragraph vilifying Israel should be equally conspicuously taped in.

Posted by: 3812Michelle at March 20, 2006 6:54 PM

This is what happens when the publishing industry consolidates, Pearson incorporates Addison-Wesley and Prentice-Hall and Longman all major textbook publishers. We have a situation where the Ummah is able to dictate the content of unrelated textbooks because of their block votes in these matters. Doubtless prince Tukri will spend some of his spare change to make this easier on the conscience of the editors. I say down with globalisation and wall street.

Posted by: ivan at March 20, 2006 7:58 PM

Things need not stop with textbooks. Think of famous writers, who wrote in a period when no one understood what constituted Islamically acceptable behavior. The Estate of James Joyce should send someone to Kuwait to apologize for making Leopold Bloom the co-hero of "Ulysses" and portraying him so sympathetically. And then there's the matter of Joyce's friendships with so many Jews, including Italo Svevo (Ettore Schmitz) in Trieste, and then Paul and Lucie Leon in Paris, and...well, just too many. If Giorgio Joyce is no longer alive, then perhaps the lawyers for the estate can appear in person. Don't want to cut into those potential sales of "Ulysses" in Saudi Arabia, now that the book has finally been translated into Arabic.

And Dmitri Nabokov may wish to visit and apologize for his late father's mentioning, in the class list in "Lolita," a boy named Irving, and having Humbert Humbert, in going down that list, note "Irving, for whom I am sorry." And then there is that check written by Nabokov to an Israeli charity, and his renewal of contact with a former classmate at the Tenishev School, who later became an architect in Tel Aviv. And then then is that Jewish character in "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" and others like him, and the depiction of the antisemite, the stepfather of heroine Zina Mertz, in "The Gift," and the notes on antisemitism by Kinbote in "Pale Fire" to be found in the notes about "two historical hells." On second thought, the son should ask Ms. Nafisi to accompany him; she might come in handy.

And then there is Borges, who wrote not one but two poems celebrating Israel's victory in the Six Day War, and who liked to claim that he must have "some Jewish ancestry." And how often, in his work, do we run across themes of the Zohar, and Luria, and the Kabbala. Again, his still-young widow Maria Kodama perhaps should be asked to be-burqa herself, and appear before some informal pack of mutawwa in Riyadh, and beg forgiveness for her late husband's transgressions, and mention that he also liked to refer to Arab texts and tales, and then beg forgiveness, and hope.

Possibly Robert Craft should show up as well, once he receives a letter asking him to please explain, because the Ministry of Pen, Speech wishes to know the exact, the meaning of a certain sentence in one of the Stravinsky-Craft diaries, in which, after a visit to Israel, Stravinsky comments on the Israelis as these "most egalitarian" and at the same time "most aristocratic of peoples," a phrase not likely to help his music rise to the top of the pops in Jiddah or Damascus or Ramallah. Let Mr. Smartypants Robert Craft try to explain that little remark away,if he possibly can.

And don't stop with writings. Demand that the Head of the Rijksmuseum, accompanied by the Queen of Holland, fly to Riyadh to present personal apologies at the next meeting of the O.I.C., for all those sympathetic portrais of aged rabbis that Rembrandt painted, and along with that apology the O.I.C. representatives will be expecting a promise that the offending paintings will be removed from view, and put into permanent storage, although occasinally they may be sent on loan to provincial museums in Manitoba -- lest something untoward happen to them.

Just a start. But a good one.

Posted by: Hugh at March 20, 2006 8:52 PM

Daisytoo,

See this link:

http://www.popeye-n-olive.com/image/characters2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.popeye-n-olive.com/character2.htm&h=708&w=1409&sz=308&tbnid=7pasAQ-LbysJ:&tbnh=75&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpopeye%2Bcharacters%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D&oi=imagesr&start=2">http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.popeye-n-olive.com/image/characters2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.popeye-n-olive.com/character2.htm&h=708&w=1409&sz=308&tbnid=7pasAQ-LbysJ:&tbnh=75&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpopeye%2Bcharacters%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D&oi=imagesr&start=2

Eugene the Jeep is in the lower right hand corner.

No burqa on Eugene or Alice the Goon. Maybe on the Seahag, though.

Posted by: PRCS at March 21, 2006 12:53 AM

Oops.

Try this one:

http://www.popeye-n-olive.com/character2.htm

Posted by: PRCS at March 21, 2006 12:56 AM

The people here in Arabia honestly don't know their own history. They don't learn it in school and they believe out of ignorance that Islam spread by debate and conversation. This article about the book publisher just plays right into that whole scenario.

Posted by: blondeinarabia at March 21, 2006 1:38 AM

Daisytoo, you have confused three different characters. Alice the Goon is an ugly, immensely strong, non-human female friend of Popeye and his friends (and yes, E.C.Segar, the creator of Popeye, one of the greatest cartoonists of all time, invented the word "goon"). She is bald and hairy and very very loyal, and, if I remember correct, mute. The Sea Hag, Popeye's most dangerous enemy, is probably the one you remember - tall as a beanpole, thin as a rake, boiling with hatred, and covered in black from top to toe, leaving only her face uncovered. Eugene the Jeep is Popeye's charming little pet, something like a cross between a cat and a monkey, very intelligent, magically powerful, and indubitably not Muslim.

Posted by: Paolo at March 21, 2006 12:45 PM

And Robert... "Salami, that's mighty big of you." I never would have thought you of all people would make a dirty pun! Well, join that select and illustrious assemblage, the "I tried to make Paolo laugh and succeeded" club.

Posted by: Paolo at March 21, 2006 12:46 PM

Paolo and Daisytoo

Now you've got me started too. I can't remember Eugene the Jeep that clearly, but who remembers O.G.Whataschnozzle, shyster-at-law? Nasty, bearded and also clad in black to his chin, but he wore a Homberg and not a turbin.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at March 21, 2006 12:49 PM

Waterdragon: Almost every villain in Popeye was bearded and dressed in black up to their chin. A few years ago, Fantagraphics, an American publisher, published a complete reprint of all the Segar Popeye strips (tragically, this cartooning genius died at 44, leaving his creation in the hands of lesser men). It ain't cheap, but for a really great American masterpiece in one of the neglected arts, I could not recommend better.

Posted by: Paolo at March 21, 2006 1:01 PM

Thanks to all who have helped me out with Popeye and friends .. just checking back in now and will look them all up ...

Posted by: Daisytoo at March 21, 2006 4:18 PM

Does anyone have a website where I can order this textbook? It's not on Amazon.com I think it might be an excellent resource for my high school students.

Posted by: Provoslavni at March 21, 2006 5:25 PM