Washington Report On Middle East Affairs – October 2018

problem for the Israeli government,” he told

the BBC’s Dave Gordon.

The major growth in Chinese investment

in Israel has taken place since 2010.

China has also supplied labor to Israel.

Six thousand Chinese workers were se-

lected to work in Israel’s construction sec-

tor in 2017. According to an Aug. 2 report

by JNi Media, the Israeli Ministry of Fi-

nance expected the Chinese workers “to

double the construction capacity of the

housing market, which will lead to stability

in the sector, increasing the supply of

apartments and reducing the cost of living.”

Construction used to be a sector where

Palestinians found employment: about 45

percent of the construction workforce in Is-

rael before the first intifada consisted of

Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza

Strip. In 2017, construction remained the

main Israeli economic sector where some

Palestinian migrant workers from the 1967

occupied territories could find legal employ-

ment.

ISRAEL AND MYANMAR:

CONTROLLING THE PAST

Israel and Myanmar have signed an educa-

tion agreement that entitles each state to

edit the other’s textbooks’ coverage of their

history. A copy of the agreement obtained

by the Israeli newspaper Haaretzprovides

that the two states “through their competent

authorities, endeavor to mutually verify

school textbooks, particularly concerning

the passages referring to the history of the

other state and, where needed, introduce

corrections to these textbooks.”

Commenting on this move, James M.

Dorsey (see p. 58), senior fellow at the S. Ra-

jaratnam School of International Studies in

Singapore and author of China and the Mid-

dle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom, says

in his blog:

“[B]oth countries are subjecting education

to the partisan political views of a govern-

ment at the expense of an independent

scholarly approach that ensures that stu-

dents are exposed to the perspectives of all

stakeholders or parties to a conflict.”

This is not simply a matter of pushing a

certain version of history, but of trying to

shape the future. As the ruling party put it in

George Orwell’s 1984: “Who controls the

past, controls the future: who controls the

present controls the past.”

Dorsey writes:

“The agreement calls for the joint devel-

opment of ‘programs for the teaching of the

Holocaust and its lessons of the negative

consequences of intolerance, racism, anti-

Semitism and xenophobia as a part of the

school curriculum in the Republic of the

Union of Myanmar.’

“It encourages the development of an Is-

raeli and Jewish studies program in Myan-

mar and a Myanmar studies program in Is-

rael as well as contacts and cooperation be-

tween educational institutions and participa-

tion in conferences, training courses, and

educational and professional study tours.”

Though couched in these seemingly

positive terms, the context of the agree-

ment gives good reason to think that the

agreement will indeed be more about sup-

pressing inconvenient truths than enlight-

ening the public in Israel and Myanmar:

You suppress inconvenient facts and opin-

ions about the Palestinians and we’ll do the

same to ensure that your view of the Ro-

hingya question is what our young citizens

read.

Commenting on the background to the

agreement, Dorsey writes:

“Both Israel and Myanmar have justified

their actions as combating terrorism, de-

fending historical rights and correcting his-

torical injustices, a version of events that in

both cases has been rejected by a majority

of the international community but that both

countries would want to see reflected in

what students are taught about their histo-

ries.

“Israel raised eyebrows last summer be-

cause of reports that it was selling arms to

Myanmar, including tanks and Super Dvora

III patrol boats used to police the country’s

border despite the Myanmar military’s cam-

paign against the Rohingya.

“Images initially posted on the website of

Israeli military training and sales company

Tar Ideal showed its staff training Myanmar

special forces who were involved in the

anti-Rohingya campaign in Rakhine state

in combat tactics and the use of various

weapons. The images have since been

deleted.”

In November 2017, Israel’s Foreign Min-

istry claimed that arms sales had been

halted, although that statement left open

whether other forms of military services,

such as training or the supply of surveil-

lance technology, had continued.

Burma (now called Myanmar) was the

first Asian state to recognize Israel in

1948. Israel enjoyed friendly relations with
      the military regime in Myanmar that took
      power in 1989 and is reported to have
      supplied it with arms and ammunition at
      times when it was shunned by Western
      states for its suppression of democracy
      and national minority groups. Israel’s role
      was also political. In April 2000, the Myan-
      mar ambassador to Tel Aviv described Is-
      rael as an “open door to Western coun-
      tries” for his isolated state.

56 WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS OCTOBER 2018

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