Education and Memory

School Systems and Official Curricula

Education systems on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides transmit not only skills and knowledge but also particular ways of remembering the past and understanding the conflict. These systems are shaped by ministries of education, political pressures, religious institutions, and international funders, and they operate in a context where the conflict is not just a history topic but a lived reality.

In Israel, the state school system is divided into several streams, including secular Jewish, religious Jewish, ultra-Orthodox, and Arabic language schools serving Palestinian citizens of Israel. Each stream follows state-approved curricula but with different emphases. History, civics, and Bible or religious studies play central roles in constructing national identity. The conflict is often taught as part of broader Jewish and Israeli history, from ancient times through Zionism and the establishment of the state, and then through the wars that followed. Within this structure, key events are commonly framed as milestones in the struggle for survival and self-determination. Palestinian Arabs may appear in these narratives as neighbors, opponents, or sometimes as an indistinct background, depending on the textbooks and the particular school stream.

On the Palestinian side, education in the West Bank and Gaza is overseen primarily by the Palestinian Authority and the Ministry of Education, though UNRWA runs its own schools for refugees and there are also private and religious institutions. The curriculum presents the conflict as a story of dispossession, resistance, and a long search for justice and return. The same historical events that appear in Israeli textbooks are present, but from an entirely different vantage point, emphasizing the loss of land, the Nakba, and the experience of occupation and exile. In East Jerusalem, a separate tension exists, because schools may be pressured to use either the Israeli curriculum, the Palestinian curriculum, or a hybrid, and the choice itself becomes political.

These systems are not static. Both have undergone multiple revisions, often prompted by political shifts, peace talks, international pressure, or internal debates. Curriculum committees decide which maps to print, which place names to use, which primary documents to include, and whose voices to highlight. Even small details, like whether a border is shown as temporary or permanent, or whether a city is labeled with Hebrew, Arabic, or both names, can convey a particular political message. As a result, the school systems function as important sites where official narratives attempt to shape how younger generations remember the past and imagine the future.

Textbooks, Maps, and Symbols

Textbooks are one of the clearest windows into how education shapes memory. They not only transmit facts, but also, through selection and emphasis, tell students which events and perspectives are central and which are marginal.

In Israeli Jewish textbooks, the story is usually organized around the continuity of Jewish presence and connection to the land, the rise of Zionism, and the struggle that led to statehood. Wars are often discussed as defensive reactions to threats, and the creation of Israel appears as a moment of liberation and return. Palestinian displacement may be acknowledged in some books, but often briefly, with the focus remaining on Jewish immigration, state-building, and security concerns. Symbols such as the Israeli flag, anthem, and Independence Day are treated as self-evident markers of national pride and legitimacy.

Palestinian textbooks present a different symbolic universe. The same period that Israelis call their War of Independence appears as the Nakba, and the maps used in these books may show Palestine as a whole territory without marking Israel as a separate state, or they may do so in ways that emphasize loss rather than a settled political reality. Keys, olive trees, and traditional village scenes often appear as symbols of dispossession and steadfastness. The Palestinian flag and national anthem are used to affirm an enduring national identity despite statelessness or occupation.

Maps are especially charged. A map that shows Israel within its internationally recognized borders, another that marks the Green Line of the 1949 armistice, and another that shows all the land as Israel or as Palestine, each communicates a different claim. Students learn to see their environment through these cartographic choices. In some cases, textbooks avoid showing the Green Line entirely, reflecting political positions that reject that boundary as either illegitimate or temporary.

Outside history and civics, symbolic narratives are woven into language, literature, and religious education. Poems, novels, and religious texts selected for the classroom can reinforce themes of sacrifice, heroism, trauma, or reconciliation. Even mathematics or science textbooks may include word problems or examples that subtly normalize particular geographies, communities, or military institutions, for instance by referring to army units, settlements, or refugee camps as everyday backdrops.

Teaching the “Other” and Themes of Dehumanization

Education and memory are not only about telling your own group’s story, but also about how you portray those on the other side. This portrayal varies widely, but it has recurring patterns.

In many Israeli Jewish textbooks, Palestinians or Arabs may be described mainly in the context of wars, terror attacks, or as abstract political actors. Everyday Palestinian lives often receive less attention. When the focus is on security threats, patterns of representation can slip into stereotypes that emphasize violence or hostility. Some textbooks have been revised to remove openly derogatory language, but the overall framing often remains one in which Palestinians are seen primarily as obstacles or dangers rather than neighbors with complex histories and aspirations.

In Palestinian textbooks, Israelis may appear primarily as occupiers, settlers, or soldiers, rather than as civilians with their own history of persecution and fear. The term “Zionist” is often used rather than “Israeli,” and the distinction between the Israeli state, its policies, and Jewish people more broadly is not always sharply drawn. This creates a risk of essentializing and conflating political structures with an entire population or religious group.

These tendencies are not uniform. Some textbooks and school programs in both societies try to humanize the other, encourage critical thinking, and present multiple perspectives. However, they often face criticism that they are “normalizing” the conflict or undermining national cohesion. In a setting where the conflict is ongoing, teachers may feel pressure from parents, community leaders, or authorities not to appear sympathetic to the other side’s narrative.

The cumulative effect of how the other is taught can be dehumanization, where students learn to see the opposing community as a single, threatening block rather than as individuals. This shapes not only views of the past, but also expectations about what is possible in the future, making distrust and fear seem justified and inevitable.

Commemoration, Holidays, and Competing Calendars

Beyond formal schooling, societies educate through their calendars. Public and communal commemorations create a rhythm of remembrance that reinforces particular interpretations of history.

In Israel, Independence Day celebrates the establishment of the state, often paired with military ceremonies, public festivities, and messages emphasizing survival, resilience, and national pride. The day before is a memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims of attacks. Sirens, ceremonies, and media coverage highlight sacrifice and loss as part of the national story. These events are formative experiences for students, as schools take part in official ceremonies and prepare special lessons tying personal stories and historical narratives together.

For Palestinians, the same founding moment is remembered as the Nakba. Nakba Day is marked by marches, speeches, cultural events, and moments of silence or symbolic actions such as carrying keys representing lost homes. In refugee camps and in the diaspora, commemorations may emphasize transmission of memory from older generations who experienced displacement to younger ones who did not. This establishes the Nakba not as a past event, but as an ongoing condition that still structures daily life.

These commemorative days sometimes overlap in time but send opposite messages, turning the same period of the year into a mirror of contrasting narratives. Students on each side grow up with emotional attachments to their own community’s calendar of grief and celebration, and often have little direct contact with the other side’s commemorations. The sense that “our tragedy is their celebration” can deepen feelings of mutual incomprehension.

Religious and cultural holidays also carry historical narratives. Sermons, family gatherings, and communal rituals become spaces where stories of persecution, exile, resistance, or divine promise are repeated. These stories connect contemporary events to long chains of memory, often linking current threats or losses to much older episodes in religious or national history. This linkage can make compromise feel morally complicated, since it is not just politics that is at stake, but perceived continuity with ancestors and sacred stories.

Museums, Memorials, and Sites of Memory

Physical spaces dedicated to remembrance play a powerful role in how societies explain the conflict to themselves and to younger generations. Museums, memorials, and historical sites are often visited by school groups, and they present curated, authoritative narratives.

In Israel, major institutions dedicated to Jewish history and the Holocaust, as well as museums about the various wars, embed the conflict in a broader story of centuries of persecution, culminating in genocide and then statehood. Exhibits often highlight vulnerability, heroism, and the necessity of self-defense. Students may visit former battlefields, military cemeteries, and memorials, where speeches and educational activities link personal sacrifice with national survival. These sites can foster empathy for past victims and pride in resilience, but they can also encourage an interpretation of the conflict in which external threats are constant and existential.

Palestinians visit places that mark destroyed villages, refugee camps, and sites of previous confrontations. Even where formal museums are limited, informal monuments, murals, and community centers function as memorial spaces. Photographs of martyrs, displays of keys and documents from pre-1948 homes, and collections recording oral testimonies serve to keep the memory of displacement and resistance alive. These locations often become focal points during commemorations, and young people encounter them through school trips, family visits, or community activities.

There are also contested sites where both communities attach different stories to the same place. Sacred spaces in Jerusalem, or cities and villages renamed, repopulated, or repurposed, layer memories on top of one another. Which story is told on a plaque or in a guided tour, and which is ignored, reflects power relations and political decisions about whose past is acknowledged. For students, such sites teach not just history, but whose suffering and claims are recognized in public space.

Family Stories, Oral History, and Intergenerational Memory

Formal education is only part of how people learn about the conflict. Family narratives and oral histories often shape identity more deeply than textbooks.

In many Israeli families, especially among those whose relatives fled antisemitic violence or survived the Holocaust, personal stories of persecution and rescue are intertwined with the founding of Israel and subsequent wars. Children may grow up hearing about relatives lost in Europe, grandparents who arrived as immigrants or refugees, or parents who served in the military. These stories rarely match the neutral language of school materials. They are emotional, moral, and personal, and they can make national events feel like part of a family biography.

For Palestinians, family memory frequently revolves around displacement, loss of property, and life in exile or under occupation. Older generations may recall specific villages, street names, and neighbors, along with the events that forced them to leave. Keys and documents handed down through the family are physical anchors for these memories. Children raised in refugee camps or in the diaspora may feel a strong emotional connection to places they have never seen, because they have been made vivid in repeated stories and songs.

Intergenerational memory can either reinforce or complicate official narratives. Sometimes family stories align with what is taught in schools, strengthening a shared sense of identity and grievance. At other times, they introduce nuances, for example accounts of cooperation across communities, or critical reflections on political leadership. However, because these stories carry emotional weight, they often frame how later information is interpreted. A single personal testimony can feel more convincing than multiple abstract sources.

The transmission of memory across generations is also shaped by trauma and silence. In some families, painful experiences are spoken about constantly. In others, they are barely mentioned, leaving younger members to sense unspoken wounds. Both patterns influence how individuals respond to public debates, peace initiatives, or new escalations. Education that deals with memory, therefore, must grapple not only with published histories but also with these private archives of experience.

Media, Popular Culture, and Informal Learning

Outside formal schooling and family, young people absorb narratives through media and popular culture. Television series, films, music, social media, and online videos present simplified but emotionally compelling stories about the conflict.

On both sides, there are popular productions that highlight national heroism, victimhood, or betrayal, often focusing on dramatic events and clear-cut moral oppositions. These works reach wide audiences and can be more influential than school lessons. They may celebrate particular military operations, acts of resistance, or symbolic leaders, embedding these in the collective imagination.

News media also act as a continuous source of informal education. The way incidents are reported, the images selected, and the language used shape how viewers understand current events and link them to past patterns. For young audiences, cycles of violence shown on screens are not just information but part of how they learn to assign blame and imagine the other group.

Online spaces allow for alternative narratives, encounters with different perspectives, and access to international commentary. At the same time, algorithms and echo chambers can reinforce existing beliefs, exposing users almost exclusively to content that fits their own side’s view. Memes, short clips, and hashtags condense history into slogans, which are easy to share but often leave no room for complexity or empathy.

This informal education, layered on top of school and family memories, contributes to a dense environment in which certain interpretations of the conflict feel obvious and natural, while others appear strange or threatening.

Attempts at Shared Education and Joint Memory Work

Despite the dominance of separate narratives, there have been initiatives aimed at creating shared or at least parallel understandings of the past. These efforts are small compared to mainstream systems, but they illustrate alternative ways of connecting education and memory.

Some projects bring together historians, educators, and NGOs from both communities to produce materials that present two narratives side by side. A common format is a textbook page split into three columns. One column presents the Israeli narrative of an event, another presents the Palestinian narrative, and the center column is left blank for students to write their own reflections. The goal is not to merge the narratives into a single agreed version, but to make students aware that more than one story exists and that each has its own internal logic and emotional weight.

There are also joint schools where Israeli and Palestinian students study together, often in both Hebrew and Arabic. These schools generally try to commemorate both communities’ holidays and memorial days in ways that acknowledge pain and pride on each side. Students may attend ceremonies that mark Independence Day and Nakba Day, for example, and discuss their conflicting meanings. Such approaches attempt to widen the circle of empathy and to show that recognition of another group’s suffering does not necessarily require abandoning one’s own.

These initiatives face considerable obstacles. They may be criticized as undermining national cohesion, accused of relativizing suffering, or even threatened by violence and political opposition. Their reach is limited compared to nationwide systems. However, they show that education and memory can be handled in ways that encourage curiosity rather than only loyalty, and that students can be invited to examine narratives instead of simply inheriting them.

The Long-Term Impact of Education and Memory

Education and memory interact over decades. What children learn in school, through commemorations, family stories, and media, shapes how they will vote, protest, serve in institutions, or engage in activism later in life. This does not determine their choices, but it frames what they consider realistic, legitimate, or morally necessary.

When educational systems and memory practices reinforce exclusive narratives, they can make compromise or mutual recognition feel like betrayal. If the past is taught primarily as a series of unprovoked attacks or acts of treachery by the other side, it becomes easier to justify harsh policies and harder to imagine trust. Conversely, when educational spaces allow for complexity and the coexistence of multiple memories, they can open space for alternative political imaginaries, even if they do not immediately change formal positions.

For absolute beginners studying this conflict, it is important to recognize that you are also entering a field structured by education and memory. The sources you read, the maps you see, and the language you encounter will often reflect particular narratives. Being aware of how those narratives are formed and transmitted in Israeli and Palestinian societies is part of understanding why the conflict is so emotionally charged and why simple factual corrections rarely settle arguments. Memory is not just a record of what happened. It is a living process that shapes identity, loyalty, and the range of futures people are able, or unable, to imagine.