By Symi Rom-Rymer "No other country in the world, in its official curriculum, would treat the fact of its founding as a catastrophe," categorically stated Education Minister Gideon Saar in response to a recent controversy over an unapproved Israeli textbook. The textbook in question is a history textbook used by Shaar Hanegev, a liberal high school in southern Israel.  In this teaching of Israeli history, the authors—a group that includes both Israeli and Palestinian teachers--offer competing versions of the establishment of Israel. On one side of the page is the traditional Israeli narrative and on the other side the traditional Arab one. The middle of the page is left blank so that students can add their own thoughts.   As the Christian Science Monitor reported, this book is so incendiary because “the row drives at the heart of Israeli identity,...

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