Father Gabriel Nadaf, the spiritual leader of the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, has complained to Israeli Teachers' Union Chairman Yossi Wasserman and to the Education Ministry about an Arabic-language union pamphlet distributed to teachers that includes a story encouraging readers to harm Israeli soldiers.
In his complaint, Nadaf wrote, "To my astonishment, I came across the July-August 2014 edition of a pamphlet called the 'Echo of Education,' written in Arabic, and published by the Teachers' Union and funded by the Education Ministry, in which, on Page 26, there is a story more inciting than any Palestinian resistance literature I have seen.
"It is a story in which the protagonist is an eight-month-old fetus in the womb of a Palestinian mother, 'who, like all the other women in the village, stands before wild soldiers armed with lethal weapons.' The author writes that if the fetus could express itself, it would say, 'Oh Mother, I am an eight-month-old fetus but I would love to die as a martyr in the struggle against the occupation. I don't want my mother to die at the hands of the soldiers, which would make me only a passive martyr.
"Mother, wait patiently. Take care of yourself and hold on until you give birth to me, and you will see that you gave birth to a fighter."
The head of the planning department at the Teachers' Union, Ziyad Majadlah, said the story's publication was a "grave mistake," and that it had occurred innocently during the editing of the pamphlet.
"The story was published with no intention of malice," he said. "It is certainly a story that could offer legitimacy to Israel's enemies who may hurt the country's citizens. We apologize for this mistake and for its publication."
The Education Ministry said it does not fund the pamphlet's publication.