The Zionist pedagogical narrative reproduced in schoolbooks views the migration of Jews to Israel as the felicitous conclusion of the journey from the Holocaust to the Resurrection. It negates all forms of diasporic Jewish life and culture and ignores the history of Palestine during the 2000-year-long Jewish "exile." This narrative otherizes three main groups vis-à-vis whom Israeliness is constituted: Holocaust victims, who are presented in a traumatizing manner as the stateless and therefore persecuted Jews "we" refuse but might become again if "we" lose control over Palestinian Arabs, who constitute the second group of "others." Palestinians are racialized, demonized, and portrayed as "our" potential exterminators. The third group of "others" comprises non-European (Mizrahi and Ethiopian) Jews. They are described as backward people who lack history or culture and must undergo constant acculturation to fit into Israel's "Western" society.
