Truth in Texas Textbooks ReviewPublisher/Publication/Year: McGraw Hill/US History since 1877/2014

Author: Dr. Sandra Alfonsi

Problem: Bias (B), Omission of Fact (OF), Half-Truth (HT), Factual Error (FE)

The publisher responded to all seven of the items in this report and agreed to three changes.

Page #/Line # Quote Problem Fact & Source1. Ch. 11 A World

in Flames, Lesson 1 “The Origins of WWI,” “Stalin Takes over the Soviet Union,” page 2, ll.18-19

He used concentration camps, which held nearly 2 million people by 1935. Prisoners were used as slave labor.

HT Stalin created the Gulag to incarcerate prisoners whom he used as slave labor. He did not use the term concentration camp.

Publisher’s response: The text is not in error. The term concentration camp accurately describes the forced labor camps set up by the Soviet Union under Stalin and the Soviets actually referred to these camps as "concentration camps" in the 1920s and 1930s after which they referred to them as “special camps." The term Gulag is actually an acronym, made from the letters of the administrative body "Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Lagerey" or "Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps." It is not known if Stalin used the term Gulag. The term was popularized in the 1970s after Alexsander Solzhenitsyn published The Gulag Archipelago --and it became a popular term in the West for the Soviet system of forced labor camps so as to distinguish it from the Nazi concentration camps. Given that the term is still used in discussions of the Soviet political system and useful for students to know, McGraw-Hill proposes to revise the sentence to read: "He used a system of concentration camps, which came to be known as the Gulag,. These camps held nearly 2 million people by 1935.

2. Ch. 11 A World in Flames,

During the Holocaust, the Nazis killed nearly 6 million European Jews. The Nazis also killed

HT More than 6 million Jews were exterminated. The Shoah is used specifically – not often used specifically, to refer

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Lesson 3, The Holocaust, “Nazi Persecution of the Jews,” page 1, ll. 1-5

millions of people from other groups they considered inferior. The Hebrew term for the Holocaust is Shoah, meaning “catastrophe,” but it is often used specifically to refer to the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews during World War II.

to the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews during World War II.

Publisher’s Response: This issue of the 6 million figure was raised by a Jewish organization, the Institute for Curriculum Services National Resource Center for Accurate Jewish Content in Schools (ICS). Please see the changes MHE agreed to make in its previous response to ICS. The response can be found in the document entitled: "McGraw-Hill Response to Public Comment HS US History Since 1877."The text's description of the term shoah is accurate: the Hebrew word shoah can also be used in Hebrew to mean catastrophe , devastation, destruction, or "to crash into ruin" and is not always used to indicate the Holocaust. But today, as the text states, it is often used to refer to the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jews. In addition, the use of the word "often" also indicates that in common conversation the word Shoah is "often" used as a substitute for the word Holocaust; this helps students understand both words when they encounter them.Publisher’s Response to ICS: MHE will revise the text so that the 6 million number is not qualified by the term "nearly."The use of the term "kill" instead of the term "murder" is not a factual error. It is a request for an editorial revision to change the tone of the text. MHE does not object to making this editorial revision to the online student edition.The request for a definition of genocide is not a factual error. It is a request for additional content. MHE does not object to adding this content to the online student edition.

3. Ch. 11 A World in Flames, Lesson 3, The Holocaust, “Nazi Persecution of the Jews,” page 1, ll. 8-13

[The Nazis] reserved their strongest hatred for the Jews. This loathing went far beyond the European anti-Semitism that was common at the time. In the Middle Ages, Jews had been subjected to discrimination and sometimes to mob violence and expulsions. But in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western and Central Europe, both the frequency and intensity of anti-Jewish government policies diminished.

HT, OF The statement that “the frequency and intensity of anti-Jewish government policies diminished” in Western and Central Europe during the 19th and 20 century is correct. Simultaneously, however, the 19th century marked the so-far (up to that moment in history) culmination to European anti-Semitism. As nationalism became the order of the day, the hatred of the Jews escalated and the number of pogroms increased all over Europe. In the name of nationalism, ethnic and religious minorities were looked down upon. Also, the word ‘anti-Semitism’ was

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invented (in 1879). . In the Ukraine, however, anti-Semitic sentiments increased, leading to the most terrible results. In 1919 Ukrainian nationalists murdered around 60,000 Jews.

http://www.holocaust-education.dk/baggrund/ antisemitisme.asp

Publisher’s response: As the reviewer acknowledges, the text is accurate as written and the website the reviewer points to as a source supports MHE's content. Dr. David Berger, professor of Jewish History and Dean of Yeshiva University, who works with MHE to ensure accurate coverage of materials related to Judaism and Israel reviewed this passage and had no concerns. As the reviewer notes, anti-semitic [sic] violence and pograms [sic] against Jews did escalate in Russia and Ukraine in the 19th century. But the MHE text specifically references Western and Central Europe precisely because at this point in the text it is discussing the rise of Nazism in Germany, which is located in western and central Europe. The text is pointing out that the Nazis reversed the trends in that part of Europe, where Jews had become increasingly assimilated and had previously seen improvements in their liberty and acceptance.

4. Ch. 16 The Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, Lesson 2 “Challenging Segregation,” p. 2, ll. 9-19.

Urged on by former NAACP official and SCLC executive director Ella Baker, students established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. African American college students from all across the South made up the majority of SNCC’s members. Many whites also joined. SNCC became an important civil rights group.

Many SNCC volunteers, including Moses, bravely headed south as part of a voter education project. During a period of registration efforts in 1964 known as Freedom Summer, the Ku Klux Klan brutally murdered three SNCC workers with the complicity of local officials.

OF, B The first bolded sentence seems included more like an after-thought rather than a conscious decision to show that whites were part of the Civil Rights Movement. This is basically the only information that indicates that the Blacks were not alone in their pursuit of Civil Rights.

The second bolded sentence is particularly troublesome since two of the three SNCC workers were college students from NY and were white and Jewish and the third young man was Black. Most textbooks in the past provided not only this information but also the names of the 3 students.

http://atyourlibrary.org/culture/murder-civil-right- workers-while-registering-voters-shocks-nation-1964

This textbook has removed all the history of the participation of American Jews in the Civil Rights Movement, including the creation and funding of the

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NAACP. http://rac.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=21347

Publisher’s response: The reviewer is incorrect. The textbook identifies the founders of the NAACP in Chapter 6 lesson 3. It is true the text does not identify that some of the founders of the NAACP were Jewish. Nor does it identify the religious affiliation of other founders of the NAACP. The general editorial practice of McGraw-Hill Education and its authors is not to identify the racial, ethnic, or religious identity of people, unless it specifically related to the topic being discussed, or if their contribution is a notable first achievement by members of that group. Since the NAACP began with a focus on the lynching of African Americans, it did not seem pertinent to note the religious affiliations of the founders. The same argument applies to the Civil Rights movement in general. The Civil Rights movement, focused on the political, social, and economic rights of African Americans. It is unclear how the religious affiliation of those who led or assisted in the movement is pertinent. We do not identify whether other members of the civil rights movement were Methodists, Baptists, Catholics and so forth.

The text does explain to students that many white Americans joined the civil rights movement. In addition to mentioning white involvement with SNCC, it also discusses white volunteers when describing the Freedom Riders, whose particular form of protest was only possible because blacks and whites worked together. The identification of race is necessary in this case because it is important that students understand that the civil rights movement was not a "black" vs "white" issue--that there were white Americans on both sides of the issue.

5. Chapter 22, America’s Challenges for a New Century 2001-Present

On September 11, 2001, two passenger jets slammed into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Soon afterward, a third plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Within about two hours, the World Trade

HT, OF, B This quotation deals in partial truth and omits critical information. There is no identification of the terrorists as Muslims or Islamic Jihadists. Furthermore, there is no explanation of why the Jihadists targeted the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or that the third target “on

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Century, Lesson 1”Bush’s Global Challenge,” p. 3 September 11, 2001, ll. 3-14

Center collapsed in a billow of dust and debris, killing nearly 3,000 people. The airplanes did not crash accidentally. Hijackers deliberately flew them into the buildings. Hijackers had also seized a fourth airplane. Passengers on that flight had cell phones and had learned of the earlier attacks. Four passengers decided to fight the hijackers, and the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.A National Emergency

The attacks shocked Americans. Citizens donated food, money, supplies, and their own time toward the recovery effort. They rallied together to show their unity and resolve. On September 14, President Bush declared a national emergency. Congress authorized the use of force to fight whoever had attacked the nation. Osama bin Laden and his organization, al-Qaeda (al KY•duh), were soon identified as the plotters behind the attacks

Middle East Terrorism and the United States

The 9/11 attacks were acts of terrorism, the use of violence by nongovernmental groups to achieve a political goal. Most terrorist attacks on Americans since World War II have been carried out by Middle Eastern groups.

the ground” was the White House. Emphasis is placed on the reaction and generosity of

Americans following the loss of four commercial planes. No explanation is given of the political aims of al-Qaeda.

Terrorism is not limited to nongovernmental groups. There are governments which engage in state-sponsored terrorism against their own people and also in international terrorism. This sanitized definition does not do justice to what modern terrorism is. Murder perpetrated under terrorism is not random; it is systematic and calculated, whether the target is the Twin Towers or a school bus. Its intent is far more than political. It is designed to kill.

Publisher’s Response: This is a request for editorial revisions and additional content, not a factual error. MHE does not believe it has omitted critical information. On the pages following the text quoted by the reviewer, MHE notes that most terrorist attacks against Americans have originated in the Middle East, and then spend an entire page identifying reasons for the rise of militant Islam and Muslim hostility towards the United States. MHE does agree that the text could do a better job explaining the specific motivations of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. MHE proposes to delete this sentence "This organization carried out attacks on U.S. embassies and other targets in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks" from page 4 and replace it with the following [sic]: "Bin Laden's experience in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet Union convinced him that superpowers could be beaten. He believed that western ideas had contaminated Muslim society and was outraged when Saudi Arabia allowed American troops on its soil after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Bin Laden dedicated himself and al-Qaeda to driving westerners, especially Americans, out of the Middle East. In 1998, he called on Muslims to kill Americans. In the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks, his followers attacked two U.S. embassies in Africa, attempted to bomb Seattle, and attacked a U.S. warship docked in Yemen."

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Publisher’s second reply: MHE previously responded to the first two bullet points when they were submitted independently by Dr. Amy Jo Baker and Sandra Alfonsi at the first public hearing and proposed some additional content to expand upon al-Qaeda's political aims. Please see our previous response in the document entitled "McGraw-Hill Response to Public Comment HS US History Since 1877"

With respect to the third bullet point stating we have no coverage of state-sponsored terrorism, MHE would note that two paragraphs after the text cited by the reviewer, MHE includes a definition of state-sponsored terrorism and identifies Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iran as practitioners of state-sponsored terrorism.

With respect to the definition of terrorism, MHE would note that clicking on the highlighted yellow terms in the online edition launches the full definition of the term. In the print edition, the full definition appears in the side margin beside the narrative.

The full definition given in the text reads as follows:"terrorism: the use of violence by non-governmental groups against civilians to achieve a political goal by instilling fear and frightening governments into changing policies"

MHE's full definition of state-sponsored terrorism reads as follows: "state-sponsored terrorism: violent acts against civilians that are secretly supported by a government in order to attack other nations without going to war"

MHE believes these definitions are comprehensive and appropriate for a Grade 11 US history textbook and that there is no factual error. The issue of how to define terrorism is complicated, and one that political scientists and historians have struggled with since the 19th century when the term was first used in the context of anarchist

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terrorism. For discussions about the history of terrorism, and definitions of terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism, see Walter Laquer's works, including A History of Terrorism , and Origins of Terrorism , as well as Walter Laquer and Yonah Alexander, The Terrorism Reader ; Paul Wilkinson's works, including, Political Terrorism , and Terrorism vs Democracy ; Grant Wardlaw, Political Terrorism ; Gerado Schamis, War and Terrorism in International Affairs , and Roy S. Cline, Terrorism as State-Sponsored Covert Warfare .

One of challenges in defining terrorism is explaining the distinction between what governments do and what individuals do. If government acts are included then every act of war could be characterized as terrorism, and the terms war and terrorism become interchangeable and the distinction meaningless. Most definitions also include the idea that terrorist attacks involve attacks on civilians. But if all attacks on civilians are terrorism, then the Alied [sic] bombing of German cities would have to be called terrorism. Clearly the definition must distinguish between what sovereign states do, and what individuals do. At the same time, if you define terrorism as simply acts by non-government forces, then the attacks by American farmers against British soldiers in 1775, or the attacks by the Jewish Irgun against the British military in Palestine in 1948, would have to classified [sic] as terrorism. The definition needs to include both elements--actions by non-government groups, and actions against civilians. In general, specialists in the field have focused on who is perpetrating the act and why: terrorism is identified as acts of violence by non-government groups against civilians to achieve a political goal. State-sponsored terrorism are acts of violence by non-government groups that have been armed, funded, or organized by governments as a way to hide the government's involvement and avoid triggering a war.

When the reviewer asserts that "terrorism's intent is far more than political; it is designed to kill," the reviewer

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has it exactly backwards. The issue for historians, who seek to explain why events occur, is not simply the fact of the murder, but to ask the question: why did the terrorists commit murder? What was their goal? If an act of murder is to be considered terrorism, then the purpose of the murder must be to achieve a political goal. In al-Qaeda's case, the purpose of its terrorism was to make the United States withdraw its forces from the Middle East and particularly to withdraw forces from Saudi Arabia. (Please see our previous response on this issue in the document entitled: "McGraw-Hill Response to Public Comment HS US History Since 1877" where MHE proposed to add this clarification to the text). We also note that in this comment the reviewer criticizes MHE for saying terrorists have political goals, yet in their previous bullet points the reviewers criticizes MHE for not having enough material about al-Qaeda's political goals. The criticism cannot go both ways.

The reviewer suggests that the text sanitizes terrorism and implies that it is random. MHE disagrees. Nothing in the text suggests that terrorism is random. Indeed by explaining that terrorist's [sic] have political goals, we are making it clear that it is systematic, preplanned, and calculated, that it has a purpose, which makes it all the more horrific.

6. Chapter 22, America’s Challenges for a New Century 2001-Present Century, Lesson 1”Bush’s Global Challenge,” p. 3 September 11, 2001, ll. 3-14

In the 1920s, the United States invested in Middle East oil. The ruling families in some kingdoms grew wealthy, but most other people remained poor. Many Muslims feared their traditional values were weakening as the oil industrialists also brought Western ideas into the region. New movements arose calling for a strict interpretation of the Quran—the Muslim holy book—and a return to traditional religious laws. Some militant supporters began using terrorism to achieve their goals

OF, HT, B This statement incorrectly suggests that Islamic terrorist organizations arose from the poor, when, in fact, those organizations are typically led by the most highly educated people in the Muslim world. It also ignores the fact that the wealthy ruling families throughout the Muslim world are one of the main sources of funding for Islamic Jihadist activities.

http://www.islam-watch.org/M.Hussain/Reasons-Causes-Islamic-Terrorism-Illiteracy-Poverty-Deprivation.htm

While individual elements of this paragraph are true, the paragraph as a whole is an apologetics for Islamist Jihadism. What has been omitted from the explanation as to the reasons that these Muslim movements wanted to

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overthrow pro-Western governments is the critical fact that for the Muslims, the world is divided into the House of Islam and the House of War, the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb. The Dar al-Islam is all those lands in which a Muslim government rules and the Holy Law of Islam (Shari’a) prevails. Non-Muslims may live there on Muslim sufferance. The outside world, which has not yet been subjugated, is called the "House of War," and strictly speaking, a perpetual state of jihad, of holy war, is imposed by the law. The law also provides that the jihad might be interrupted by truces as and when appropriate.

http://atheism.about.com/od/islamicextremism/a/daralharb.htm

Publisher’s Response: There is no factual error in the text. It is accurate as written and appropriate for a Grade 11 history of the United States. MHE does not agree or accept the statement that the text is an apologetic for terrorism. It is important to consider the context and purpose of this portion of the narrative. The text is a history of the United States. Its purpose is to explain the causes and effects of historical events and developments involving Americans and the United States. At this point in the narrative, the text is explaining why the attacks of September 11, 2001 took place.

For historians of US history, the issue is not the theological question of whether Islam considers all Muslims to be perpetually at war with everyone else, and whether all Muslims believe that idea. The issue is why a radical Muslim terrorist group attacked the United States on 9/11. Muslim groups have not been waging war or committing terrorist acts against the United States on an ongoing basis since the republic's founding. Muslim groups did not stage acts of terrorism against Americans in the 1920s and 1930s when the American oil industry set up operations in the region. Other than the attacks on American shipping that led to Thomas Jefferson's war against the Barbary pirates in Tripoli (1801-1815), there were no attacks by Muslim groups against Americans

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until the 1970s. For American historians, the question is why 9/11 happened when it did and not earlier or later. Why was it al-Qaeda that attacked the United States on 9/11 and not some other Muslim group? What were the long-range causes of the attacks? What were the immediate causes? What led to the rise of Islamist terrorist groups in the 20th century? Once they were formed, why did they focus their anger on the United States? Why did they begin attacks starting in the 1970s and not sooner or later? What historical developments contributed to the decision of these groups to make Americans a target? The reviewers need to keep these goals in mind when reading this lesson in the program.

We are unable to locate the source cited by the reviewer concerning poverty in the Muslim world; the link does not work. But in any case MHE's text does not state that Islamic terrorist organizations arose from the poor. The roots of militant Islamism can be traced to the late 19th century as European imperialist powers began to assert themselves in the region. Following World War I, Arabs saw their desire for independence shattered when the League of Nations gave Britain and France control over mandates in the region. These developments brought western values, ideas, and ways of organizing society into the region and posed a challenge to many Muslims living there. Some of them responded by arguing that the problems Muslims were having--their failure to achieve independence, the ongoing poverty of the region, and the extreme disparity in wealth--were because they were no longer remaining true to their faith and were cooperating with Westerners. There is nothing controversial about these statements. It does not contradict the fact that some of the leaders of terrorist organizations came from the middle class or were highly educated, nor does it contradict that some wealthy Muslims have contributed to terrorist organizations. In fact, it might well be expected that the people most angry at the problems of Muslim society--the lack of independence, the poverty, the disparity of wealth--would come from the educated

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middle class and some members of the wealthy elite. But while the events outlined above explain the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, they do not explain why Muslim militants became specifically hostile toward the United States, and how that hostility led to 9/11. The explanation for the anger directed specifically at the United States--the beginning of the long chain of historical events that leads to 9/11--begins with the arrival of Americans in the region as part of their investment in the region's oil industry. The oil industry accelerated the disparity of wealth and also accelerated the pace at which the Arab and Iranian ruling elites could introduce western ideas and technology into Muslim society. Because those elites aligned themselves with the United States and other western nations, Muslim fundamentalists began to see Americans as an enemy of their goal of restoring a pure version of Islam. For scholarly discussion of these points, please see the works of Bernard Lewis, one of the leading scholars of the history of the middle east. Specifically see Lewis, The Crisis of Islam , chapter 7 "A Failure of Modernity," pp. 113-119, and chapter 8, "The Marriage of Saudi Power and Wahabi Teaching," pp. 120-136 for discussion of the role of poverty and the rise of the oil industry in the rise of Muslim extremism and their reasons for blaming the United States specifically for the region's problems. See also Lewis, The Arabs in History , chapter 10, "The Impact of the West" pp. 190-194 for a discussion of the impact of western values and ideas on Arab society.

MHE therefore believes the text is accurate as written, that it avoids excessive detail unnecessary for a Grade 11 US History course, while providing a useful description of one of the basic long-range causes of why the United States was attacked on 9/11. MHE does not claim this is the only reason or the immediate reason for the attacks. See our comment on the next line item. The rise of fundamentalism and the rise of the oil industry is only part of the story.

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The reviewer also asserts that some Muslims wanted to overthrow pro-Western Muslims because they believed the world was divided between the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb. MHE's content already agrees with this comment. The reviewer's comment is one example of the kind of "strict interpretation of the Quran" that MHE's text already says is motivating Muslim militants. MHE does not think that a high school US History textbook, discussing events in American history, needs a detailed discussion of fundamentalist Muslim theology. Simply stating that the Muslim militants argued for a "strict interpretation of the Quran" is sufficient to explain one of the causes of the rise of Muslim terrorism.

7. Lesson 1”Bush’s Global Challenge,” p. 4, ll.1-20

The United States’s support of Israel also angered many in the Middle East. In 1947, as a response to global outrage over the Holocaust, the UN proposed to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The Jews accepted the UN plan and established Israel in 1948. Arab states responded by attacking Israel. The territory that the UN had proposed as an Arab state came under the control of Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. In the 1950s, Palestinians began staging guerrilla raids and terrorist attacks against Israel. Since the United States gave aid to Israel, it became the target of Muslim hostility. In the 1970s, several Middle Eastern nations realized they could fight Israel and the United States by providing terrorists with money, weapons, and training. This is called state-sponsored terrorism. The governments of Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Iran have all sponsored terrorists.

B, OF, HT The opening sentence “American support of Israel also angered many in the Middle East” in effect places all the blame for terrorism on the existence of Israel and supports the Islamist stance that if there were no Israel, there would be no terrorism. It totally omits information on Jihad-sponsored terrorism or Jihad against the West and in particular America.

The next statement is erroneous by omission of critical facts. And as such it supports and teaches Islamist Holocaust Revisionism that purports that there would be no Israel, if there had been no Holocaust. The plan to partition Palestine did not come about “to provide a home for Jews.” UN Resolution 181 on the Partition of Palestine called for one state for the Jews and one for the Arabs. There were no Palestinian Arabs since this terminology is an artificial designation coined for political reasons with the creation of the PLO in 1964. Further, the textbook omits the history of the British Mandate in Palestine from the time that the British defeated the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and gained control over Palestine and Transjordan until the time that Britain decided to hand back its Mandate to the United Nations because it was unable to solve any of the problems in that region. There is also no reference to the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), the Weizmann-Faisal Agreement (1919), or the McMahon-Hussein correspondence (1916), all of which entailed an Arab acknowledgement

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of the legitimacy of a Jewish homeland. There is also no mention of the 1936 Peel Commission Proposal to partition Palestine.

The statement that the territory that the UN had proposed as an Arab state came under the control of Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. omits the facts that students need in order to understand exactly what happened to the area designated by the UN for an Arab state, i.e. that the Arab leadership in Palestine and the League of Arab States unconditionally rejected the UN Partition Plan on the grounds that all of Palestine should be awarded to a Palestinian state. Arab violence broke out immediately after the announcement of the Partition Plan, on November 29, 1947. Palestinian Arabs took the offensive; five Arab nations attacked the nascent state of Israel. Israel was not the aggressor and it was not militarily ready for the war.1

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_un_arabrejection.php

Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem! (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 352. ”When Israel declared its independence in May 1948, the army did not have a single canon or tank. Its air force consisted of nine obsolete planes. Although the Haganah had 60,000 trained fighters, only 18,900 were fully mobilized, armed and prepared for war.”

Students must be taught that Israel did not violate UN Resolution 181 on the Partition of Palestine. In addition to this fact, they need to learn that Israel honored the armistice agreements negotiated between themselves and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Iraq refused to sign an agreement. Further, they must understand that from the Weizmann-Faisal Agreement of 1919 to the Peel Commission Proposal of 1936 to the UN Partition Plan of 1947, the Jews have accepted every proposal for a “two-state solution,” whereas the Arabs have rejected every proposal and have opted for a “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem” in Palestine. The Six Day War, as the Arabs themselves described it, was to have been a

1

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war of extermination of Israel. Bard, pp. 54-56; 62-63; 72Publisher’s Response: These are not factual errors. The reviewer's statement in the first bullet point is plainly untrue. TTT's reviewers have just discussed in their previous comment some of the other reasons the text gives for Muslim terrorism against the United States, but now asserts that the text is putting all of the blame on Israel. The criticism cannot go both ways--and clearly McGraw-Hill's text is arguing for multiple causes for the attacks of September 11, 2001. Again, as noted in our comment above, the text is an American history text, and it is describing the long-range and short range causes of Muslim fundamentalist anger at the United States as part of the explanation of the events of 9/11. The text does not say, in any way, that without Israel, there would be no attacks on the west or the United States. All that the text states is that American support of Israel is another reason that some Muslim militants became angry at the United States. This statement is not controversial, and the anger of many Muslim groups at the United States for its support of Israel is a matter of public record.

ICS, a Jewish organization (full name: The Institute for Curriculum Services National Resource Center for Accurate Jewish Content in Schools) specifically requested McGraw-Hill to include the statement that "Two-thirds of European Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. This increased international support for the establishment of a Jewish state" as part of the textbook's summary of the effects of World War II at the end of Chapter 12. MHE has agreed to make that change. (See the document entitled: "McGraw-Hill Response to Public Comment HS US History Since 1877"). To remove the same statement here in Chapter 22 that the Holocaust contributed to the UN decision to divide Palestine would contradict what ICS requested, and what MHE agreed to do, in the earlier chapter. MHE agreed to make the change requested by ICS because the statement that the Holocaust helped build international support for the

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division of Palestine is accurate and not controversial. There is no need to remove the content here. The reviewer's request for additional detailed information on the division of Israel, UN Resolution 181, and the violence that began following the partition of Palestine in 1948 does not take into account the purpose and context of the lesson. As noted above, this lesson in the text is describing the multiple reasons for the attacks of September 11, 2001. The preceding paragraph in the text describes the development of the oil industry in the Middle East, the concentration of wealth, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalist militants. The paragraph in question describes the role of the Arab-Israeli conflict in contributing to Muslim hostility toward the United States. The subsequent paragraph references the Soviet war in Afghanistan and its role in the development of al-Qaeda. The purpose of all of these paragraphs is to explain why the September 11 attacks occurred. The paragraphs are not intended to be a detailed discussion of Arab-Israeli history but a brief summary of the key points and historical events that contributed to the rise of radical Islamists, the reasons for their hostility toward the United States, and a description of how events culminated in the September 11 attacks. Adding extensive detail on the events of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948 to this lesson would give the impression that the 9/11 attacks are directly related to the creation of Israel. The reviewer strongly objects above to giving that impression, and MHE agrees. We do not think adding extensive detail on the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict is appropriate for this lesson.

For the reasons listed above, MHE does not believe the suggested revisions should be made. Adding complex and detailed content on the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict and events that took place in 1948 would impede student learning, since the goal of the text in this lesson is to teach students the causes of the 9/11 attacks. However, in response to previous requests by the ICS organization, MHE has proposed to explain that it was not just US

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support of Israel that led to Muslim anger at the United States, but also US policies toward Muslim countries as well. MHE has agreed to add content describing the rise of Iranian hostility toward the United States, and the role of the Gulf War in increasing radical Islamist hostility (and particularly al-Qaeda's hostility) toward the United States. See our response to ICS comments in the document entitled: "McGraw-Hill Response to Public Comment HS US History Since 1877."

Evaluation of Social Studies Skills and other important issuesNumber Questions Yes No

1. Is the appropriate vocabulary relevant to the subject matter presented to students?For example, on comparative government are terms such as monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, socialism, fascism, and communism presented?

Yes

2. Are the captions under pictures factual? Yes

3. Are the charts and graphs relevant to the topic being presented? N/A

4. Are the maps accurate and relevant to the topic?

5. Are questions thought provoking? Is adequate and accurate material provided so that the students can formulate appropriate answers?

NO to second question

6. Are primary and secondary sources presented for students to examine (for bias, propaganda, point of view, and frame of reference)?*

NO

7. Does the text present a lesson on how to evaluate the validity of a source based on language, corroboration with other sources, and information about the author? *

NO

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8. Does the textbook have a Glossary? Are key terms included and defined? Terms defined in context

9. Does the textbook have accurate timelines to help the student understand chronological historical developments?

N/A

Evaluations based on templateChoices Explanations Yes No

1. This text has minor changes that need to be made

2. This text has a moderate number of changes

3. This text has substantial changes that need to be made YES

4. This book is so flawed that it is not recommended for adoption. ABSOLUTELY YES

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