"If you have a Ph. D. after your name, manifest a fashionable anti-Sharon and anti-Bush stance, and mention a few obscure reports from a few obscure think tanks, there is a good chance you will be able to print absolute non-sense in The International Herald Tribune.
Take a look Roger Avenstrup's December 18 column in the International Herald Tribune "Palestinian textbooks: Where is all that 'incitement '?"
It has been eagerly cited in anti-Zionists blogs and websites. And will be read by many more. Few who read the Avesntrup's opinion piece will bother to check out the sources he cites.
According to Avenstrup each and every analysis of Palestinian textbooks by research institutes have given them a clean bill of health In reality, the studies of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information have been quite critical. The 2004 report, for instance, says of the Palestinian textbooks "... it is not difficult to come to the understanding that the main political theme imparted to the students is that Israel should not exist and that is essentially the Palestinian goal. Assuming that this is not the political message that the Palestinian Authority adheres to, there is a need to make real revisions and amendments in the Palestinian text books."
Avenstrup is, of course, free to disagree with the conclusions on the IPCRI. Instead he blatantly misrepresents their studies."