French Publisher Recalls School Textbooks That Describe Oct. 7 Victims as ‘Jewish Settlers’
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
The largest publishing company in France announced on Wednesday its decision to immediately recall three high school textbooks that describe the victims of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel as “Jewish settlers” following outrage in the country.
Hachette Livre said it recalled copies of the textbooks that feature the “erroneous content” from booksellers and its other partners. The company also launched an internal investigation to determine how the error could have occurred.
The publisher apologized and said the books will only be sold again once they are corrected, while unsold books will be destroyed. An estimated 2,000 copies were reportedly recalled.
The textbooks read, “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a large-scale humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The text appears in books for final year students preparing for the baccalaureate exam.
Hachette Livre’s chairman, Arnaud Lagardere, apologized “to all those who may rightly have felt hurt, to the teaching staff, to the parents of students, and to the students themselves.” He added that the publisher will “put in place the necessary procedures to ensure that this does not happen again.”
In a post on X, French President Emmanuel Macron said historical revisionism and school textbooks that “falsify the facts” are “intolerable,” especially regarding the “terrorist and antisemitic” massacre on Oct. 7, 2023. “Revisionism has no place in the Republic. I have asked the government to take measures,” he added.
The French Embassy in Israel said it was “deeply outraged” by Hachette’s distortion of facts.
“Any biased presentation of the terrorist and antisemitic attacks carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7 is unacceptable,” it wrote in a post on X. “France is committed to the truth of the facts, to historical rigor, and to the fight against terrorism and antisemitism. The French government has been informed, and immediate measures have been taken to ensure that these shortcomings are corrected without delay.”
Yonathan Arfi, head of the French Jewish group Crif, said the false narrative promoted in the textbooks “constitutes a falsification of history and an unacceptable form of legitimization of Hamas terrorism, which this book fails to explicitly label as a terrorist organization.”
“The justification of the Oct. 7 terrorism has no place in school textbooks,” he wrote on X. “It is not acceptable for this text to continue serving as an educational resource in the schooling of young French people. Hate has no place in school textbooks.”