Two Stories from Two Sides of a Fence

First off, I realize that my focus has been primarily directed towards Israel, but I will bring up this piece of news from last week: the Palestinian Authority shutting down operations at the Al-Jazeera offices in the West Bank after a guest on the network, Farouk Qaddoumi, accused Mahmoud Abbas of playing a part in the death of former PA chairman Yasir Arafat.
Of course this rivalry goes way back, but what's better is that Abbas admits that his criticism of the network is nearly baseless; he doesn't have time to watch TV (so maybe someone is telling him what they're saying?).
This also comes on the heel of the IMF's declaration that the West Bank has had one of its best years economically. Abbas and the PA have taken some steps to hegemony, but I have to agree with Dr. Lynch that this is not how you want to establish this power going forward. Government transparency is essential, and while the network won't be able to report directly, five of their top seven stories at the time of Lynch's post were about the expulsion and resulting effects.
At the same time, on the Israeli side, education is essentially being Americanized (just like this AP article, which is, for some reason, a direct translation from Yisrael Hayom aka Israel Today aka Bibi-Ton (during the run up to the election in February each word was like a tongue slowly licking the bottom of Netanyahu's feet) minus the added quotes from new Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman).
Minister of Education Gideon Saar told the Knesset, "No other country in the world, in its official curriculum, would treat the fact of its founding as a catastrophe." This is true, especially for third-graders. When was the last time a third-grade teacher in the US wasn't essentially feeding propaganda to his/her students? Never! The beginning of consideration of revisionist history theory in US public schools begins during high school, and it was something required quite a bit of adjusting for me (Smallpox blankets? DAYUMN!). So, whatever. Let the children believe, as they do in every country in elementary school, that their independence was a natural action that some supernatural force decided was just and opportune.
Let's look at this a little further in depth:

The decision applied to a third-grade textbook for Arab schoolchildren. Jewish textbooks make no mention of the term.

This sounds a lot like you're trying to make them forget it. Even though Saar noted that teachers are still "free to discuss the personal and national tragedies that befell Palestinians during the war," taking it out of a book is the equivalent of the deplorable revionist history that some Palestinian textbooks were employing during the Second Intifada and probably still to this day. And there is something to say about subtracting from a history book. The discussion may still be able to stand in, but to leave this injustice out of the book is to say it lacks truth. Another step towards hegemony that will not end well. And for the Jewish textbooks, they do not mention of the term, but falsely revise it to say it was a completely voluntary flight.
Avigdor Lieberman, at the time a Knesset member said Education Minister Yuli Tamir was "expressing a sort of political masochist spirit and ... a total lack of national pride." I think it was more reconciling with the truth and allowing an ethnic group that is treated pretty well compared to under the PA or Hamas. Compare this to black children in the US: Do teachers skip slavery and the civil rights movement and tell them everything was just hunky-dory? No, they give them some narrative that may not explain everything, but establishes some sort of basis for learning more about the movement and how it led them to their current position in society.
Yossi Sarid gives the quote I agree with the most in his response to Saar's actions:

"Zionism has already won in many ways, and can afford to be more confident. We need not be afraid of a word."

Revisionist history has already done so much for moving Israeli society forward and making sure that it doesn't become like totalitarian states that suppress any possibly negative historical facts from public acknowledgement. It looks like these kids are going to have to wait until they get to college.