This paper presents findings from an ongoing study of Arabic instruction in Israel, its underlying cognitive processes, and the way these are embedded in the daily reality of sectarian, Zionist domination. The research focuses predominantly on the teaching of Arabic grammar at both the Arabic and Hebrew school streams and at universities. I am concerned in particular with knowledge formation and transmission, teaching and learning styles and seemingly technical curricular choices. The paper presents the results of a systematic comparison of textbooks, curricular documents, and examinations of Arabic in the Jewish and Arab school streams in Israel. The results of the comparative analysis are then interpreted in light of earlier ethnographic and other studies of Arabic instruction. I argue that Jews and Arabs tend to develop different modes of learning Arabic, and that this difference imposes itself on curricular design such that there is no neutral curriculum. Consequently, even the most seemingly technical curricular choices are politically and ideologically loaded. They are guided by implicit ideological and political notions that practitioners have, such as what language is, what the place of Arabic is in the world, who controls Arabic, and so forth. This point becomes particularly poignant at the tertiary level of education. All top-tier universities in Israel are Hebrew-language institutions and (with one partial exception that helps demonstrate the general trend) teach university grammar of Arabic in a way that suits the Arabic learning patterns of graduates of the Jewish schools system. As a result, Arab students tend to be disorientated and alienated by these practices. These implicit alienating aspects of the curriculum come in addition to more visibly sectarian aspects of Arabic instruction, and turn educational encounters in Arabic classes into sites of sectarian and political clashes.