Lower Education in Israel September 1, 2009
The Alternative Information Center - 31 August 2009
A direct line connects the plans of Israeli Minister of Education Gideon Sa’ar, as published in the weekend newspapers in run to for the opening of the school year, and the remarks of Rivka Carmi, President of Ben Gurion University, in response to the article of Dr. Neve Gordon in the Los Angeles Times. This connection must concern everyone who believes that education in Israel must encourage critical thinking, a pluralistic approach and a multi-cultural position.
The only sin of Gordon was to write, as a private individual, what everyone with eyes in his head has known for a long time: that in the territories Israel occupied in 1967 there is an apartheid regime in which the masters are the settlers while the Palestinians are lacking in all civil rights. He further suggested the imposition of a boycott on the settlements, as the sole means of pressure that can impact government policy. There is no need to agree with all of his opinions in order to recognize his right to express them on any stage. However, the response of Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar came quickly: he contended that the article aroused disgust, and that it should be denounced. The president of the university at which Gordon teaches hurried to follow him, while she condemned Gordon’s “destructive perspectives” and contends that Ben Gurion University is a “Zionist institution” with no place for someone who thinks like Gordon. Carmi exposes in her response a fundamental lack of understanding, both of the principle of freedom of expression and the essence of the university, which is intended to include the various opinions of its lecturers, and as such cannot be “Zionist” or “post-Zionist,” just as it cannot be “Republican,” “Democrat” or “Communist” —and if it is such, then a shame for the education it provides. However, Carmi is responsible, luckily for us, only for a certain portion of higher education, and as such, her damage is limited. Gideon Sa’ar, on the other hand, is supposed to lead in the coming years what look more and more like the Israeli system for lower education.
Sa'ar promises to encourage student recruitment to the Israeli military
In the interviews he gave to the weekend newspapers, Sa’ar mentioned again and again his commitment to “values,” but a review of the plans he wishes to promote in the coming academic year raises heavy fears concerning the type of values of which he speaks. These plans include, amongst other things, the provision of financial rewards (institutional and personal) to schools that increase the percentage of students enlisting in the military; encouragement of guided tours to battle sites; the singing of the national anthem in school; the obligation of all students to visit Jerusalem; the creation of a new topic of study—“history and culture of Israel”—which does not recognize the various streams in Judaism; and an increase in the number of participants in the “Israeli Trek” program of the Braisheet association. The last plan is perhaps the most worrisome owing to its effectiveness. According to an article by Or Keshti (Haaretz, 5 July 2009), this is a seven day tour throughout Israel that is partially funded by the Canadian evangelical millionaire, Jim Pattison, and organized in cooperation with the Department of Society and Youth in the Ministry of Education. The tour, intended to strengthen the “personal, Jewish and Zionist identity” of the participating pupils, also includes ceremonial and social activities, and ends with a visit to the 1967 battle site of Ammunition Hill and the Western Wall in Jerusalem. At the head of the Braisheet association is Rabbi Mordechai Elon, whose political opinions are not far from those of his brother, Rabbi Benny Elon, the former Member of Knesset from Moledet. As a staff member of the Ministry of Education was quoted in the aforementioned article, the tour has great influence on the pupils, “at least like the tour to Poland”—another influential tour, from which the primary conclusion reached by the participants is that “we need a strong army.”
Israeli military brass talk to new recruits
The accumulative total of these activities leads to the conclusion that under Sa’ar, schools in Israel will become institutions intended primarily to train manpower for the military. For some time now already, the “preparation for the IDF” in schools is not only a few meetings with psychologists and military officers, but spreads throughout the entire educational curriculum. However, we are now witness to an advance stage, which joins the public relations campaign of the army’s Chief Education Officer against the “draft-dodgers” and the ongoing attacks on New Profile activists. Sa’ar does mention in interviews values such as “education for tolerance, acceptance of the other and the different,” but this does not sit well with his blatant militarism, narrow nationalism and the national-religious Judaism expressed in these new programs. It is not by chance that the path of the Israeli Trek does not include any Arab villages, or that the visit to Jerusalem ignores “sensitive” neighborhoods such as Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinians are being deprived of their homes. The “other and different” do not include, of course, the Palestinians, or those who think like Neve Gordon.
And we have not yet mentioned the “controlled opening of registration areas” which will allow for the selection of students, the use of celebrities as teachers for an hour, and the transformation of financial rewards as tools to encourage studying. Sa’ar, in the best tradition of the new Right, combines his nationalism with belief in the market economy. When the competitive, business model takes over the education system, the sole glue holding the parts together is patriotism.
This article originally appeared in the critical analysis site Haokets in Hebrew and was translated into English by the Alternative Information Center (AIC).
LINK: http://www.alternativenews.org/english/2131-lower-education-in-israel-.html
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