This item at Tal G.'s blog caught my attention. A website called "Palestine Media Watch is trying to "prove" that Israel engages in the "incitement" of its schoolchildren to hate Arabs in the same way that Palestinian schools incite hatred against Jews. His "proof"? An incident reported in Yediot Aharonot in May, where some middle- and high-school students wrote letters to soldiers encouraging them to break the rules and kill as many Arabs as possible. Tal answered that the PMW translation of the article was inaccurate, and of course it was. Tal promises a complete translation and some more comments, which I look forward to. In the meantime, I was sufficiently intrigued to look at the article myself.
Apart from answering the sloppy and biased translator at Palestine Media Watch, this case told me a great deal about how Israel as a society is managing the war:
It's unfortunate that the kids in grades 7-10 chose to express their frustration over the situation with calls for senseless killing. Kids that age say all kinds of stupid things. But there's no indication that they were incited to do so by any school official.
The tone of the article, which appeared in a mass circulation tabloid, was one of shock at the unacceptable behavior of the students.
Picture the scenario described in the article: A reserve soldier is at his post in a combat zone. Presumably he is worried about doing his job and also trying not to be killed. He gets a letter from a schoolboy. The soldier is sufficiently distressed by what the schoolboy wrote, that in spite of the fact that he is in a combat situation, he goes out of his way to take action and inform somebody about the letter. In other words, this is a soldier who takes risks to act on his conscience. He is concerned both about respecting the boundaries of conduct during a war, and about the soul of his nation.
The letters urged the soldiers to "disregard the rules" and "kill as many Arabs as possible". This implies that there are rules against unnecessary violence in the first place, and that those rules are meant to be obeyed.
The country is open and pluralistic. There exists a civil rights group, The Israel Religious Action Center (direct translation of its Hebrew name is "Center for Jewish Pluralism"). This group is concerned with restraining the power of the most religious factions, and "advancing religious freedom and pluralism, tolerance, social justice and civil liberties in Israel, based on the belief that these values are intrinsic to and stem from a liberal understanding of Judaism". This group got involved when it turned out that the offending letters came from a state religious school.
The response of the chair of Knesset education committee, a member of the National Religious Party, was "These statements represent an educational failure. Even if they were written out of emotional torment due to the current terror attacks, there is no justification for students of religious Zionist schools to express themselves in such a severe fashion". The Ministry of Education said that "the educational system is strict about instructing its students in tolerance and co-existence." and that the director-general of the Ministry was "shocked by the tone of the letters".
Tal will surely have more insights about this story. For me, it seems clear that this is not about a country that incites its children to hatred. The story is about a country that has very clear values and standards about conduct even (especially) during wartime, that has mechanisms in place to monitor and reinforce those standards, and that reacts appropriately when some of its children screw up. Which aspects of this story would still hold if you replace the words Israel/Israeli above with the words Palestine/Palestinian? I doubt very many would.
So go ahead, Palestine Media Watch, dig up more dirt. Make my day.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 02, 2002 07:00 AMHere's what the "Center for Jewish Pluralism" is up to these days:
Judge Irked By Request To Gag Arutz-7
The Central Elections Board is on the verge of turning down a request this afternoon to either ban Arutz-7 outright until after the election or curtail its election-related broadcasts. Two left-wing organizations - Keshev and the Center for Jewish Pluralism - filed the request, saying that Arutz-7 gives too much airtime to right-wing parties and not enough to the others. The station denies what it calls the "politically-motivated" charges, saying that it is more careful not to allow its interviewers and interviewees to speak on behalf of specific parties than are Israel's public stations.
Arutz-7's Effie Meir reports that reaction of Elections Board Chairman Hon. Michael Cheshin appears to leave no room for doubt as to his decision. "This law [banning election propaganda] should be nullified. Everyone violates it; it's a 'covenant of thieves.' ... If I would accept this request against Arutz-7, then Arutz-7 could justifiably ask for a similar order against the other stations, because they all violate the law." When Arutz-7 presented its list of recent interviewees, Cheshin showed that he was duly impressed with the balance between the right and left of the political spectrum.
Keshev is headed by Yizhar Be'er, a former Director-General of the left-wing B'Tzelem human rights organization, and is funded by the European Union and the New Israel Fund. The European Union has frequently intervened in internal Israeli matters. Journalist Yoav Yitzchak revealed that the EU funded such left-wing organizations as Peace Now, Four Mothers, the Peres Peace Center, and others, and supported Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben-Ami.
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These guys are only into "pluralism" as long as the right wing religious are shut down and they get to hand over Israel to the terrs!
With Jews like these, who needs Hamas?
Posted by: Yehuda on December 27, 2002 12:05 AM