The first one is really encouraging. No, it’s not about Iran, nor about so-called peace talks, nor about any of the more usual subjects these days. It is a first, apparently. Over 200 Israeli teachers stand up to Gideon Saar, the Israeli Minister of education and say a loud and clear “We will not cooperate!” Moreover, a reason that they will not cooperate in Saar’s pet project is because they want to teach kids to think rather than to implant predigested notions in their minds. Incredible. And they don’t even belong to New Profile! Am so glad to know that there are still teachers who know what teaching should do—open youngsters’ minds and stir thinking. Without that ability, all the knowledge in the world is not worth a cent.
Item 2 is Saar’s response to the teachers—negative, of course.
Item 3 reports that Jahalin tribe has received a reprieve of sorts. It’s not clear to me, though, that beyond not being relocated next to a garbage dump that anything else has basically changed. Hope that I’m wrong.
Item 4 reports that Abbas is to lead a unity government. May it succeed.
Item 5 relates that a Canadian media company refuses to show a video of Michael Riordon speaking about his latest book, “Our Way to Fight,” which is about Israeli and Palestinian non-violent activism. The company’s excuse for cancelling the showing is that it is “unbalanced.” Tell me, dear friends, how can a book about non-violent means of resisting oppression be “unbalanced”? Should Riordon perhaps have also included violent means of resistance to balance the scales?
In item 7 Akiva Eldar states that “Israel can clear the Mideast of nukes, it just won’t. Of course not. Just as Israel could long ago have had peace and security for all within the greater Palestine, but wouldn’t and won’t.
Item 8 contains 3 links to readings that Sam Bahour recommends.
All the best,
And may Adnan Moussa survive and be released immediately!
Tags: Israel education Jewish World Israel protest
For the first time in Israel’s history, more than 200 teachers Sunday signed a letter declaring that they would refuse to participate in an Education Ministry program to take pupils on “heritage tours” in Hebron.
“In February 2011, you announced a new tour program called Ascending to Hebron,” some 260 teachers wrote yesterday to Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar. “Introducing the program to schools is a manipulative use of pupils and teachers, who will be forced to become political pawns. Since we’re dedicated to education, our conscience prevents us from becoming agents of such a policy.”
Udi Gur, a literature teacher from Jerusalem and one of the initiators of the teachers’ letter, told Haaretz Sunday that “we might be at the beginning of an era when citizens must pay a personal price in order to stop the nationalistic wave.
“We hope that other teachers won’t fear, because we have no intention of backing down due to threats,” Gur continued. “The educational system is under attack by extremist political forces, aiming to trade education for indoctrination. We won’t allow that to happen.”
The teachers oppose Sa’ar’s plan to spend millions of shekels – the amount was undisclosed by the Education Ministry – to fund the tours. “You claim that the purpose of these tours isn’t political,” the letter reads. “But in your visit to Shiloh you announced their aim openly: ‘It’s good to come to the settlements. Its good that the settlements flourish. One should not allow the Arabs to harbor the illusion that one day there won’t be Jews here. Jews will always live here and any other illusion is an obstacle to peace.’ That is the reason we’re called to visit the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Shiloh. By using the national education system, you wish to strengthen and perpetuate the Jewish settlements in these areas. To this end, the reality in Hebron is presented in a partial and tendentious manner. Concealing the political reality is a political action.”
The controversial “heritage tours” curriculum has until now been geared only toward students in the Jerusalem school district; but last week, Sa’ar announced that it would be available to students across the country.
So far some 2,000 secular and 1,000 religious high school students have visited the the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Beit Hadassah. So far, the program has not been made compulsory but the teachers fear that is the next step.
The visits to Hebron are part of a drive led by the ministry to strengthen “Jewish and Zionist values” that include tours at an archaeological site at the Shiloh settlement and of the City of David, conducted in cooperation with Elad, a group dedicated to Jewish settlement in the East Jerusalem village of Silwan.
Other projects initiated by Sa’ar include meetings between army officers and students that are aimed at “strengthening the connection and cooperation between schools and the Israel Defense Forces, and doubling the funding of Israeli Hike, whose declared purpose is to “clarify and strengthen the bond between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel, while understanding our roots as a people and our right to the land.”
Gur added: “We want to tell the minister unequivocally that neither we nor the pupils are his soldiers. This isn’t a leftist statement but one of teachers wishing their students to form a knowledgeable and independent opinion. These tours of Hebron and Shiloh are the complete opposite, since their aim isn’t educational. Their aim is to forge an emotional identification, while making political gains.” The teachers point to the fact that for the first time, teachers opposed to the ministry’s policies appear publicly and not anonymously.
Ofra Goldberg, who teaches Jewish Thought in Jerusalem insists that “there is a huge lie in the tours that aim to strengthen Jewish values through Hebron.”
According to Goldberg, “We’re discussing the link to the patriarchs who never actually lived in Hebron but were only buried there. The city Abraham is most identified with is actually Be’er Sheva, a city that really needs attention. Why go to Hebron, an extremist, dead city, instead of visiting a city that promotes coexistence and reflects Abraham more faithfully? What is the value of life if its portrayed through a group that sanctifies graves? Let’s build the Jewish identity around a living, creative center, not tombs.”
Uri Snir, a philosophy teacher from Ramat Hasharon said that “this program is directly opposed to the open and critical way of thinking that I try to promote. We’re responding to illegitimate moves by the ministry. The Hebron tours are political, by teaching half truths for one-sided, ideological reasons.”
The teacher’s letter ends with a pledge: “We know that our vocation as educators is to present the students with the truth, as best as we can. A partial, conscripted truth is no truth at all. For that reason, we will not agree to be agents of such a policy, and won’t lie to ourselves.
“We call on you to cease using the education system cynically for extreme political aims, and declare that if we are called to accompany such tours, we will not do so.”
Michal Wesser, a history teacher at the Shaar Hanegev high school said that “the Education Ministry’s tendencies are swiftly crossing the line from education on values to mere indoctrination, and that is a central characteristic of the darkest regimes of the 20th century.
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is taught only from a one-dimensional point of view, as a Zionist statement. It’s of huge importance to teach the background of the conflict from both points of view, otherwise the Palestinians will remain as the feared ‘anonymous other,’ and we’ll raise generation of ignoramuses afraid to face the conflict.”
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2 Haaretz
Monday, February 06, 2012
Education Minister: Hebron school trips should have started a long time ago
Likud’s Gideon Sa’ar rebuffs protest letter by 260 teachers who refuse to participate in trips to the West Bank town, saying missive is part of anti-government campaign aided by Haaretz.
Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar rebuffed a teachers’ protest concerning planned school trips to Hebron, telling Israel Radio on Monday that the only issue with such excursions is that they haven’t been taking place in the last forty years.
Sa’ar comments came after, on Sunday, and for the first time in Israel’s history, more than 200 teachers signed a letter declaring that they would refuse to participate in an Education Ministry program to take pupils on “heritage tours” in Hebron.
“In February 2011, you announced a new tour program called Ascending to Hebron,” some 260 teachers wrote yesterday to Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
“Introducing the program to schools is a manipulative use of pupils and teachers, who will be forced to become political pawns. Since we’re dedicated to education, our conscience prevents us from becoming agents of such a policy,” the letter said.
On Monday, Sa’ar rejected any criticism of the planed trips, saying that “it’s to the discredit of the education system that this hasn’t happened in the last 40 years.”
“I didn’t receive any protest letter, their letter was sent to Haaretz to serve their campaign against us,” Sa’ar alleged, saying: “One teacher charged me of Zionist indoctrination. You see? Being Zionist is now an accusation.”
The education minister also referred to last week’s cancellation of a planned Hebron school tour lead by Jerusalem-based NGO called Breaking the Silence, a group of ex-soldiers who relay what they deem to be the daily reality of IDF presence in the West Bank.
“There’s no need to balance out Shelach teachers [from the Education Ministry’s heritage program] with an organization like Breaking the Silence which aided the Goldstone report,” Sa’ar added, referring to the UN mission to investigate the Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza led by former South African justice Richrad Goldstone.
The controversial “heritage tours” curriculum has until now been geared only toward students in the Jerusalem school district; but last week, Sa’ar announced that it would be available to students across the country.
So far some 2,000 secular and 1,000 religious high school students have visited the the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Beit Hadassah. So far, the program has not been made compulsory but the teachers fear that is the next step.
Students from a Jerusalem high school were prohibited by security forces yesterday from touring Hebron with a group of former Israel Defense Forces soldiers.
The planned tour, organized by a, was scheduled to provide students with testimony from IDF soldiers and veterans who have served in the West Bank. However, security forces reportedly informed Breaking the Silence officials yesterday that its members would not be allowed to accompany the students on their visit to the West Bank city.
In their protest letter, the teachers opposed Sa’ar’s plan to spend millions of shekels – the amount was undisclosed by the Education Ministry – to fund the tours.
“You claim that the purpose of these tours isn’t political,” the letter reads.
“But in your visit to Shiloh you announced their aim openly: ‘It’s good to come to the settlements. Its good that the settlements flourish. One should not allow the Arabs to harbor the illusion that one day there won’t be Jews here. Jews will always live here and any other illusion is an obstacle to peace.’ That is the reason we’re called to visit the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Shiloh. By using the national education system, you wish to strengthen and perpetuate the Jewish settlements in these areas. To this end, the reality in Hebron is presented in a partial and tendentious manner. Concealing the political reality is a political action.”
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3 Haaretz
Monday, February 06, 2012
Bedouin community wins reprieve from forcible relocation to Jerusalem garbage dump
Sources say change in plans follows a visit to the Jahalin encampment at Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank last week the coordinator of government activities in the territories.
Get Haaretz on iPhone Get Haaretz on Android The Bedouin community that lives just east of Jerusalem will not be required to move next to the Abu Dis garbage dump, as initially proposed, and the Civil Administration will provide another permanent site where they will be able to settle.
The Bedouin, who are from the Jahalin tribe, will be given the opportunity to review and comment on the new proposal but will not be consulted before it is drawn up, Palestinian sources said.
The change in plans, the sources said, follows a visit to the Jahalin encampment at Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank last week by Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, the coordinator of government activities in the territories.
Dangot was speaking during a meeting Wednesday with a Bedouin representative and Bassam Erekat, the Palestinian Education Ministry official in charge of the Jerusalem area.
The initial plan to forcibly move hundreds of Bedouin to the site near the Abu Dis dump was initially disclosed in September by Haaretz.
It sparked opposition from the Jahalin tribe and a number of Israeli and international human rights groups.
Shlomo Lecker, an Israeli lawyer, has filed a number of court petitions over the years in an effort to stop the demolition of Bedouin structures. Organizations affiliated with the United Nations have come out against uprooting the Bedouin, and the European Union condemned the initial plan.
Although the Civil Administration appears to be backtracking on the relocation to Abu Dis, it is not retracting its plan to concentrate the Bedouin population of the area in one location, which is contrary to their traditional nomadic lifestyle.
Dangot and his delegation assured the Jahalin tribe that their school in Khan al-Ahmar would be allowed to remain standing until the tribe moves to the new site, the Palestinian sources said. A demolition order has been issued for the school, which is built out of tires and mud.
The Bedouin have also been told that the tents and shacks they erected without Civil Administration approval, which were also slated for demolition, will not be removed, the sources said.
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4 Haaretz
Monday, February 06, 2012
Abbas to lead Palestinian unity cabinet, following Hamas-Fatah deal
Agreement between rival factions represents a significant breakthrough in the efforts to reach Palestinian reconciliation; still not clear when unity government will be sworn in.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wil head a Fatah-Hamas unity caretaker cabinet, Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshal said in a joint announcement on Monday, in a move that could pave for a long-sought-after reconciliation between the rival factions.
“We are serious, both Fatah and Hamas, in healing the wounds and ending the chapter of division and reinforcing and accomplishing reconciliation,” Meshal said in remarks televised live by Al Jazeera from Qatar.
He said the Palestinians wanted to accomplish unity and move forward “to resist the enemy [Israel] and achieve our national goal.”
Abbas, head of the secular Fatah organization, promised that this effort will be implemented in the shortest time possible.”
A Palestinian source speaking with Haaretz indicted that both parties were considering the option of naming Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as Abbas’ deputies.
The Doha Agreement stipulates that the unity caretaker government will be comprised of non-affiliated technocrats, and its mission will be to start Gaza’s rehabilitation and to prepare for a general Palestinian election for both president and parliament.
A second meeting between the two Palestinian leaders has been set to February 18 in Cairo, where Abbas and Meshal will be expected to set the date for the upcoming vote.
The agreement on Abbas’ leadership of a caretaker unity cabinet represents a significant breakthrough in the efforts to reach Palestinian reconciliation for the first time since Gaza and the West Bank broke into disunity following Hamas’ violent takeover of the coastal enclave in 2007.
These recent developments, reportedly taking place with aid and mediation of Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa, came despite recent tensions between the rival factions.
Last month, Fatah said it would have to reevaluate its reconciliation pact with Hamas group following the rejection of a Fatah visit to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip last week.
In a statement, Fatah’s Central Committee said Hamas’s behavior showed it was not interested in the implementation of the reconciliation agreement signed in Cairo last year, which included the formation of a unity government and the holding of a parliamentary election on May 4.
Speaking following what the Palestinians have called the failure of a recent round of peace talks with Israel, Wasel Abu Yousef, a member of the PLO’s top panel, said that the Palestinian leadership could accelerate reconciliation talks with Hamas, adding that “all necessary measure will be weighed in order to strengthen our people’s resolve against the racist and fascist occupation and to increase popular resistance in all Palestinian lands.”
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5 From Amnesty International regarding Khader Adnan Moussa
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East Mediterranean Team
Amnesty International, International Secretariat
Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street
London WC1X 0DW
United Kingdom
E-mail: Eastmed@amnesty.org
Tel: +44 (0)20 7413 5500
Fax: +44 (0)20 7413 5719
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Working to protect human rights worldwide
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6 NEWS RELEASE — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 6, 2012
SHAW BANS VIDEO OF PEACE ACTIVIST AUTHOR’S TALK
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Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) Canada — Victoria Chapter
VICTORIA BC February 6th, 2012 — The program “Our Way to Fight” is being censored by Shaw Cable in Vancouver. The program is a video recording of an evening with Canadian author Michael Riordon, recently hosted by the Victoria Chapter of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) Canada.
Pasifik.ca, who recorded the event and wishes to release it as an independent community program, has received an email saying that Shaw TV cannot broadcast the video of Our Way to Fight: Peace-work Under Siege in Israel-Palestine, by Michael Riordon, as it is too ‘unbalanced’ and ‘controversial.’
Shaw Cable is the community cable arm of Shaw Communications, one of Canada’s largest telecommunications corporations. Based in Calgary, Alberta it controls telephone, Internet and television networks, including digital satellite, and broadcasting stations from Hamilton, Ontario, to Victoria. As a federally licensed community cable network, Shaw Cable is required to air locally-created programming.
Author Michael Riordon is concerned about Shaw censoring community programming. “This is why we desperately need principled, courageous independent media like Pasifik.ca, and people who care deeply enough about freedom to defend our fundamental rights,” he said today.
IJV Victoria Chapter member Stuart Hertzog, who sits on the national Steering Committee of IJV Canada, is concerned about the implications of Shaw’s action.
“This attempt by Shaw to censor free expression of social and political views does not bode well for the future of media in Canada,” said Hertzog. “Corporate control of media in Canada is now excessive.”
“Shaw Vancouver’s decision also reflects on the dampening effect on democratic freedoms produced by the uncritical support of Israeli government policies by the Steven Harper Conservatives,” he added.
“If this repression of free speech is allowed to grow, we will soon have left behind us the kind of democratic society that most Canadians want — peaceful, equitable, and free,” Hertzog concluded.
Background information
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The program can be viewed on the IJV Canada Web site at:
If Israel accepts an invitation to the conference in Helsinki, it will have an opportunity to move ahead on a deal: comprehensive nuclear disarmament in exchange for comprehensive peace, says researchers’ position paper.
The Iranian professor burst out laughing when I showed him the report on the Haaretz website about President Shimon Peres’ call for the Iranian people to bring down the ayatollahs’ regime. His neighbor at the table, also a senior lecturer at the University of Tehran, looked annoyed and scoffed: “Don’t you think it takes a lot of temerity to sit next to the Palestinian prime minister, whose people have been living for years under Israeli occupation – and call on another people to rise up against its elected government?”
The conversation took place during a seminar in Barcelona at the end of January. It was one of a series of preliminary conferences initiated by the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, in cooperation with the Norwegian government, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Protestant churches of Hesse and Nassau, in preparation for a regional conference on Middle Eastern disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. The event is to take place in Finland later this year.
At the request of the organizers, the identity of the two Iranians – like that of the other participants (from Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, the United States and Europe ) – was kept under wraps. However, they did not keep secret the fact that four Israelis (among them a former senior member of the intelligence community ) had been invited to participate in the discussions about lifting the threat of nuclear weapons and other types of WMDs.
It is possible, of course, that taking part in the conferences is just another Iranian public relations ploy, an effort to throw sand in people’s eyes while they develop a bomb. But if we don’t try such things, how will we know? And after all, after Iran attains the bomb and the means to deliver it, the cost of disarmament will be much higher, if it can be paid at all.
The attendees were presented with a position paper written by Prof. Bernd Kubbig, a project director at the institute, and another institute member, Christian Weidlich, in cooperation with Prof. Gawdat Bahgat, an American of Egyptian origin, and Col. (res. ) Dr. Ephraim Kam, deputy head of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.
The authors of the document mention the traditional support Iran has offered for the idea of nuclear disarmament, since Tehran adopted the 1974 United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a declaration of the Middle East as nuclear weapons-free zone.
The writers of the paper also quote statements by Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, ahead of its board of governors’ meeting last November. The ambassador had stressed Iran’s central role in promoting the idea of nuclear disarmament, but explained that his country would not take part in the November IAEA meeting. “The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that boosting and raising hopes to create a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East is meaningless while the Zionist regime has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its nuclear activities are not controlled by the IAEA,” Soltanieh was quoted as saying.
Since the 1980s, Israel has conditioned its support for nuclear disarmament on peace treaties with all Middle Eastern countries, including Iran. The authors of the position paper state that if Israel accepts an invitation to the conference in Helsinki, it will have an opportunity to move ahead on a deal: comprehensive nuclear disarmament in exchange for comprehensive peace. For instance, Israel will be able to help create a regional coalition of peace and disarmament (accompanied by a reliable monitoring mechanism ) based on the Arab League peace initiative, which was approved by all members of the Organization of Islamic States. That initiative, which next month will be 10 years old, has proposed normalization of ties between Israel and the entire Muslim world.
If this entire move takes place, it would likely allow Iran to take credit for helping to end Israel’s occupation, it will extricate Tehran honorably from international isolation and economic sanctions, and it will remove the threat inherent in Iran’s implementation of a disastrous military option.
It is not by chance that the Israeli (and the American ) spokesmen who proclaim that “all options are open” ignore this option. To promote it, Israel would have to withdraw from most of the West Bank, divide Jerusalem and propose a fair solution to the Palestinian refugees. But Israel wants to be both the only country in the region that has nuclear weapons (according to foreign sources, of course ) – and also to keep its hold on most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while not having to deal with the problem of the refugees.
And what will we do if the new government in Cairo, and then the successors of the murderer from Damascus, decide that they, too, want to develop nuclear programs? Will we send Peres to call on the Egyptian and the Syrian peoples to bring down their regimes?
