Blaming it on racism is too easy

Israel is rife with racism, xenophobia, snobbery and hatred - particularly toward Arabs, especially Palestinians, but also toward foreign workers and other "others." Each part of our society has its own well-known pet hates; fear and loathing exist across every religious, geographic, racial and financial divide.

Yes, of course, other societies are just as bad, if not worse, and the hatred is certainly reciprocated, with interest, toward Israelis and Jews, from many other quarters. But that should not serve as any kind of excuse. Israel and Israelis aspired once upon a time to better things, and still like to think themselves above all that.

With all that said, however, the crisis over the Ethiopian children and the Petah Tikva schools has nothing to do with racism. I lived in the religious Zionist community for many years, studied with Ethiopian students in yeshivas and colleges, served with them in a hesder unit (which combines army service and Torah study). And despite my unreserved criticisms of the community in which I grew up, and its many racist and xenophobic traits, I have to admit that with regard to absorbing Ethiopian immigrants, it is probably the least racist part of Israeli society. It is not without fault, and there have been racist incidents. But on the whole, most of its leadership, and certainly the grass roots, have displayed more concern for the Ethiopians' acceptance than any other group.

It may be useful for opportunist politicians, especially Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, to frame it as racism, but that is just a convenient cop-out, to avoid addressing the country's more fundamental problems regarding immigration, education and religion. The Petah Tikva saga is a result of all of these.

The real problem with the three private religious schools is not racism; a few Ethiopian children were enrolled there even before 36 were foisted on them this week. Rather, they represent a growing number of elitist private schools that have sprung up over the last couple of decades without any real discussion of what private education means.

David Ben-Gurion fought for one school system that would educate all Israeli children, but he never had a chance. The agricultural sector, the religious Zionist community and other pressure groups had the necessary political clout to demand and receive schools that were both fully financed by the state and retained their own identity.

But at least the curriculum and a major part of the schools' administration were still under the Education Ministry's jurisdiction. Only the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) opted out, setting up what to this day is called Hinuch Atzma'i - literally, independent education.

For 30 years, most of these schools operated in abject poverty, receiving no state funding; they relied wholly on fund-raising abroad. But after 1977, when Likud governments began including the Haredi parties in their coalitions, political deals that had to be renewed with every annual budget resulted in most of these schools starting to receive money from the national and local governments, until gradually they became, in many cases, three-quarters publicly funded. In return, all they had to agree to was very minimal supervision by a woefully understaffed ministry department that employed a handful of inspectors with virtually no powers.

Haredi politicians have successfully resisted all efforts by successive governments to force them to teach a core curriculum, including Hebrew grammar, English, mathematics and a smattering of science. They are also free to set their own admissions policy, and often discriminate against other ultra-Orthodox groups, most notably Sephardi girls.

Shas eventually founded its own extensive school network, which not only catered to its constituency but also enticed thousands of children from low-income families with promises of rabbinic blessings, a "traditional" education and a daily hot meal. Only a handful of schools belonging to the Eda Haredit, that small part of the ultra-Orthodox community that still refuses to have anything to do with the state, remain truly privately funded.

It is hardly surprising that other groups - including religious Zionist families and rabbis who wanted a more elitist and rigorously religious environment than the state schools offered, as well as believers in "natural" or "democratic" education - seized on this loophole to establish a wide range of schools. Parents paid additional fees and donations were raised for the extra hours, teaching staff and facilities. But the anomaly remains: "private" schools that are three-quarters funded by the state.

Several education ministers tried to battle the phenomenon, but they were usually powerless against influential parent groups that often had the backing of local politicians. Gideon Sa'ar is now trying to use this state funding as a lever with which to pressure the three schools in Petah Tikva. He seems to have been at least partially successful, but the basic situation has not changed.

And neither has the Ethiopian issue - or more precisely, the Falash Mura issue. Since the Falash Mura claim to be descendents of Ethiopian Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity, they must convert upon arriving in Israel in order to obtain citizenship. The conversion courts, under the aegis of the most conservative Haredi rabbis, demand a "religious way of life" as a basic requirement for becoming Jews. Therefore, they have no choice but to send their children to religious schools.

As sending them to Haredi schools is unthinkable (there is real racism there - but that is a subject for another column), and as the Falash Mura tend to live together in a few neighborhoods, this has created intolerable pressure on the state religious schools. But forcing these children, whose backgrounds did not prepare them in any way for the religious and academic demands of the "private" schools, into those schools seems hardly fair to either side. The state that allowed these schools to flourish is now demanding that they do something that completely contradicts their raison d'etre.

As long as the government maintains an incoherent policy on the Falash Mura, allowing thousands of additional Christian Ethiopians to arrive while forcing them to convert to Judaism; as long as inflexible ultra-Orthodox rabbis are allowed a stranglehold over the conversion process; and as long as a largely unregulated "private" school system is allowed to exist at the public's expense, this problem is not going to go away. Blaming it on racism is far too easy.