Forcing Arabs to study Zionism is no solution

The ministerial committee on legislation did well when it decided earlier this week to reject a bill by a group of Knesset members from Yisrael Beiteinu that would have required all Israeli schools to teach "Israel studies and Zionism."

Aside from the fact that this was a stupid proposal, drafted by people who have apparently never in their lives entered a classroom, it was clear to all that the goal was to spark unnecessary national ferment - or, to be more precise, nationalist ferment.

For when a bill says "all schools," and even stresses "all schools required to teach the core curriculum," it is clear that it is aimed at the Arabs. In other words, it is clear that this bill - like the Nakba bill before it and the long list of other bills that will undoubtedly follow (the disappointed sponsors are already preparing to submit the Israel studies bill to the Knesset as a private member's bill) - has one goal, and one only: to provoke the Arabs.

What is important here is not the bill itself, but the trend. It began long ago, and now encompasses many areas of life - from a law sponsored by Likud's Limor Livnat that requires Arab schools to fly the Israeli flag to a bill by Kadima's Israel Hasson (which quietly passed its preliminary reading this week) that would "launder" family farms in the Negev (of which some are illegal and most are problematic), eradicate the limitations set by master plans and cleverly circumvent the principle of equality. Under Yisrael Beiteinu's auspices, this trend has broken through the few barriers that still existed, and its purpose is clearer than ever.

Since this is the trend, the Israel studies and Zionism bill will undoubtedly be passed by the Knesset in some form or other. And strange as it might seem, the Arab school system - or at least, large parts of it - will probably welcome it joyfully. Granted, this is a poor man's joy, which will destroy the last vestiges of the Arab public's feeling of partnership in Israeli society, but joy nevertheless - because there is nothing like oppression to awaken and intensify slumbering national sentiment.

Ukrainian youths who refuse to speak Russian, Corsicans who spit at signs written in French, and Jerusalemites who, during the British Mandate, refused to learn English in school will all attest to this.

There is no better way to spark a bitter, mutinous discussion full of painful memories than a forced course in "Zionism." Do you want to know the history of the settlement movement? Of the land purchases? Of the "tower and stockade" era? Of the War of Independence? Be my guest. Israeli research into the history of Zionism offers an endless supply of different accounts and interpretations of every event. The revival of the term "Nakba" ("catastrophe") in the wake of the idiotic bill that seeks to bar its commemoration on Independence Day is only the beginning. Every debate and every nuanced discussion within Israeli Arab society has now been silenced by the nationalist, ostensibly Zionist, onslaught.

But the gravest, most worrisome aspect of the whole affair is Yisrael Beiteinu's effort to adorn itself with the trappings of Zionism. Even though all the new laws and regulations it has proposed are designed simply to hammer the Arabs, they are dangerous to Israeli society as a whole, and especially to Israel's definition as a nation-state. Just when the prime minister has made Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation-state an ironclad condition for starting negotiations, Yisrael Beiteinu has exposed the real battle that is raging today - between the definition of Zionism as a national political movement and the perception of it as an apartheid movement.

The "Zionism" that Yisrael Beiteinu wants to teach is not that of Herzl, and certainly not one that embodies dialogue among different strains, including those that seek to implement the principles of equality and the inclusion of those who are not "Zionist." This warped Zionism reflects a tradition of violent, colonialist conquest that silences all debate and grates on both sides' nationalist nerves. In such a context, reality disappears while symbols become all-important, and thus a source of ongoing conflict.

Nor is this accidental. None of the people who have proposed bills of this kind have a genuine solution to either Jewish-Arab relations in Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So in a series of aggressive moves, they are turning the politics of "there is no solution" into a fact and trying to entrench it. And they will welcome any Palestinian counterreaction with open arms.

	Arab Israeli secondary school students.
	Photo by: Itzik Ben-Malki