The perception of the Other instilled through education in Israel
is a product of the mainstream, dominating culture, i.e., of a
culture that is Jewish-Zionist, Ashkenazi (European-American),
male-militaristic. The educational system includes almost no
manifestations of any of the repressed cultures in Israeli society:
Palestinian culture, Oriental Jewish culture, women/s sub-culture,
etc.
In Israeli education the Other is anyone who is different from us/
either in nationality (such as Palestinians), or language (such as
new immi¬grants), or skin color (such as Ethiopian Jews), or
appearance (such as vic¬tims of cerebral palsy), or ethnicity
(such as Georgian Jews), or merely in his or her unwillingness to
conform and be like everyone else. The educa¬tional system
channels children into the mainstream. The products of its success
are those who have adopted the prevalent views of this stream, that
is of the dominating culture.
Portraying the Other
Schools and kindergartens teach and convey messages that conform to
the consensus prevailing in Israeli society. The enemies of the
people - the Arabs - have been portrayed over the years of our
children's education, within a dichotomy of good guys vs. bad guys.
No differentiation is made between their various groups and all
evil is projected onto the others. The conflicts endured by Jews
throughout their history are depicted, along with Jewish tradition,
in black and white terms, as absolute right vs. absolute wrong, or
as winners vs. losers. These historical conflicts are
con¬flated with the present-day conflict and the current
enemy, i.e., the Arabs. The central message conveyed through
Israeli education has emphasized the national unity of the people
vis-a.-vis the enemy. We must protect our¬selves as victims
from them. This is a constant imperative although "they" change
identity over time ("In every generation they attempt our
annihilation," from the Pessah Haggadah).
A Wound of Persecution
The peace talks, since the meetings between the late Yitzhak Rabin
and Yasser Arafat, face the educational system with a complexity it
has never experienced. The peace process has introduced a new
alternative into the repertoire of this system. It shows the other
side in a human light. These new times will require new emphases
and messages of the educational system.
The simplistic messages conveyed by and in this system result, I
believe, from the syndrome of power vs. helplessness which rules
our lives. The internal world-view of many Jews who live in the
State of Israel is the world-view of the persecuted. Our collective
memory of our parents' and grandparents' suffering in the
Holocaust, makes us susceptible to fears and sensibilities beyond
our choice and control. As second-generation survivors of the
Holocaust (of which I am one), we have forged an inter¬nal
reality characterized by aggressiveness, vulnerability, anger and
guilt. "We won't let it happen to us": we are strong and
threatening and, "We'll break their bones" if they dare hurt
us.
In fact, though, we are vulnerable and weak. Every terrorist attack
reminds us of what happened there. Accordingly, our reactions
contain an endless anger at what was done to us. We carry
survivors' guilt. We therefore find it difficult, as a society, to
account for our own evil and our own mistakes.
It is only lately that we have begun to scrutinize the myth that
"they went like sheep to the slaughter," and this too, not yet in
the educational system. We also allow ourselves to ignore our own
racism. We project all evil onto the Other, our enemy.
This provides our justification for the demonization of the enemy,
for a world-view consisting of absolute truths, in which everyone
who is dif¬ferent from us is evil. Especially Arabs. (But also
blacks-Ethiopians, weak¬lings-disabled, etc.)
Anti-Semitism
The victim psychology stemming from the collective trauma of the
Holocaust dictates our cultural dynamic and the education of our
chil¬dren. It is a twofold message claiming, "The whole
world's against us," and "Everyone wants to destroy us," on the one
hand, and heroism, com¬bat and strength to remedy
helplessness, on the other. Protecting human rights is not
presented as a possible answer to the incessant persecution
suffered by generations of Jews. Our educational system presents
the Jewish-Arab conflict as a struggle for survival.
According to this school, anti-Semitism is the major factor
deciding rela¬tions between Israel and other nations. Children
are made to learn a chronology of 2,000 years of anti-Semitism, in
contexts as disparate as the Middle Ages, the expulsion from Spain
and the pogroms in Czarist Russia. The story of Massada, where
zealot Jews killed their children, their wives and finally
committed suicide to avoid capture by the Romans, has turned into a
national myth, a symbol of strength and heroism. The expression
"Massada will not fall again" has become analogous with the
establish¬ment of the State of Israel and its victories in
wars against the Arabs.
The selection of messages conveyed to children from very early on
through Jewish education in Israel, stresses particularism rather
than universality, aggression over humanism, gut emotion over
rationality, dis¬allowing the possibility of alternative
analyses.
History's Victims
The symptom of helplessness is at the root of the myth, "They went
like sheep to the slaughter" is opposed to "Had the State of Israel
existed, things would have been altogether different." This is also
the justification for every act performed by our military.
Everything we do counts as a struggle for survival, for our
lives.
Characteristic of the Jewish people living in the shadow of the
Holocaust is an inability to find equilibrium between power and
helplessness. Former Foreign Minister Abba Eban has said, "We must
dis¬tinguish between the psychology of our vulnerability and
the reality of our power." The current flow of youth groups to
Auschwitz and Treblinka has become a display of nationalism and
strength on the graves of the helpless Jews slaughtered in Europe
during World War II.
Alternative survival strategies (making peace, for instance) lie
outside this consciousness and, accordingly, outside of school
curricula. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, for example,
is not studied in schools to this day. The educational system
imbues these messages directly, in classrooms, and less directly
through memorial services held on Holocaust Day, a week before
Independence Day, to which it is firmly linked. In the opinion of
many of its citizens, the State of Israel is the answer to the
Holocaust and the Arabs represent the outside forces striving for
our destruction (succeeding the Nazis), simply one more instance in
the long history of our triumphant and defiant struggle to
survive.
This veil of feelings originating in the collective identity of
first-, second- and third-generation survivors of the Jewish
Holocaust, makes some of us unable to distinguish between our
feelings of victimization ¬rooted elsewhere - and the reality
of our existence here and now. In the absence of such a separation,
every terrorist act becomes anti-Semitic, directed against Jews for
the sole reason of their Jewishness. This in turn leads to the
conclusion that the struggle against the enemy is a fight to the
death, justifying any and every act, regardless of its price:
extended cur¬fews imprisoning large [Palestinian] populations
within their homes, human-rights abuses, enforced poverty for a
population of close to two million, shootings of demonstrators and
innocent bystanders.
Education Lags Behind
Our self-perception was that of helpless victim. This is no
nightmare risen out of the void. It is a feeling based on real
traumas experienced by both individuals and the collective
constituency of the nation. The Arab nations did indeed pose a
threat, the Nazis did indeed devise the "final solution." However,
for many years now our physical survival has not been in
doubt.
In the political sphere, accumulating peace agreements between
Israel and its former enemies clearly emphasizes the changing
reality. But the educational field has not yet adapted. It does not
yet convey the tools and features necessary for a country's
survival in today's world.
The victim mentality provides our justification and our emotional
grounds for still viewing our enemies as demons, for continuing to
fight for the Jews burned in Nazi death camps, powerless to fight
back. Although Hitler failed in annihilating the Jewish people
physically, I believe in one sense he won. He succeeded in
conditioning us to incessant fear of our physical annihilation,
giving us a survivors' psychology.
The historiography of the period following 1945 is taught in
Israeli schools as a military history, focusing on Israeli-Arab
wars. Other aspects, such as economic, cultural, social tensions
are mentioned only in passing. Not studied are Palestinian or
Egyptian culture, alternative viewpoints, public controversy,
dilemmas, internal contradictions and the complexity of reality.
Students are not taught that different standpoints generate very
different histories. Now, as the peace option is becoming a
reality, this narrow view of history will have to be broadened. The
option of peace and a universal view of men, women and humanity
will have to be presented.