Is this racism or not??? YOU be the judge.
Israeli children at school (illustrative).
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
Jewish parents want Arabs out of TA school
Parents in south Tel Aviv who are seeking to prevent two Arab girls from attending their children’s school are denying accusations of racism, saying they’re worried about academic standings.
The conflict centers around the Hagalil Elementary School in the Hatikva quarter and began when the Tel Aviv school board decided to enroll the girls, both of whom are neighborhood residents. Even in the country’s handful of mixed cities, Jews and Arabs generally prefer to live – and learn – apart.
Hatikva has long been a low income area suffering from crime and drug-related ills. An influx of immigrants and foreign workers within the past decade has put long-time residents on guard, and the enrollment of many of the foreign workers’ children into area schools has added to the tension.
Dismissing charges of racism, a core group of Hagalil parents said they’re concerned that the academic level of their children’s classes may drop if students who are struggling with Hebrew are integrated.
“The school board already dumped the African kids here, and now they’re bringing in the Arab kids without even telling us,” one mother said. “They can’t speak Hebrew well, they’re having trouble in class and it’s hurting the academic level of the school,” she said.
“Anyone who doesn’t understand why we’re so upset… should take a look at other schools in the area,” the mother added. “It starts with a few students and all of a sudden parents find that there are dozens of refugees in their schools. It’s simply bad for the school.”
While other parents have called the group’s charges blatant racism, its members say they plan to circulate a petition calling on administrators to remove the girls.
The Education Ministry said there were no plans to do so, citing the girls’ right as Israeli citizens and neighborhood residents to a public education without hindrance.
“The students in question are Arab girls who live in the neighborhood and belong in the school, according to the school registration areas,” a ministry statement said. “They have the right to attend Hagalil School just as any other student living in the area. The parents’ complaints are unjustified.”
Desertpeace 
CrazyComposer said,
December 9, 2008 at 15:58
Well, I’m not so sure that I can address this question with any amount of authority, after all, I only have a limited amount of experience teaching, though it ranges from one-on-one private tutorials to university level classes taught while in graduate school. Actually, now that I think about it, I have about twenty-four years experience as a teacher, so perhaps I do have something to say about this matter (beyond the obvious “it’s racism”).
The argument being offered that the Arab girls do not have a solid enough command of Hebrew and will subsequently bring down the academic level of the entire class is entirely spurious and a smokescreen for a much more disgusting excuse which has not been publicly articulated.
It has been demonstrated in numerous studies that the best time for someone to learn a language is during childhood, particularly during the “formative” years before entering the routines of grade school. If, however, it is not possible for a child to have learned a language as a toddler the second best time is during the early grades, through an immersion program in which that language is spoken (almost) exclusively, encouraging the child to learn in an environment that is supportive and nurturing.
One may wonder why the parents of these Arab children would seemingly intentionally open themselves (and their children) up to attacks – both real and virtual – in order for the two children to merely attend a school. What could possibly be so special about this school rather than the one that the other Arab children in the area might be going to, if they are going to schools at all? The same question could have been asked of the African-American students who risked their lives to attend an all-white high school in the State of Arkansas.
Was Central High School that much better than any of the other schools in Little Rock in 1957, or did those nine black students risk their lives for nothing? Of course they didn’t; they wanted the best education available to them and that meant, at the time, being able to attend the schools that the “white kids” attended.
In Israel there are distinct classes of people and, I can only imagine based on everything that I have read and seen through various sources, distinct levels of services provided for the people depending upon where they happen to fall within the various definitions that the State has produced.
The racism that the State of Israel uses is not limited to those individuals who happen to not be Jewish: Jews of non-European descent are viewed with distrust, disdain, and, in many cases, as being less than worthy of the heritage. It is the type of institutional racism that takes hold of a nation by becoming a part of public policy, by receiving endorsements from the tourists who make their pilgrimages to the “Holy Land” in search of “Spiritual Peace” without caring whether or not the land and its people are about to erupt in a conflagration that could consume them all.
If the objection over the two Arab children entering the school was even remotely based on the possibility that their grasp of Hebrew was insufficient for the students to keep up with the rest of the class then the solution is so easy it is almost embarrassing to have to write: give the students a test to find their comprehension level(s) then let them work with a special education teacher to drill them on the Hebrew and nothing else. It may require that they end up taking an extra semester (or even a year) to complete their schooling, but this would prevent them from “holding back” the advancement of anyone else.
When you are teaching a class it is very rare to have all of the students at the exact same level – even if they all came from the same school and attended the same classes before that class. There will always be a few students that are quicker than others at solving problems while there will be some that take twice as much time to do what most of the class took ten minutes. It is impossible to plan – to the minute – what each class will accomplish (and any teacher that claims to do so only fools themselves, this is not teaching – it is shoving things down the throats of students).
In order to be an effective teacher it is of paramount importance to be adaptable to situations that seem to conspire to work against you, and to be able to work with people that seem to have been put on this earth merely to annoy you to death. If a teacher ever says that they do not want a student in their class because they are an Arab or an Indian, or anything else, that person has no business being a teacher. It is the job of teachers to destroy this type of insidious thinking, not to perpetuate it and preserve the madness.
The teachers should be standing up for the rights of their students, as citizens of Israel, to attend that school; if that isn’t good enough for the prejudiced, racist, God-forsaken parents, then they should all take their children and home-school them. Let them learn just how much work teaching really is, and how much of a responsibility it is to have the mind of a child in your hands.
embarrassed in USA said,
December 9, 2008 at 17:30
God loves us!
God hates you!
Good things for us!
Bad things for you!
Any questions?
William said,
December 9, 2008 at 18:08
(1) These are the SAME arguements used by the KKK to fight integration in America. (2) Anti-GENTILISM causes anti-semitism.
Matt Giwer said,
December 9, 2008 at 22:39
In denying being racists they admit to be segregationists and bigots. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Scarlett said,
December 10, 2008 at 03:42
CrazyComposer — excellent post. I agree with you completely. My daughter attends a good public school here in the US and she has always had students in her class who speak English as a second language. One boy in her class barely speaks any English at all and is struggling. Her teacher didn’t look to have him removed because he was making her job harder. She asked if I would be willing to come in once a week and work one-on-one with him. Since I am a volunteer, it will cost the school absolutely nothing to do this. The class will not be impacted because we are going to meet in the library, not the class. And this young boy will get the one on one attention that he needs to come up to speed. It is a win-win solution for everyone. Perhaps if the parents were really motivated by concern for the educational quality, they would be able to find a solution — even if it meant some personal sacrifice on their own part — in order to ensure that the quality of education is good and that the rights of these young girls to attend their local school (after all, they aren’t trying to attend a school in a neighborhood across town) is protected.
Many people in the south during segregation never thought of themselves as racists. They were fearful of what they didn’t know. The lies used to justify slavery and second class treatment of blacks (intellectual inferiority, animalistic urges leading to violence, etc.) had been passed down from generation to generation. And, lest we forget, the bible is filled with accounts of slavery and not once is slavery of non-Jews condemned by God. So many upright and God-fearing people did not see any difficulty in following their religious teachings and owning slaves.
Now, that is not to excuse them. Not in the least, because any rational, thinking, compassionate human being should be able to see that no one has the right to own another person or put themselves above any other racial group. My point is that it is easy to allow yourself to be self-deluded. Unless you enjoy being evil, like Cheney, you’re mind will always perform semantic and ethical acrobatics to allow you to be racist, yet keep your self-image as a good and decent person.
As much as the Jews would hate to hear it, the majority of Germans would also have used this same strategy to avoid having to take personal risk to stand up against the Nazi regime. All the more reason for them (and everyone else, too) to be vigilant and aware of one’s true motivations. If you simply ask, “Am I doing this because it is the right thing to do or because it is the easy thing to do?” then backsliding into racism will become a much harder thing to do.
CrazyComposer said,
December 10, 2008 at 15:52
Scarlett – you are performing a wonderful service to your community and your child’s school, not to mention the life-changing difference that you will make to that child by providing them the much needed help they need to adjust to their new country, language and customs. A friend of mine volunteers at an after-school program here in Ottawa for new Canadians and I participated for two years as well – it was very rewarding to be able to help these kids as they learned (voraciously) and absorbed everything we could throw at them … it just goes to show you that these are not “slow” kids, they simply do not know the Lingua Franca of the school system in which they now find themselves.
What you say about racism is absolutely correct and needs to be repeated until the last of the ignorant dies: racism, hatred in all its forms, being judgmental while your own life is a mess and all other forms of discrimination are learned responses. We do not begin our lives full of suspicion and conspiracy theories, we begin our lives full of curiosity and open minds, minds that crave multiple opinions – even if they are divergent. We begin our lives as a blank canvas waiting to be filled with the artistry of many brushes, not the broad strokes of one heavy-handed brute who is unwilling to share his vision for he has none, he can only cover the canvas in a tangle of blacks and obfuscations, defending his lack of coherence as the fault of all the others who wanted to share their opinions. They confused him so he became more hateful. He felt threatened by what he didn’t understand, so he hated. They looked different, so he became violent. They spoke a different language so he felt threatened because he could not understand them, and that meant they had to be plotting against him. He hated them for all that they were and now he had to be rid of them once and for all; he was, after all, ordained to be the “one” to survive: he had been here first (after the Inuit and the Natives … and the African Slaves).
Now he lies in a gutter with a knife sticking out of his heart. It turned out that the man he hated was named Luis Ramon Ramirez, a Spanish speaking student living with his mother and brother in a small apartment, trying to make ends meet while he attended night-school.
After he attacked Luis Ramon, shooting him from behind as the young man returned from class it suddenly occurred to Mr White that there was something moving in the shadows of the stoop just to the left of where Ramirez had fallen. Before he could raise the gun from his side the hand slid around his neck and grabbed his larynx as a smooth sounding voice whispered in his ear.
“You better not be thinkin’ about liftin’ up that ol gun o’ yours, cause I gots me a knife right here and it’s got your name all ova’ it,” the point of the knife pressed against his chest as proof of what he was saying.
“I won’t move,” Mr White said, genuinely regretting his actions for the first time in his life.
“Good,” the voice said, now more menacingly, “cause that will make it easier for me to do this,” and he thrust the knife into White’s chest with one quick motion. With the knife firmly entrenched in his chest he turned around to face his executioner, a look of wonderment on his face.
“You really want to know why, white man? I tell you why …” he paused as he watched what little colour remained in the dying man drain from his face as he clutched a nearby telephone poll to remain upright for the last fleeting moments of his pathetic life. “I did this for one reason: you shot my cousin.
The remaining life ebbed away and he fell into the gutter; another piece of trash waiting to be washed away.
The moral to the story: Hate Kills.
Travis said,
December 11, 2008 at 04:44
Racism from the “Chosen People”. Anyone have a chainsaw handy so I can cut the irony?