The claim that Israel’s Jewish character demands a constant sacrifice of the state’s democratic ideals continues to be a theme in subsequent chapters of the book. For instance, the discussion of the Law of Return closes with the claim of those who see the law in its entirety as illegitimate:

And here, too, the questions at the end of the chapter are used to make sure that the students understand that Israel’s Jewish character causes discrimination in a manner that might simply be inconsistent with democracy. Thus, students are asked to explain the arguments on both sides of the question as to whether the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law “are laws that discriminate unjustly against non-Jews,” and then to give their own opinion as to whether “the preference that is accorded to Jews in the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law contradicts the democratic principles on which the State of Israel was established.”⁷⁹

But the message that Israel’s Jewish character cannot be reconciled with its commitments as a democracy is brought home most sharply in the portion of the book devoted specifically to Arab-Israelis. There the main body of the text all but endorses the claim made by those Israeli Arabs who believe that Israel’s Jewish character prevents it from being democratic:

Immediately afterwards, the ministry’s textbook seeks to buttress the claim that Israel practices systematic, unjustified discrimination against Israeli Arabs. After reviewing the laws and practices that lead to discrimination against Arabs in matters of citizenship, army service, and land apportionment, the book then marshals its single most impressive section of graphics—more than half a dozen tables, bar graphs, line graphs, and picture graphs—in order to demonstrate that Arabs suffer disproportionately from poverty, unemployment, school dropouts, and educational underachievement, and are given less than their fair share of government funds for health, welfare, education, and housing.⁸¹ No attempt is made to offer the student any perspective other than that government policy is “inequitable” and “discriminatory,” and that it is a consequence of Israel’s character as a Jewish state.

Perhaps the reason why the discussion on Arab-Israelis leans so hard against the claim that a Jewish state can be democratic is that the Education Ministry chose as the author for these pages none other than Assad Ghanem—who was quoted earlier as opposing Israel’s status as a Jewish state, and arguing that it could not be a democracy until it transformed itself into a “state of all its citizens.”⁸² In fact, Ghanem went on record three months after the book was published, arguing that the non-democratic character of the State of Israel justifies the use of violence by its Arab citizens. As he told an interviewer for the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha’ir:

It is certainly remarkable—one should really say amazing—that a man such as Ghanem, who believes that Israel is not a democracy and that it should not be a Jewish state, was chosen to participate in the writing of a civics textbook for the State of Israel. And perhaps even more remarkable is that he was asked to write one of the most sensitive and complex sections in the official Ministry of Education textbook, the section on Israel’s Arab minority.

Thus despite paying some lip service to other points of view, To Be Citizens in Israel ends up sending students a rather clear message: That for Israel to be a truly democratic country, it may well have no choice but to give up on many of the central elements that make it a Jewish state. Today, this message is being broadcast in every Jewish high school in Israel.

 

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the high-school course on citizenship, which ought to be the place where young Israelis learn to understand and identify with the Jewish state in which they live, can no longer be counted on to fulfill this crucial function. The curriculum issued in 1994 radically downsized the Jewish-state orientation that had characterized its predecessor, stripped away from civics classes the historical depth that is irreplaceable for fostering a proper understanding of Israel’s Jewish character, instructed the school system to focus on that which divides rather than building a common denominator that could form the core of citizenship, and introduced the idea that students should be taught that Israel’s Jewish and democratic foundations are in serious conflict with one another.

Moreover, the textbook that the Education Ministry produced, To Be Citizens in Israel, which now enjoys monopoly status in Israeli high schools, goes well beyond the 1994 curriculum in directions that cannot help but undermine the belief of young Israelis that the state in which they live should be a Jewish one. The new text eviscerates the compelling ideas that have long been at the heart of the Jewish state by transforming them into a collection of squabbles among rival camps, deprives the Jewish state established in 1948 of purpose and meaning by disconnecting the historical motives from the results, and turns most of the actual policies that have reflected the country’s national character into the object of so much discord that the sensitive student may well be left wondering whether anything could possibly justify their continuation. At the same time, without ever endorsing the idea that Israel should cease to be a Jewish state, the authors make it clear that its failure to transform its nature puts an enduring strain on its character as a democratic regime.

What, then, should be done so that young Israelis will receive the education that will prepare them to be citizens in a Jewish democracy?

The answer lies in developing a citizenship course that will provide students with the conceptual frame of reference they need to develop a loyalty and commitment to Israel’s character as a Jewish state, to its democratic institutions, and to its open society. Such a course should address all the issues that undergird Israel’s continuing mission as the state of the Jewish people: The theoretical justification for national states, the compatibility of the particularist traditions of such states with a democratic form of government and with an open society, the historic reasons for the establishment of a Jewish state, the political and constitutional tradition of the idea of the Jewish state, the policies that have expressed this ideal in the past and in the present, and the compatibility of Israel’s Jewish character with democratic government and individual rights.

Certainly, students should be taught that there are different views about many of these matters, and that no single view possesses the monopoly on truth. Likewise, they should be taught to think critically—about their own assumptions, the texts they read, the decisions of those in power. But it must be understood that citizenship in a Jewish democracy presupposes some kind of a common understanding of, and sympathy with, the constitutive purposes and principles which underlay its founding, and which have served as a source of cohesiveness and pride in the ensuing half-century. In times of peace, an ability to identify with the fundamental character of the Jewish state would be crucial for its preservation. But at a time when Jews are being called upon to protect their country from evident danger, there is a real need for a civics curriculum that will help its young people understand what justifies the sacrifices that may have to be made on its behalf.

Daniel Polisar is Editor-in-Chief of Azure.

 

1. For a discussion of these and other manifestations of Israel’s character as a Jewish state, see Yoram Hazony, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 267-275.

2. Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson, 1960).

3. See, for example, Yoram Hazony, “Antisocial Texts,” The New Republic, April 17 and 24, 2000, pp. 46-55.

4. Hana Adan, Varda Ashkenazi, and Bilha Alperson, To Be Citizens in Israel: A Jewish and Democratic State (Jerusalem: Ma’alot, 2000). [Hebrew]

5. Directive of the Director-General of the Ministry of Education 9A, May 1, 2000, p. 12. Directive of the Supervisor-General of Citizenship Studies, no. 4 for 2000, May 25, 2000. The Arab and Druze schools are to begin using the new textbook once an adapted version has been prepared in Arabic.

6. Annual Guidebook for the Citizenship Teacher 6 (Jerusalem: Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education, 1990), p. 39. On the founding vision for teaching civics in a Jewish state, see the speech by Benzion Dinur, Israel’s third education minister, “Educating for Citizenship,” pp. 169-188 of this issue.

7. A separate curriculum was developed for Arab students in 1980, and for Druze students in 1984.

8. Citizenship is mandatory in “academic” high schools and in the academic tracks of “mixed” high schools that also offer vocational studies. The one-unit course consists of 90 academic “hours,” each of which is 45 minutes long. Typically, these hours are spread out over the course of eleventh or twelfth grade. In those schools in which citizenship is studied during the senior year, the number of hours is generally reduced by around a third, as the students end classroom study around Passover time, and spend the remainder of the year preparing for matriculation exams.

9. Curriculum in Citizenship for General and Religious State High Schools (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, 1976) (hereafter, “Citizenship Curriculum, 1976”). On the development of this curriculum, see Annual Guidebook 6, p. 39. 

10. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, p. 1. To make these separate elements clearer, the program’s authors immediately went on to note that the State of Israel must carry out the missions that stem from its being “a Jewish state,” “a democratic state,” and “a welfare state.”

11. The 1976 curriculum contained a separate section on the goals and program of study for religious state high schools. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, pp. 25-47.

12. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, p. 5.

13. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, p. 4. In addition, three other aims related to Israel’s Jewish character implicitly, by requiring students to acquire the factual, conceptual, and historical basis to grapple with the challenges that had been faced by Israelis in establishing and maintaining their state.

14. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, p. 5.

15. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, p. 8. Initially, the subject of “The Political Regime in Israel” was not made mandatory, but it was studied in the vast majority of schools, and it officially became mandatory during the 1986-1987 school year. Annual Guidebook for the Citizenship Teacher 4 (Jerusalem: Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education, 1989), p. 5.

16. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, p. 3. The other optional subjects were “Fundamental Problems in Israeli Economic Policy,” “Economic Gaps, Hardship, and Social Welfare Policy in Israel,” “Labor and Labor Relations in Israel,” and “National and Religious Minorities in Israel.” Four of these six came within the rubric of “Israeli Society as a Society in Formation,” and were initially defined as “half-subjects,” such that two of them together counted as a single subject. In practice, however, these half-subjects were counted as full subjects on the annual matriculation exams.

17. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, p. 14.

18. Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, p. 21.

19. In addition, the leading texts contained an additional flaw: They placed undue emphasis on the controversial religious elements of Israel’s Jewish character, such as the Orthodox rabbinate’s monopoly on marriages and divorces, while underplaying the nationalist elements that were the object of wall-to-wall consensus—the Law of Return, the actions of the IDF to save Jews around the world, the state’s provision of a “core Jewish curriculum” for all sectors of the population, and so on. This approach characterized the dominant civics textbook used during the 1980s, Shlomo Yovel’s The Regime in the State of Israel (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1987) [Hebrew], as well as the most popular text of the 1990s, David Shahar’s The Regime of the State of Israel (Tel Aviv: Yesod, 1993). [Hebrew]

20. In the Summer 1992 exam, only part of one long question was devoted to this subject. Students were generally allowed to choose one of the three long questions in each of the three areas which they had studied—“The Political Regime in Israel,” plus two of the optional subjects. Therefore, if there was one question on Israel’s Jewish character appearing in each of two different areas, the student could answer both of them. Though the large number of questions from which students could choose also made it possible to skip over questions about Israel’s Jewish character, students clearly had an incentive to study this material.

21. The scoring system changed over the years; starting in 1981, long questions were worth 30 points, and short ones were worth 5 points, such that two long questions and one short question totaled 35 points. As of the 1985-1986 school year, long questions were worth 25 points, and short questions were adjusted accordingly, but this change did not materially affect the prospects of students who were knowledgeable about Israel’s Jewish character.

22. Citizenship Matriculation Exam, Summer 1983, question 3.

23. Citizenship Matriculation Exam, Summer 1984, question 4. The unit on the diaspora was a revised version of the unit on absorbing immigration.

24. Citizenship Matriculation Exam, Summer 1989, question 4.

25. Citizenship: Curriculum for High School for Jewish (General State and Religious State), Arab, and Druze Schools (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, 1994), p. 2 (hereafter, “Citizenship Curriculum, 1994”).

26. In addition to Gutmann, the academics on the panel included Eliezer Don-Yehiya of the Political Science Department at Bar-Ilan University, Chaim Adler of Hebrew University’s School of Education, and Tzvi Tzameret of the Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Research Institute. On the committee’s work, see Annual Guidebook for the Citizenship Teacher 5 (Jerusalem: Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education, 1989), p. 10.

27. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, p. 5.

28. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, pp. 4-5.

29. Indeed, the previous curricula had encouraged an unhealthy element of separatism: The study of citizenship in religious state schools, for example, had explicitly sought to develop in students “a feeling of belonging to… the religious sector.” See especially Citizenship Curriculum, 1976, pp. 25, 28.

30. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, pp. 5-6.

31. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, pp. 4-5.

32. See especially Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, pp. 5-6.

33. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, pp. 7-8. Similarly, students were to “recognize the range of views in Israel on the problems that are the source of controversy.” The goals that are cited here for 1976 come from the curriculum for the general state high schools.

34. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, p. 8.

35. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, p. 8.

36. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, p. 9.

37. At the core of the 1994 citizenship curriculum was a mandatory course on “The Regime and Politics in the State of Israel,” which was to account for 70 of the 90 total class hours. Of these 70, only about 12 cover material that corresponds to Israel’s Jewish character. According to the committee’s proposed course of study, 8 hours were to be taken up by the consideration of Israel’s character as a Jewish state, 2 hours were to be devoted to Israel’s status as a Jewish and democratic state as evinced in the Declaration of Independence, and 12 hours were to be devoted to an examination of democracy. The remaining 48 classes, more than two-thirds of the total, were to be devoted to a series of subjects the committee referred to as “The Regime in Israel—a Jewish, Democratic State.” Though the word “Jewish” appears in this title, the actual content consists of a tour of Israel’s legal system, the branches of government and the balance of power among them, the process of legislating, the structure of the judiciary, the function of the political parties, and so on. With trivial exceptions, amounting perhaps to 2 hours or so, Jewish symbols, laws, practices, and values are not listed among the subject descriptions, clarifications, and comments that outline for teachers and textbook writers what is actually to be taught. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, pp. 3, 9-23. In addition, the optional courses that were outlined for students in the general state high schools, which accounted for 20 hours of study, were almost completely devoid of anything about Israel’s character as a Jewish state. The partial exception, on Arab and Druze citizens of Israel, addressed only the difficulties that Israel’s Jewish character caused to non-Jewish citizens. Citizenship Curriculum, 1994, pp. 25-26.

38. On the enrichment courses, see, for example, Annual Guidebook for the Citizenship Teacher 10 (Jerusalem: Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education, 1994), p. 4; Annual Guidebook for the Citizenship Teacher 11 (Jerusalem: Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education, 1995), p. 5.

39. Citizenship Matriculation Exam, Summer 1994. The exam that year did include questions on Israel’s Jewish character in the section on “Religion, Society, and State,” but this topic was restricted to students in the religious state high schools.

40. Citizenship Matriculation Exam, Summer 1995, question 10.

41. Citizenship Matriculation Exam, Summer 2000, question 3. Both of the questions cited in this paragraph appeared in the optional subject on Arab-Israelis—which effectively became mandatory for students in the general state high schools beginning in 1995-1996, when the Education Ministry canceled the last of the remaining optional subjects that had not been dropped earlier.

42. Members of the citizenship staff of the Education Ministry’s Curriculum Division began working on study material based on the new curriculum during the 1992-1993 school year, even before it had been formally approved. Annual Guidebook for the Citizenship Teacher 8 (Jerusalem: Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education, 1992), p. 5. They began testing this material in classrooms around the country during the 1993-1994 school year, and continued doing so in subsequent years. Annual Guidebook 11, p. 5; Annual Guidebook for the Citizenship Teacher 12 (Jerusalem: Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education, 1996), p. 78.

43. Directive of the Director-General of the Ministry of Education 9A, p. 12. According to ministry officials interviewed for this article, Arab and Druze schools are supposed to switch over to the new program starting in the fall of 2001, once suitable versions of the ministry’s textbook are published in Arabic.

44. Directive of the Supervisor-General of Citizenship Studies, no. 4 for 2000. The directive was signed by Hana Shapir and Sarah Veider, the supervisors-general for the general state and religious state schools, respectively.

45. Annual Guidebook for the Citizenship Teacher 16 (Jerusalem: Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education, 2001), pp. 10-52.

46. This finding comes from a telephone survey conducted for this article by the author and his research staff.

47. In addition, the book’s concluding chapter, “The State of Israel: A Jewish and Democratic State—Closing the Circle,” is devoted explicitly “to examining how it is possible to integrate the Jewish foundation and the democratic foundation in the State of Israel….” Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 562.

48. These two sentences are as follows: “The desire for self-determination led during the nineteenth century to an awakening of nationalist movements and to the recognition by the international community of the right of nationalities to self-determination within the framework of a sovereign state. The nationalist movements advanced the idea of ‘a state for every nationality’ and ‘every nationality in a single state.’” Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 21.

49. The introduction to the book, which focuses on Israel’s Declaration of Independence, devotes three lines to the Holocaust and its aftermath. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 14. These three lines, plus the text of the declaration, constitute the entirety of the book’s treatment of those pre-state developments that could contribute to the understanding of why a Jewish state was necessary.

50. See, for example, Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 36, question 1, and p. 77, questions 3 and 4. The teacher’s guide takes a more reasonable position, and asks teachers to explain to students that each school of thought also contains the ideas of the school of thought presented immediately afterwards on the continuum. Annual Guidebook 16, pp. 14-15.

51. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 30-31.

52. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 63-64.

53. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 266. The Law of Return is described briefly in the first section of the book, “What Is a Jewish State?” on p. 73, but the extended discussion to which I am referring here is in the third section of the book. 

54. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 266-268.

55. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 67.

56. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 69.

57. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 69-70.

58. The law setting forth the Ministry of Education’s role is disposed of in a single sentence. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 72.

59. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 81-238.

60. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 236. The need to include such a chapter in the section on democracy was explicitly mentioned in the 1994 citizenship curriculum.

61. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 94. There are occasional statements to the effect that there are differences of opinion as to how democracies should be constituted, and the introduction to the book (p. 6) suggests that this is parallel to the situation with regard to Israel’s Jewish character. In practice, however, the sections on democracy focus on the common denominator, whereas the sections on the Jewish state magnify the differences.

62. See especially Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 84-88, 98-100.

63. For the list of these values, see Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 94.

64. On this point, see especially Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 6, 562-563, as well as the title of the book.

65. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 23.

66. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 23-24.

67. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 22-24.

68. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 23.

69. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 29.

70. See, for example, Azmi Bishara, “On the Question of the Palestinian Minority in Israel,” Theory and Criticism 3, Winter 1993, pp. 7-20. [Hebrew]

71. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 29, 35.

72. Instead, there is merely an oblique, half-sentence reference several pages earlier to the fact that the “citizens’ state” approach is not consistent with those provisions of Israel’s Declaration of Independence that call for a state that is both democratic and Jewish. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 29-30.

73. Yitzhak Reiter, excerpted in Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 36-37.

74. Atallah Mansour, excerpted in Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 39.

75. Assad Ghanem, excerpted in Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 40.

76. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 76.

77. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 77-78.

78. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 268.

79. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 273.

80. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 290-291.

81. Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, pp. 291-295.

82. The fact that Dr. Ghanem wrote the section on Arab-Israelis is noted in Adan, To Be Citizens in Israel, p. 279.

83. Interview with Dr. Assad Ghanem, “Apocalypse Now,” Kol Ha’ir, June 30, 2000, pp. 80-81.