A venerable Israeli newspaper, founded in 1919 and whose editor served as a member of Knesset for four years in the 1950s, has found itself in a bit of a bind.
As a result of complaints that content from Haaretz characterized as very critical of Israel’s foundational values has found its way into the high school matriculation examinations, Education Minister Yoav Kisch informed Knesset Education Committee chairman MK Zvi Sukkot that he is requesting a professional oversight unit to review the matter.
The concern of both politicians is that texts employed as material for tests on grammar and composition are unfairly being used not so much to check for pupils’ language skills but to politically influence those sitting for the exams.
The newspaper is already engaged in a legal confrontation over the government’s 2024 resolution to cancel subscriptions to Haaretz of government officials and army officers and to halt the placement of advertisements in the newspaper. This, too, resulted from what is perceived as the paper’s overly critical views of the country’s happenings and policies.
I am not sure that Sukkot’s initiative will succeed, as the lawyers representing Haaretz will do their best to confound his intention. Perhaps a semi-victory for Sukkot will be achieved and divisive material will be blocked.
I doubt if the newspaper would be happy if the content of selected items from its pages would be culled from articles dealing with its longtime columnist Alon Pinkas, who was allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by a lobbyist tied to Qatar, and who has been terminated. Neither should material come from that published by its now fired senior journalist Chaim Levinson, who allegedly received at least NIS 200,000 from a firm tied to the same Qatar influence network.
After all, if Haaretz has found their views tainted, if only because of the source of the extra funding the two allegedly collected, it might very well be possible to restrict its content. What is being quibbled over by Sukkot and Kisch is if ideological and political content can also be prohibited, at least to high school students.
What schools aren’t teaching
For my part, I wish Kisch would turn his attention to content that is inadequately represented in the schools’ curriculum. I am referring to lesson plans that educate students about the history of the continuous and consistent presence of Jews in their historic national homeland.
One of the most potent accusations made against Jews and our Zionist nationalism is that we are European colonialists, that we are not indigenous, that our connection to “Palestine” terminated two millennia ago and therefore is worthless, and that “between the river and the sea” lies the homeland of the Palestinian Arabs.
Our schools do not counter this, not adequately and almost not at all.
I checked the Education Ministry website. Jerusalem’s chronicles do merit attention, as do other areas, but not the country overall. Other regions are covered in other learning outlines but within the limited framework of geography, topography, and archaeology. There is little specifically centered on the Land of Israel.
Multi-sphere treatment that includes history, culture, geopolitics, Judaism, literature, and the confronting of propaganda claims by Arabs and non-Zionists, even Jewish ones, focused on the Land of Israel, is lacking.
This subject should not be just a compendium of dates and events but the study of Jewish texts. Midrashim, the Talmud, and Rabbinic responsa are important. The activities of emissaries who collected money for the Jews still residing in the land demand more than a passing reference from a teacher.
There is the poetry written on the longing for Zion over centuries; the Zohar and the Kabbalah center in 16th-century Safed; the Ramban, who immigrated to what was then part of the Mamluk Sultanate in 1267, as well as the earlier aliyah of the French Rabbis (1210), the aliyah of the Hassidim (1777), and the aliyah of the Lithuanian followers of the Vilna Gaon (1808); the Karaite “Lovers of Zion”; and much more.
Of course, the introduction of such material, which would necessitate new textbooks, training of teachers, class trips to heritage sites, as well as learning about many of the falsehoods and fabrications of fake history Arabs have been propagating, just might be too much for the editors and journalists of Haaretz.
Already, the newspaper has carried critical pieces on the ministry’s decision to cut the section dealing with themes of “liberal democracy” from its civics exam, while, the paper claims, “nationalist content” is boosted.
Or the paper may not be opposed, as Haaretz carries many archaeological stories that prove the continuum of a 3,000-year-old presence of Jews in this land.
But we’ll all cross that bridge when we come to it, in the name of freedom of knowledge.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.