Gal Levy

From Subjects to Citizens: On Educational Reforms and the Demarcation of the “Israeli-Arabs”

Based on a critical analysis of the Arab educational policy, from Israels independence in the 1970s, this article examines the pivotal role of the state in engendering the trends of Palestinianization and Israelization that arguably characterize the attitude of the Arab minority to the Israeli state. Exploring the educational reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, it shows the contingent relation between ethnicity and the state, and also, the interrelationship between the intra-Jewish and Jewish-Arab divides. Looking at the ethnicization of social relations not as a preordained upshot of primordial realities, the history of the reforms unravels the changing patterns of inclusion and exclusion that result in demarcating the Arab minority as both Israeli and Palestinian, and in constructing the oxymoronic category of “Israeli-Arabs”. Seen from the perspective of the goals for Arab and Jewish education, this category manifests the internalization of the “Arab Question” and the shift in educational policy from preclusion to incorporation, but also the limits of inclusion. These goals thus epitomize the ways in which the new discourse of meritocracy (resulting from the liberalizing of the economy and society) had determined civic equality between Arab and Jewish citizens, but equally important, the seclusion of the Arab minority from both the Jewish (ethnic) society and the Palestinian (national) collective. In this sense, I argue, neither Israelization nor Palestinianization were a matter of choice. Rather, both constitute the inevitable dual path for social and political inclusion, limited as it is.

Yaffa: a school of their choice?

This article is a product of in‐depth research in Yaffa, The Arab Democratic School that was carried out in 2004/05, as part of a study on alternative Arab education in Israel. Its aim, beyond telling the story of Yaffa, is to explicate the motivations that underlay this initiative, and to examine parental choice amongst the disadvantaged. We ask how the Arabs’ parental choice is affected by their (marginalised) social location, by how far they are from the dominant culture, and by their (in)capacity to make a difference. Apparently, to make a choice is a multidimensional act, reflecting the Palestinian citizens’ resistance to their marginalisation and unwillingness to be subjugated through non‐democratic educational perceptions. Their positionality resonates in Yaffa, as an act of intervention, and their search for an alternative reality where democratic education is not and cannot be separated from the Palestinian citizens’ need to imagine themselves as Arabs.

Is There a Place for Peace Education? Political Education and Citizenship Activism in Israeli Schools.

What is wrong with peace education in Israel? In this article, I attempt to decipher the cultural codes of Israeli schools in their relation to issues of peace, conflict and citizenship. It combines findings from two studies in order to understand how ‘school culture’ animates ‘peace education’. My main contention is not that ‘peace’ is or is not being taught in the Israeli schools. Rather, I ask how conflict is being taught, and what underlines the schools’ conception of conflict. Arguably, what Israeli schools are trying to avoid is not ‘peace education’ per se, but the very idea of political education. An adequate approach to peace education, I propose in a more general vein, ought to focus on conflict not as an aberration, but as a part of our cultural mindsets and conceptions of the world. An example from the campaign for the rights of labour migrants’ children is used to demonstrate a different approach to political education.

Peace as a surprise, peace as a disturbance: the Israeli–Arab conflict in official documents

The main question that is discussed in this paper is the way in which the Ministry of Education in Israel dealt with the changes in the political reality, and the shift from violent relations towards the possibility of peace agreements between Israel and its neighbours and the Palestinians. Drawing on the analysis of official documents – Director General Directives (DGDs) – this paper asks how the possibility for peace was understood by the Ministry of Education and how the role of the education system and educators was defined. It also asks to what extent changes in the political reality have altered the dominant discourses (militarism and peace‐loving society) while making room for a more positive form of peace education. The analysis reveals that the changes in political reality have led to the articulation of two unique responses, alongside the dominant discourses. They are peace as a surprise and peace as a disturbance. This paper focuses on these two responses and the ways in which they correspond to the militaristic culture and the image of Israel as a peace‐loving society, and how they might shape peace education.

From Rights To Representation: Challenging Citizenship From The Margins Post 2011

This study asks whether we are the same citizens as we were before the civil awakening that spilled over from tyrannical Arab states to core cities of the global economy and beyond. To address this question it offers an historical account of the role of New Social Movements, civil society, and deliberative and radical democracy as the three epistemic frameworks that have shaped the figure of the rights-bearing citizen, and which have conceived the neoliberal citizen as a choice driven individual. Taking the neoliberal shift in Israel of the 1980s as its point of departure, it then places the 2011 Tents’ Protest in the broader context of acts of resistance to the entrenchment of neoliberalism. This is followed by a thorough exploration of two post-2011 Israeli activist groups in Jewish and ArabPalestinian societies respectively, allowing voices and new conceptions of citizenship that had arisen from the margins of the 2011 protest to come to the fore. In the final analysis, this exploration traces how the shift away from the conception of the citizen as a rights-bearing individual challenges neoliberal governmentality. It thus enables us to configure the image of a post-neoliberal citizen, one whose political subjectivity is grounded not in the discourse of rights, but rather in a new discourse of representation.

Within and beyond citizenship: alternative educational initiatives in the Arab society in Israel

In recent years, Arab-Palestinian citizens in Israel are in search of ‘a new vocabulary of citizenship’, among other ways, by resorting to ‘alternative educational initiatives’. We investigate and compare three alternative schools, each challenging the contested conception of Israeli citizenship. Our findings reveal different educational strategies to become ‘claimants of rights’, yet all initiatives demonstrate the constraints Arab citizens face while trying to become ‘activist citizens’ (E.F. Isin, 2009. Citizenship in flux: the figure of the activist citizen. Subjectivity, 29 (1), 367–388.).

Review: Economic Life: Adriana Kemp and Rebeca Raijman, Migrants and Workers: The Political Economy of Labour Migration in Israel. Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House 2008, 222 pp., ISBN 9789650203979, NIS 79

Biographical Note: Ercüment Çelik is a PhD candidate and lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Freiburg, Germany and research affiliate with the Industrial Organizational and Labour Studies Research Unit at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. A member of the ISA Research Committee on Labour Movements, he has published articles on the informalization of women’s labour and new types of labour organizations, marginal labour force and social movement unionism. Address: Universitätsstr. 15, 79098 Freiburg, Germany. [email: ercumentcelik@ gmail.com]