05.10.23
Editorial Note
On previous occasions, IAM mentioned Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research founded in Haifa in 2000. According to its website, Mada “works to further the human, civil and political rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel through applied social research and policy analysis. Mada amplifies Palestinian perspectives in Israeli civil and political discourse, aiming to stimulate alternatives to state policies that privilege one national group over another.”
Recently, Mada al-Carmel published an edited volume in Arabic titled “Zionism and Settler Colonialism: Palestinian Approaches,” portraying Israel negatively and as a settler-colonial entity. The volume is edited by Nadim Rouhana, former Director of Mada al-Carmel and professor of International Affairs and Conflict Studies at Tufs University, and Areen Hawari, the Director of the Gender Studies Program at Mada al-Carmel. This book results from academic workshops by Mada al-Carmel, Palestinian scholars, and graduate students in Palestine. The workshops focused on the “study of Zionism as a settler-colonial project, examined its practices, and studied its foundational assumptions and its intellectual, religious, and political worldviews.” According to Mada, the workshops addressed “Zionism’s settler colonial underpinnings, also addressed the transformations that the Zionist project has undergone, as a result of its continued failure to subjugate the ongoing Palestinian resistance.”
Mada explains that the book “contributes to the debate about the position of the settler-colonial studies in understanding the nature of the Israeli State and in developing Palestinian strategies for liberation in light of this understanding. Thus, the book is a contribution to the growing literature on decolonization in the context of Palestine studies. The contributors to this volume come from different disciplines, live in different geographical areas with different political and legal status within Palestine and work in and study in diverse academic contexts. Some of the writers approached Zionism and its colonial project from a historical perspective, others focused on both its historical and current practices, and some chapters investigated the resistance to the project.”
As Mada describes it, the volume also includes chapters that analyze the “colonial structure itself, and the overlap between Zionism’s settler-colonial dimension with the religious and national ones. In addition, the volume addressed the knowledge production around the question of Zionism as a settler colonialism by Israeli academic institutions and by Zionism’s opponents.”
Worth noting that many of the authors are employees in Israeli academic institutions. Moreover, Mada’s negation of Jews to their rights to self-determination in their ancestral homeland is nothing but antisemitic.
Mada al Carmel is also active abroad. The Arab Center Washington DC, a research organization dedicated to furthering the political, economic, and social understanding of the Arab world in the United States and addresses fundamental aspects of US-Arab relations, has recently published an article titled “Political Persecution of Palestinians Using the Education System and Israeli Universities” written by Mada al-Carmel. It claims that the current government in Israel is deepening “the country’s structurally racist policies toward Palestinian citizens of Israel,” and “poses more of a threat than previous governments… it will directly and openly reduce the space for democracy in Israel while directing ever stronger doses of racism at Palestinian society.”
To prove its case, Mada al-Carmel charged Israel with “growing police hostility and repression toward Palestinian citizens, further restrictions on public and individual freedoms, moves to rein in the judiciary, deeper “Zionization” of academic curricula and the education system in general, and restrictions on the political activity and struggle of Palestinians within the country.” The government, according to Mada al-Carmel, “advanced policies and laws that have grave impacts for the Palestinian education system and the political activities of Palestinian students at Israeli universities.” Such measures have been “proposed or passed” without serious opposition.
The Knesset approved two such bills in preliminary readings: The first, the Supervision of Schools Bill (Amendment—Prohibition on Employment of Terrorist Convicts and Supporters and Supervision of Study Content for Prevention of Incitement) aims to support the firing of teachers supporting “terrorist organizations.” The second bill is the Student Rights Bill (Amendment – Removal of Students Who Support Terror From Educational Institutions and the Dismantling of Terror-Supporting Cells).
For Mada, the bills “clearly target the Palestinian education system in general and Palestinian teachers in particular.” Because they “bolster security supervision at education facilities and give the domestic security apparatus the power to investigate the political backgrounds of teachers before they are appointed, and would also make it easier to dismiss them.”
Mada claims that the bills’ reference to “solidarity with a terrorist organization” is “a vague term that is clearly intended to target teachers who express support for Palestinian patriotic causes, or for any other political cause, and even to target those who mark national occasions. In Israeli eyes, such acts are seen as tantamount to support for terrorism.”
According to Mada, “Palestinian students have been brought before university disciplinary committees and Palestinian staff have been fired over posts on social media.” And that “Israel’s clampdown on Palestinian students, teachers, and education staff predates these proposed legal changes.”
For Mada, “There has been a marked increase in surveillance and monitoring of Palestinians’ statements, writings, and activities since the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in 2014. Palestinian students have been brought before university disciplinary committees and Palestinian staff have been fired over posts on social media.” The proposed amendments would “give legal cover to these practices targeting the Palestinian education system, its staff, and its students.”
Mada claims that the draft law would punish Palestinian students at Israeli universities for raising the Palestinian flag. The bill was titled the Student Rights Bill (Amendment – Removal of Students Who Support Terror from Educational Institutions and the Dismantling of Terror-Supporting Cells). For Mada, the draft law targets student union activity and the national student movement active at Israeli universities. It punishes Palestinian students, activists, and student organizations on the grounds of “terrorism,” up to and including expulsion.
Mada al-Carmel concluded that the Israeli legislation “targets the Palestinian education system and Palestinian students from primary school to university.” The Israeli government is also “working to stamp out any political or national expression by students of all ages, as well as by Palestinian teachers.” Adding, “the current administration aims to implement in order to control and politically harass Palestinians, restricting their struggle, their protests, and their ability to express their political opinions and their national identity… through the intimidation of teachers and the securitization of Palestinian education.”
Contrarily, when reading the proposed law on the Knesset website, the bill proposes “that the guidelines of the Israeli curriculum, according to circulars issued by the Ministry of Education Director General, be binding for all schools that operate by law in Israel and are subject to the ministry’s supervision. It is further proposed to restrict the employment of an education worker who is linked to terrorist activity, including the following: Making the issuance of an employment permit conditional upon the lack of a security record with such linkage; suspension of the permit if the worker is indicted for a terrorist offense or if the Director General is convinced that the worker has displayed identification with a terrorist organization or with an act of terrorism; revoking the permit if the worker has been convicted of a terrorist offense.” The explanatory notes to the bill state: “Two children, aged 13–14, have recently participated in murderous acts of terrorism. These acts did not arise in a vacuum, but rather grew on the fertile soil of unbridled incitement taking place in schools in which the Palestinian curriculum is studied in east Jerusalem. This curriculum includes delegitimization and demonization of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and glorification of terrorists and acts of terrorism against [the Jewish people and the State of Israel]. When this content is part of the education system from a young age, it has a destructive and long-term effect. “Today, supervision of the Palestinian study content is deficient, and the arrangement according to which teaching personnel can be suspended or dismissed is largely to be found in circulars of the Ministry of Education Director General. According to the existing arrangement, the possibility of suspending or dismissing teaching personnel is complicated, limited and liable to take years.”
Mada’s dismissal of “terrorism” should raise an alarm.
It must be said that there is a steady increase of Arab students at Israeli universities, most of whom come to study, not to cause trouble.
REFERENCES:
Political Persecution of Palestinians Using the Education System and Israeli Universities
Sep 21, 2023
Mada al-Carmel
Since the formation of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s sixth government December 29, 2022, it has become clear—as outlined in previous papers from Mada al-Carmel—that this administration will deepen the country’s structurally racist policies toward Palestinian citizens of Israel, that it poses more of a threat than previous governments, and that it will directly and openly reduce the space for democracy in Israel while directing ever stronger doses of racism at Palestinian society.1
Examples of this trend include growing police hostility and repression toward Palestinian citizens, further restrictions on public and individual freedoms, moves to rein in the judiciary, deeper “Zionization” of academic curricula and the education system in general, and restrictions on the political activity and struggle of Palestinians within the country. In recent months, the government has advanced policies and laws that have grave impacts for the Palestinian education system and the political activities of Palestinian students at Israeli universities. These measures have been proposed or passed with no serious opposition from within the Israeli political and party systems, or in the public sphere, and have only stirred modest responses from Palestinians themselves.
Clamping Down on the Palestinian Education System
The Knesset has recently approved two such bills in preliminary readings. The first, the Supervision of Schools Bill (Amendment—Prohibition on Employment of Terrorist Convicts and Supporters and Supervision of Study Content for Prevention of Incitement) aims to facilitate the firing of teachers who express support for “terrorist organizations.”2 The second, the Student Rights Bill (Amendment – Removal of Students Who Support Terror From Educational Institutions and the Dismantling of Terror-Supporting Cells), stipulates that a representative of the Shin Bet domestic security service should once again be deployed at the Ministry of Education, a post that was previously scrapped, officially at least, in 2005.3 The first bill was approved on its preliminary reading on May 31, by 45 votes against 25.
The second bill was tabled by Jewish Power MK Zvika Fogel, who gained notoriety a few months ago when he suggested that he wanted to see the West Bank Palestinian village of Huwwara “closed” and “burnt,” and that violence carried out there by Israeli settlers against Palestinians was legitimate as it helped to deter Palestinian attacks. His bill was approved on its preliminary reading on July 19 by 52 votes to 30, and would create a committee at the Education Ministry made up of five members, including a representative of Shin Bet, to oversee appointments within the education system.
The two bills were tabled following approval by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, and clearly target the Palestinian education system in general and Palestinian teachers in particular. They would bolster security supervision at education facilities and give the domestic security apparatus the power to investigate the political backgrounds of teachers before they are appointed, and would also make it easier to dismiss them. The bills’ reference to “solidarity with a terrorist organization” is a vague term that is clearly intended to target teachers who express support for Palestinian patriotic causes, or for any other political cause, and even to target those who mark national occasions. In Israeli eyes, such acts are seen as tantamount to support for terrorism.
Palestinian students have been brought before university disciplinary committees and Palestinian staff have been fired over posts on social media.
Israel’s clampdown on Palestinian students, teachers, and education staff predates these proposed legal changes. There has been a marked increase in surveillance and monitoring of Palestinians’ statements, writings, and activities since the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in 2014. Palestinian students have been brought before university disciplinary committees and Palestinian staff have been fired over posts on social media. Government-funded primary and preparatory schools have been banned from marking national occasions or observing strikes called for by the High Follow-up Committee for Arab citizens of Israel (HFC). The proposed amendments would help give legal cover to these practices targeting the Palestinian education system, its staff, and its students.
In response to the proposed amendment to the Supervision of Schools Bill, human rights organization Adalah and the regional Follow-up Committee on Educational Affairs issued a joint statement saying, “The law is another attempt to deepen the regime of control over the Palestinian education system and to return us to the period of military rule that was imposed on Palestinians in Israel from 1948 to 1966.” The statement added that, “The proposed law is unconstitutional, as it allows for surveillance of education system staff on the assumption that they pose a security threat simply on the grounds of being Arab, and treats Palestinian Arab citizens as enemies.” It also warned that even the act of making such proposals is damaging, as it sows fear among staff. The statement called for increased awareness, and for efforts to counter the stir caused by the proposals by raising education employees’ awareness of their legal rights when dealing with such issues in a professional and principled way, and with a sense of ownership. “Teachers are caregivers whose role is not limited to delivering set curricula,” the statement read, urging Palestinian teachers to organize.4
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), meanwhile, said the main aim of the proposed laws is to impose surveillance and securitization on the Palestinian education system and to prepare for the return of a Shin Bet representative to the ministry, as well as to allow for non-education personnel to seize control of the education system. It said that the proposals represent implicit incitement against an entire community on the grounds that it supports “terrorism.” In ACRI’s view, the vague text of the law adds to the atmosphere of persecution, fear, and repression facing Palestinian education staff, part of a trend of censorship and a silencing of critics within the education system as a whole.5
Attempts to Repress Palestinian Students’ National Identity at Israeli Universities
In mid-July, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved the tabling of a draft law that would see Palestinian students at Israeli universities punished for raising the Palestinian flag. The bill was titled the Student Rights Bill (Amendment – Removal of Students Who Support Terror from Educational Institutions and the Dismantling of Terror-Supporting Cells). On July 19, the Knesset approved it on its preliminary reading, by 50 votes in favor to 32 against.6
The draft law targets student union activity and the national student movement that is active at Israeli universities, and would provide for punishments against Palestinian students, activists, and student organizations on the grounds of “terrorism,” up to and including expulsion. It would also punish students caught raising the Palestinian flag. According to ACRI, the law would oblige academic institutions to halt the education of students found guilty of making statements deemed to be supportive of “terrorism” and to permanently expel them. In addition, any academic degree they had gained outside the country would not be recognized.7
The Student Coalition (al-Tajammu al-Tullabi) released a statement condemning the bill, which reads, “This law intensifies the political persecution that Palestinians inside Israel and national activism in general have faced since the Nakba.” It goes on to say, “What 75 years of persecution, harassment, and attempts at erasure and ‘Israelization’ have failed to achieve will not succeed against a generation that is proud of its identity, its belonging to its people, and the justness of its cause, and that refuses to submit in any way.”8
The Student Front said in its own statement that, “The bill that would ban raising the Palestinian flag at universities and expel students who do so reflects utter hysteria over the student movement, its popularity, and the way students have gathered under the Palestinian flag, as well as Arab-Jewish partnership and struggle in recent years.”9 Aside from these statements, Palestinian political parties, the HFC, and rights groups have not responded in any serious way to these proposed laws, which represent a fundamental shift in the tools of repression and political persecution against the Palestinian community in Israel.
Conclusion
The legislation described above targets the Palestinian education system and Palestinian students from primary school to university. It aims to wipe out their national identity and remove their national affiliation and political stances from the education sphere. The Israeli political right is making efforts to bring Jewish identity and Zionist values into the Jewish education system, with the blessing of the current government. A minister has even been appointed in the prime minister’s office to work on this issue. The government is also working to stamp out any political or national expression by students of all ages, as well as by Palestinian teachers.
The Israeli political right is making efforts to bring Jewish identity and Zionist values into the Jewish education system.
The bills outlined above fit within a broader legislative program that aims to impose government control and censorship over Palestinians in Israel. They add to a string of laws and measures that the current administration aims to implement in order to control and politically harass Palestinians, restricting their struggle, their protests, and their ability to express their political opinions and their national identity. These bills are also a direct extension of the government’s move to make Zionism the “guiding principle of the government’s activities,” which would “make Zionist values a guiding and decisive principle in all the activities of government ministries,” in the spirit of both the 2018 Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People and the agreement on which the current coalition government was formed.
Moreover, these laws revive Israeli policies from the era of military government, which sought to remake Palestinian identity through the education system, and through the intimidation of teachers and the securitization of Palestinian education. Mada al-Carmel believes that these proposals reflect the general outlook of this government, are an interpretation of the coalition agreement, and represent the government’s efforts to turn the 2018 basic law into government policy, transforming it from a declarative law into a legal reality. Furthermore, the Palestinian community’s reaction to these laws and policies has not been commensurate with their seriousness and the political threat that they represent.
The views expressed in this publication are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
This position paper was first published in Arabic by Mada al-Carmel, Arab Center for Applied Social Research, Haifa, Israel.
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1 “Projections of the Sixth Netanyahu Government’s Treatment of Arab Citizens” (in Arabic), Mada al-Carmel, December 2022, https://tinyurl.com/3svhxzv4.; “The Justice Minister’s Plan: Harming the Rights of Palestinians in Israel” (in Arabic), Mada al-Carmel, January 2023, https://tinyurl.com/47tu5vr4.
2 “Approved in Preliminary Reading: Restricting Employment of Education Worker Who Is Linked to Terrorist Activity,” Israeli Knesset, June 1, 2023, https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/news/pressreleases/pages/press1623w.aspx.
3 “Approved in Preliminary Reading: Bill to Remove Students Who Support Terrorism from Universities,” Israeli Knesset, July 20, 2023, https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/news/pressreleases/pages/press20723q.aspx.
4 “Adalah and the Follow-Up Committee on Educational Affairs Comment on the Supervision of Schools Bill: Racist Proposals That We Will Challenge Publicly, Legally and Internationally” (in Arabic), Adalah (the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights In Israel), June 1, 2023, https://www.adalah.org/ar/content/view/10832.
5 “Position Paper regarding the School Inspection Bill” (in Hebrew), ACRI, May 26, 2023, https://01368b10-57e4-4138-acc3-01373134d221.usrfiles.com/ugd/01368b_a2a2196260fa416dab47dfbc2436c175.pdf.
6 “Approved in Preliminary Reading: Bill Targeting Arab Political Activity at Universities on Grounds of ‘Supporting Terrorism’” (in Arabic), Arab48, July 19, 2023, https://tinyurl.com/ye2av462.
7 ACRI, “Position Paper regarding the School Inspection Bill.”
8 Arab48, “Approved in Preliminary Reading.”
9 “Student Front: We Will Continue to Raise the Palestinian Flag at Universities, and Our Students Will Stomp on the Flag-Raising Law” (in Arabic), Alittihad, May 25, 2023, https://tinyurl.com/yff2tuzm.
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By Mada Admin | 20 July 2023
Zionism and Settler Colonialism: Palestinian approaches New book published by Mada al-Carmel.
Mada al-Carmel – The Arab Center for Applied Social Research published an edited volume in Arabic titled “Zionism and Settler Colonialism: Palestinian Approaches”. The volume is edited by Nadim Rouhana, the former Director of Mada al-Carmel and professor of International Affairs and Conflict Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufs University, and Areen Hawari the Director of the Gender Studies Program at Mada al-Carmel.
This book is the result of an academic workshop at which Mada al-Carmel brought together a group of Palestinian scholars and graduate students in Palestine for four two-day workshops over a year and a half. The workshops focused on the study of Zionism as a settler-colonial project, examined its practices, and studied its foundational assumptions and its intellectual, religious, and political worldviews. The workshops, while addressing Zionism’s settler colonial underpinnings, also addressed the transformations that the Zionist project has undergone, as a result of its continued failure to subjugate the ongoing Palestinian resistance.
The book contributes to the debate about the position of the settler-colonial studies in understanding the nature of the Israeli State and in developing Palestinian strategies for liberation in light of this understanding. Thus, the book is a contribution to the growing literature on decolonization in the context of Palestine studies.
The contributors to this volume come from different disciplines, live in different geographical areas with different political and legal status within Palestine and work in and study in diverse academic contexts. Some of the writers approached Zionism and its colonial project from a historical perspective, others focused on both its historical and current practices, and some chapters investigated the resistance to the project. The volume also includes chapters that analyzed the colonial structure itself, and the overlap between Zionism’s settler-colonial dimension with the religious and national ones. In addition, the volume addressed the knowledge production around the question of Zionism as a settler colonialism by Israeli academic institutions and by Zionism’s opponents.
Contributors and chapters as they appear in the volume are:
Introduction
Nadim Rouhana and Areen Hawari
The first section: Settler Colonialism: Theoretical approaches
- The Palestinian Resistance and the Dilemma of Legitimacy of Settler Colonialism in Palestine: Zionism Responds with Religious Narratives.
Nadim Rouhana
- The Dialectic of the Colonial and Exploitative Dimension in the Structure of Israeli Colonialism: The Colonized Lands of 1967 as an Example.
Ahmad Iz Addin Asaad
- A Comparative Reading between the Colonial Cases in Palestine and Algeria.
Abaher al-Sakka
Settler Colonialism in the Israeli-Palestinian Context, Decolonization, and the Sociology of Knowledge Production in Israel
Areej Sabbagh Khoury
- Benjamin Netanyahu and the Reproduction of the Zionist Project within the Paradigm of the Clash of Civilizations.
Mohannad Mustafa
The second section: The Settler-Colonial Policies of the Zionist Project
- The Political Economy Under the Colonial Regime and the Outbreak of the 1936 Revolution.
Mahmoud Yazbek
- In Search for the Biblical Golan: Jewish Imaginaries and Settlement in the 19th-Century
Aamer Ibraheem
- The Unchilding Politics: Tracing the Israeli Colonialism.
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
- The Biopolitics of Palestinian Class Elimination in the Colonial Labor Market.
Sarab Abu Rabia
The third section: On the Agency of the Colonized
- Ms. Keren Kayemet: The Formation of Palestinian Masculine Identities Under Military Regime.
Areen Hawari
- The Normalization within the Structure of Settler Colonialism in Palestine: The Duality of Rejection and Acceptance.
Mai Al-Bazour
- The Concept of Normalization within the Structure of Settler Colonialism in Palestine: Between the Duality of Rejection and Acceptance
Heba Yazbak
- Liberating the Past from the Captivity of a Colonized Present: The Memory as a Site of Resistance.
Amira Silmi
- The presence of the Settler Project in the political folk Songs: A Reading in the Palestinian Revolutionary oral text
Qasam Al-Haj
israel-academia-monitor.com 