Today is the day I recognized that Israel is doomed. Iran and Hamas and all the other haters should just sit back and let Israel implode. Many argue that Israel survives because she faces existential threats. The protests in Immanuel today are the writing on the wall for the fate of Israel.
Let's recap: (please correct any errors, I don't claim to be perfect, just generally clever)
The Israeli public school system is divided into 3 tracks. Orthodox Jews, Secular Jews and Arabs. There are also private schools which operate independently from the ministry of education's public schools.
In the town of Immanuel there is a public school for orthodox Jewish girls. Many ashkenazi (jews from european/white heritage) who are parents in the school do not want their children to attend classes with sephardi girls (jews from spanish/middle eastern/dark skinned heritage).
The school decided to separate the dark from the light. The supreme court said no you don't. The white parents said, well we're not sending our kids to school with darkies.
After a few months went by and the court was ignored, the court gave a group of parents 2 weeks to integrate or go to prison. And today, over 100,000 orthodox Jews, protested in Israel, for the right to segregate the public school system based on race.
Just because a country exists on a map, does not mean it is surviving. After the fall of Rome, there were countries in the hinterlands, that for hundreds of years later still thought they were part of the Roman Empire. Israel does not have the luxury of allowing a theocracy to take over. When a significant segment of the population claims that the courts have no authority over them, and that their version of god is more important than the legal authority in a public school, that is a problem. When that group holds mass protests in the streets, with the support of mainstream politicians and significant rabbinical leaders, that is the writing on the wall.
3 comments:
It's very disturbing to see such virulent internal conflicts when Israel faces serious external threats. My first instinct is to attribute this to racism, but I read an interesting article stating that the reason for the school split lay more in religious traditions that may seem insignificant to us, but define the identity of religious fundamentalist cliches. Let me know what you think.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/06/21/2739704/op-ed-emmanuel-school-controversy-about-religiosity-not-ethnic-segregation
The more I read on this the more I am inclined to believe that this is more an issue of totally koo-koo religiosity and less an issue of racism. One thing that points to this interpretation is the fact that at least one of the parents being arrested for pulling their children out of the school was a Yemenite who claimed that he pulled his daughter out, because the school was getting too theologically lax. They are phrasing it as an issue that they as parents have the right to education their children as they see fit.
I would actually by somewhat sympathetic to these loony-tunes IF the school was privately funded. But if you take public funds you got to accept the dictates of the state. You can't have your matza and eat it too!
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