ISRAEL-PALESTINE, September 16 — The Zionist government continues its racism against the 20 percent Palestinian minority within the state. According to Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, the new school year in Israel began on September 1 in an orderly fashion. The 33,000 Palestinian-Israeli students on strike since the first day of school disagree! These students attend 47 “community schools” administered by a private Christian church whose existence precedes Israel’s itself. The schools teach students of all religions and employ teachers of all sectors as well.
These schools reject the racist brainwashing curriculum of the Ministry of Education. The Palestinian nationality is preserved in these non-government schools. Students are told the truth about the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, the forcible expulsion in 1947-48 of 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of over 500 villages by terrorists who would become the leaders of the future Israeli state. Government schools teach the lie that all Palestinians voluntarily left rather than live with Jews.
Furthermore, the relatively high quality of this education results in 94 percent of the graduates ending up with an academic degree. In fact, out of all Palestinian academics within Israel, 84 percent of those in technology, medicine, and law are alumni of the private Christian schools.
Naturally, the Israeli state is threatened by the idea of educating Palestinian students, whom it treats as second-class citizens, and has been cutting the Christian schools’ budgets year after year. The crisis escalated this year. In addition to cutting the budget, the state is limiting the fees these schools are allowed to charge parents. Private Jewish schools still get 100 percent funding from the state. A Palestinian student in Israel gets 29 percent of what a Jewish student would get.
For the past two weeks, there has been only limited coverage in the Israeli media. The capitalist state has offered two “solutions” — either these schools become official state schools, which would definitely abolish the only places where students get an alternative to the Zionist version of history, or they become schools for rich Arab people only. Considering the majority of Arabs in Israel are below average financially, this option would make the church money. But, it would also force many students to go to state Israeli schools. Lastly, many of these private schools are the only option in places where the State hasn’t even provided official schools for the Arab families.
To support this struggle, here is a link to a statement signed by a large group of Palestinian-Israeli academics on this issue: https://www.facebook.com/hossam.haick/posts/508729419305184.
The racist and savage anti-Palestinian ideas and practices of the Israeli government are used to justify and win Jewish workers to support its existence as a violent state where only Jews enjoy full rights. However, Jewish workers do not profit from this racism. While Palestinian workers suffer more directly and sharply from the occupation and racism, Jewish workers also endure high unemployment, low wages, housing shortages and a militaristic culture. So long as bosses are able to keep workers separated physically or ideologically, all workers will suffer.
Neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — or any other boss, politician, Jewish or Arab — is a friend of the working class. All of them maintain their power and profits from the exploitation of workers. And they build and depend on racism, nationalism, sexism and religion to divide us.
For a better world where all children can live in true peace, justice and egalitarianism, all workers in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, whether Jewish, Arab, African, refugee or immigrant, must unite to fight back. As a united working class, we can rid the world of capitalism and the exploitation, racism, wars and other horrors inflicts upon us.
Editor’s note: Let’s fight in solidarity with thesestriking students, and raise communist ideas. These Christian schools are limited by their own religious and Palestinian nationalist ideology. The fight against racist cuts to
education must be coupled with a rejection all religion, nationalism, and borders.