HAARETZ: The Wicked Scheme to Turn Israeli School Kids Into Jewish ISIS, Exposed

T. Belman. This Haaretz article starts nice enough but quickly degenerates into unbelieveable vitriolic.

And truly, we must ask: Why should a Jewish child in the Jewish state be exposed (and right from the beginning of grade school!) to the Jewish sages and be “encouraged to feel at home with Jewish culture”? What good could come of studying the Jewish calendar, the traditions of various Jewish cultures and Jewish peoplehood? What is Education Minister Naftali Bennett cooking up when he claims that the program is “pluralistic”? Israel,

There is no doubt that behind the pluralistic sweet talk lurks a plot to brainwash these young, defenseless children with Jewish and Zionist indoctrination. They will also be taken on field trips, with no consideration for what it might do to their tender souls, to Zionist heritage and memorial sites.

For the enlightened public, any attempt to have children delve into their culture is a plot to brainwash them with Jewish and Zionist indoctrination.

I always thought that introducing Jewish kids to Jewish values and identity was a good thing. The visceral reaction exemplified by this article, demonstrates how big the divide is between nationalists and some leftists.

By Israel Harel, HAARETZ

A front-page headline in Wednesday’s Haaretz announced, “New school program will bring young children to Judaism.” At first glance, a headline announcing a plan to intensify Jewish-national identity in “regular” public schools, not religious ones, is good news.

“Finally” was supposed to be the response of the typical parent, who was barely exposed to such materials in school and is incapable of instilling them in the next generation. The same goes for the (Hebrew) subheading: “The students will delve into the weekly Torah portion, the siddur prayer book and ’Ethics of the Fathers.’” But it would appear that the giant headline (in the Hebrew print edition, it was the main headline) was meant more as protest than happy proclamation.

The news story itself explained that while the children will not pray from the siddur, they definitely will study its contents. And if that were not enough, incentives will be offered to encourage schools to go more deeply into Jewish and Israeli holidays, Jewish history and figures from Jewish and Zionist history.

And truly, we must ask: Why should a Jewish child in the Jewish state be exposed (and right from the beginning of grade school!) to the Jewish sages and be “encouraged to feel at home with Jewish culture”? What good could come of studying the Jewish calendar, the traditions of various Jewish cultures and Jewish peoplehood? What is Education Minister Naftali Bennett cooking up when he claims that the program is “pluralistic”? Israel, as a reader noted in the comments section of the Hebrew website, does not have an education ministry. It has two ministries of religious affairs. A different commenter also hit the target: Jewish ISIS is on the way.

There is no doubt that behind the pluralistic sweet talk lurks a plot to brainwash these young, defenseless children with Jewish and Zionist indoctrination. They will also be taken on field trips, with no consideration for what it might do to their tender souls, to Zionist heritage and memorial sites.

Education Ministry officials tried to keep the plan secret, the Hebrew version of the article notes. It’s no wonder, when the mere act of obtaining and publishing the secret plan to teach Jewish identity in the Jewish state is a journalistic scoop deserving of all professional praise.

In a quick Google search I found that the chairman of the committee that drafted the wicked scheme, Prof. Ron Margolin, heads the Ofakim Program for Jewish Philosophy and Education of Tel Aviv University. Ofakim seeks to conduct “intellectual negotiations between Jewish culture and foreign cultures, especially those of the West.” Margolin, say people who know him, is a quintessential liberal who is very far from Bennett’s religious and political viewpoints. The same can be said of his colleague on the committee, Tzila Miron-Ilan, head of the Education Ministry’s Department of Heritage.

But the enlightened public, thanks to the scheme’s exposers, does not buy these cover stories. It determines that the committee members are the education ministry’s best agents. They are the classic “useful idiots”: idealists who, out of blindness, serve a cause that is opposite to the one in which they believe.

Israelis who are fed up with the rampant clericalism that jeopardizes their free identity are called to rally, precisely on Passover, which is also known as the Festival of Freedom, and to defend themselves against those who would stuff their young progeny full of an obsolete identity. After all, the scheme has just one purpose: to raise Habayit Hayehudi voters and hasten the day that Israel resembles the Islamic State.