Israel education could be about to face its “greatest challenge” if Israel goes ahead with the proposed annexation of tranches of the West Bank, according to a leading practitioner in the field.
Robbie Gringras, the British-born former creative director of Makom, the Jewish Agency’s education lab, who has lived in Israel for 24 years, has helped to train hundreds of Israel educators of diaspora youth.
Writing on the online platform eJewish Philanthropy, Mr Gringras said, “The greatest challenge to Israel education is just around the corner and we’re nowhere near ready…
“The implications are profound, and yet many of us in Israel education are still fiddling with the mute-all control on Zoom.”
He said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been “crystal clear” that if Israel were to declare sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, the Palestinians there would not be the given the right to vote in Israel.
“We tend to grapple with the paradox of a Jewish-democratic state in the context of religious freedom, conversions and access to the Kotel,” Mr Gringras said.
“But how should we address the flat-out contradiction between democracy and a regime that does not allow a group of its ‘citizens’ the right to vote?”
“As Black Lives Matter reaches its moment, how will we answer our students’ questions about racism and about the inevitably violent clashes that will hit our screens as the IDF enforces this plan?”
Mr Gringras, who co-founded the Besht Tellers theatre group in London, coined the phrase “hugging and wrestling” to characterise an approach to Israel education, which sought to foster identification with Israel and the Jewish people while at the same time addressing young people’s concerns.
But he wrote in e-JewishPhilanthropy, “Falling back on a hugging and wrestling stance will not suffice. To what extent will our students be open to embrace a country, or even to remain in a critical encounter with a country that so clearly rejects their own values?”
