Showing posts with label Israeli education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli education. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 26, 2022


Yair Lapid, for now, is the caretaker prime minister of Israel. Next week at the polls, however, Israelis will determine his fitness to remain as head of their government. One factor that voters may wish to take into account is his lack of an education: Yair Lapid never matriculated from high school.

Informed of this juicy tidbit, Israelis not to the right will laugh in your face. The fact is, however, indisputable. The naysayers may go to Google to prove you wrong, pointing to the scanty text falling under Lapid’s official Knesset biography, which suggests that he has, at the very least, attained a baccalaureate degree:

Education:

Studies toward MA in Hermeneutics and Culture Studies, Bar Ilan University.

But dig a little further and one arrives closer to the truth, as in this Hebrew-language biography of Lapid at Ynet:

:השכלה של יאיר לפיד

בוגר הגימנסיה העברית הרצליה, ללא זכאות לתעודת בגרות. התקבל ללימודי תואר שני במסלול מהיר לדוקטורט מטעם אוניברסיטת בר אילן, אך עזב לאור איסור המל"ג על קבלת סטודנטים ללא תואר אקדמי.

Google translates this as (emphasis added):

Yair Lapid's education:

Graduated from the Herzliya Hebrew High School, without eligibility for a matriculation certificate. He was admitted to master's studies on a fast-track path to a doctorate on behalf of Bar Ilan University, but left in light of the ban on accepting students without an academic degree.

In other words, it’s against the rules, but the university was going to look the other way and give Lapid a master’s. Unfortunately, someone noticed and that someone was the Council for Higher Education (CHE), the official authority for higher education in Israel and the body responsible for this country’s higher education policy. In 2012, CHE recommended sanctions* for Bar Ilan as a result of its offer to give Lapid some lickety-split education on the sly (emphasis added):

The Council for Higher Education will recommend on Tuesday imposing sanctions on Bar-Ilan University for violating regulations on accepting students for advanced degrees. The investigation was launched after Haaretz revealed that Bar-Ilan had accepted Yair Lapid directly to a Master's and then a doctoral program without him having [a] B.A. degree.

The CHE ordered its committee on supervision and enforcement to investigate the matter, and the committee will meet on Tuesday and recommend action against the university.

All other Israeli universities were asked to report any similar violations by the middle of February, but the Council of University Presidents said Tuesday that, as far as it knows, only Bar-Ilan admitted such students against the rules. However, a Bar-Ilan official said he thinks all of the universities do the same.

Lapid was accepted onto Bar-Ilan's prestigious culture and interpretation graduate program, which accepts only candidates who received a B.A. degree with honors. Lapid, a news and media personality whose recent announcement of his Knesset candidacy was accompanied by reports of skyrocketing popularity in polls, has no undergraduate degree.

In response, the CHE launched an investigation. The university says Lapid was accepted into the demanding master's and doctoral programs on the basis of his "literary and journalistic achievements."

Someone might want to tell Haaretz that not only does Lapid not have an undergraduate degree, he did not even pass the bagrut—the rigorous Israeli high school matriculation examinations. Should we be disturbed by Lapid’s lack of academic credentials? And isn’t it kind of embarrassing for Israel to have a prime minister who didn’t finish high school?

That depends on your point of view. Is he otherwise qualified?

Abraham Lincoln Marovitz

Well, let’s put it this way, he’s no Abraham Lincoln Marovitz. Marovitz earned his Bachelor of Laws in 1925 at the age of 19, when he was still 20 months too young to sit for the Illinois bar exam. He took the exam when he turned 21, and passed it on his first try. But Marovitz attended law school without benefit of a college degree. "In those days, you didn't need a college degree to go to law school," Marovitz later said. "So that's how I wound up the only sitting federal judge who never went to college."

Of course, even the boy wonder that was Marovitz, matriculated from high school.

Bar Ilan’s claim that it accepted Lapid for a masters and subsequent doctoral program (!) because of his “literary and journalistic achievements” doesn’t even begin to pass the smell test. It is far more likely that Lapid’s political star had begun to rise, so he thought he’d talk to someone and snag a couple of college degrees PDQ, because hey. That lack of education: It’s not a good look for a prime minister.  

Lapid, like me, is a writer and a journalist. He never studied political science. He’s not a lawyer or an economist. But he does have great hair and his English is good. Also his father was Tommy Lapid.

Are these CVs, added to his experience in office, enough to sway the balance against his failure to obtain a high school diploma? From this writer's perspective, it seems doubtful. And here is why:

Some years ago, I applied for a job with a Jerusalem think tank. They loved my cover letter and resume. I stood out from all the candidates. But there was nothing about education on my resume, could I just fill in for them that missing bit?

At that point, the jig was up and I had to tell them that I was not a college graduate. To which they said, “You’re otherwise perfect for us, but as a government-affiliated think tank, there’s no way we can hire someone without even a bachelor's degree.”

I was disappointed, but I had learned a lesson: I too, was no Abraham Lincoln Marovitz. If I wanted a job at that level, I was going to have to put in the time and work necessary to earn it. And if I wasn’t willing to do that, I had to set my sights elsewhere. 

It’s pretty basic: without that college degree, I was not qualified for that particular job, no matter how much knowledge or wisdom I had managed to accumulate.

But like I said, even matriculated from high school. Which leads to a thought:

It is not that difficult to arrange to sit for the Israeli high school matriculation exams, no matter one’s age or station in life. Shouldn’t the Israeli electorate, at the very least, demand that a prime minister have a high school degree under his or her belt? And shouldn’t this be codified into law?

*The Haaretz piece linked to here is behind a paywall.


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Monday, October 03, 2022

FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - issued a report by Nora Lester Murad that claims that books for toddlers and youngsters that introduce kids to Israel are pretty much racist against Palestinians, because - they aren't about Palestinians.

However, Murad's critique exposes her own disdain for Arabs who live in Israel as well as her own hate for Israeli Jews.

Even though the books aren't about Palestinians, and aren't meant to be, she says that they"erase" Palestinians.

First, Murad claims that they erase through "appropriation:"

Rah! Rah! Mujadara!
, for example, is a 12-page board book for ages 1–4 that has an attractive tagline: “Everybody likes hummus, but that’s just one of the great variety of foods found in Israel among its diverse cultures.”

There’s a subtlety in that tagline that may be lost on some. While diversity is acknowledged, it is represented only within the Israeli sphere, without its own history and separate identity. This is a political position that  jibes with Israel’s intentional deployment of the term “Israeli Arabs” to refer to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, whom Israel wants to incorporate as an Israeli minority, fragmenting them from the larger Palestinian community and from their national identity.
To progressives, referring to someone in ways that they object to - say, by using the wrong pronoun - is an unforgivable crime. But only a small percentage of Israeli Arabs refer to themselves as "Palestinian." According to a 2020 poll from  Jewish People Policy Institute, only 7% referred to themselves as "Palestinian" while 74% referred to themselves as "Arab Israeli" or simply "Israeli." 

FAIR is showing great disrespect to the people they are claiming to be defending from this book. And the simple children's book is far more accurate in its depiction of Arabs in Israel than FAIR is. 

The critique then veers into the absurd:
Newbies to the the Israeli/Palestinian narrative war may also not realize that food is an active battleground. Palestinians consider Israel’s claiming of hummus and falafel, among other foods, to be cultural appropriation.

Palestinians, therefore, are likely to consider both the people and the food appropriated  when the same [Muslim] girl is featured behind the text:

    Blow, slow.
    Taste. Whoa!
    Brown fa-LA-fel,
    big green mouthful!
Since the state of Israel is not even 75 years old, any food with a longer pedigree must have been originated by someone else. But while Kar-Ben Publishing is surely aware of this contention, they either choose to ignore it or intentionally intend to steer readers towards the Israeli narrative—by hiding the Palestinian one.
But does the book say that falafel is an Israeli-created dish, or does it say that it is a dish that Israeli citizens of all backgrounds enjoy? Clearly it is the latter - "the great variety of foods found in Israel among its diverse cultures." It mentions bagels too - does anyone claim that they are Israeli? Other foods in the book are meant to highlight the different cultures that come together in Israeli society: nowhere does it claim that malawach, mujadara, hummus, or bourekas were created by Israelis except in the fevered imagination of Nora Lester Murad.



Murad is apparently opposed to kids from different backgrounds finding things in common that they like from different cultures. This hardly seems progressive.

Murad then says that books about Israel that show the Dome of the Rock are "erasure through deception" because, she claims, "east Jerusalem" is not part of Israel. However, Israel disagrees, and so do many international jurists. To Jews, the idea of an Israel without the holy places is anathema and extraordinarily offensive.  There is no deception there - people who say that all of Jerusalem is part of Israel have that right. 

But FAIR doesn't recognize that right. We must all believe as they do, or we are racists. So tolerant!

The next "erasure" is "Erasure through both-sidesism." Yes, books about Israel that go out of their way to show Arab Israelis are awful, too - and her main target is, believe it or not, Sesame Street.

Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street (Christy Peterson, Lerner Publishing, 2021)...[has a] “both sides” approach, starting by teaching children how to say hello in both Hebrew and Arabic (pages 4–5).  This “both sides” approach makes a nice visual while hiding Israel’s disrespect for Arabic and Arabic speakers, which is clear in the fact that Arabic had been an official language of Israel until it was officially downgraded in the 2018 Jewish Nation State Law.

Of course, Murad pointedly doesn't mention that the use of Arabic in government documents and in the public sphere is still mandated under Israeli law. Israel still supports and funds its Arabic-language schools. There is no disrespect in reality. But why let the facts get in the way of anti-Israel soundbites?

Presenting “both sides” is a device used to appear neutral, which conjures a sense of objectivity and truth. It is also a way to stake a claim to antiracism and respect. For example, page 11 says that Jerusalem is “special to people of many religions,” over a  photo of Palestinian school girls, some wearing the Muslim hijab.

But presenting Palestinians only as linguistic and religious minorities of Israel, and not as a national group in and of itself, is an Israeli narrative tactic that dehumanizes  Palestinians and undermines readers’ ability to understand Israel. While appearing respectful of diversity, the text and photo cleverly omit that Israel is an explicitly, self-declared Jewish state, that enshrines Jewish supremacy over non-Jews (and the corresponding inequality of Palestinians) by saying, in law, that only Jews have the right to self-determination.
A book for children that celebrates Israel's diversity is regarded as flawed because it should show what Murad declares to be the truth, that Israel is a racist state that doesn't give its Arab citizens equal rights. 

This is all a lie, of course. The same poll I mentioned above shows that virtually the same percentage of non-Jews as Jews feel comfortable being themselves as Israeli citizens. Most Arab citizens of Israel are proud to be Israelis - but Murad the racist wants them to be considered part of a different nation that the vast majority want little or nothing to do with. The bigotry is in Murad's head and in her poison pen, not in the reality of Israel's non-Jewish citizens.

And by the way, virtually every Arab state declares itself to be an Arab state in their constitutions. By Murad's logic, they are all enforcing Arab supremacy. Does anyone think FAIR will ever mention that?

In Murad's twisted mind, Israel is by definition racist, so any children's book that doesn't highlight how terrible Israel is must be guilty of racism as well. The most bizarre part of her argument is that while it is obvious to all that children's books are meant to teach tolerance, which these books are doing, she is against it. Murad is the racist. Her arguments are as racist as those of a white supremacist upset at American schoolbooks that show white children playing with children of color without mentioning comparative crime rates for different groups. 

Finally, Murad freaks out over a map in the Sesame Street book:


The 1949 armistice lines are clearly drawn, and Israel is only shown inside those lines. Egypt, Jordan and Syria are not named. But Murad looks hard to find bias, and of course she succeeds:
Page 6 of Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street incorrectly displays a map of Israel (“and Surrounding Area”) including the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the same shade of yellow. The outlines of the occupied Palestinian territory are visible but not labeled. 
This is her entire argument - the yellow on the map of the territories is slightly different than the yellow of other countries. The actual lines that represent borders, prominently displayed, are meaningless to Murad's bizarre brain - the shade of yellow is offensive.

Hilariously, she sent this litany of paranoid complaints to Sesame Workshop, and they properly ignored her:
Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street, however, is not harmless. It uses subtle messages to contribute to erasure and distortion of Palestinians, which should cause concern among people who care about the educational reputation of the brand. Unfortunately, Sesame Workshop failed to respond to my several inquiries about this book.
Maybe because if she was honestly being as fair as FAIR pretends to be, she would realize that every single one of her complaints is baseless.

It would be amusing to see the same methodology used for children's books about "Palestine." Do they even mention or show pictures of Jews? Do they admit that Jews have the right to live in their historic homeland? Or are Jews not mentioned at best, and called "sons of apes and pigs" at worst?

If FAIR was fair, they would have a Zionist Jew do the exact same type of analysis on books pushing the Palestinian narrative, and see how they fare. Like the alphabet book that says "I is for Intifada." How are Jews represented there? How do they represent the emotional Jewish ties to Jerusalem? How are the feelings of millions of Jews taken into account? 

Which side actually tries for coexistence, and which side wants to see the other be ethnically cleansed in the books meant for children? 

The books being critiqued by her show smiling Arab children, some in hijabs. Find me a single children's book about Palestine that shows a smiling child in a yarmulke or tzitzit.

Just one.

That is the comparison that needs to be made to see which side is the side of progressiveness and tolerance, and which side is both implicitly and explicitly antisemitic. 

For example, this drawing for Palestinian children contrasting Arabs and Jews is not exactly sending  tolerant message. Yet I suspect it is a message that Murad wholeheartedly endorses all children should be exposed to..


Pro-Israel books go out of their way to teach tolerance. Pro-Palestinian books do the opposite. FAIR promotes the former as racist and doesn't want you to look at the latter.

FAIR isn't fair, and this article is exhibit A.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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