The Knesset on Tuesday, November 5, gave final approval to a law authorizing the Education Ministry to fire teachers who publicly identify with an “act of terrorism,” drawing immediate condemnation from Hadash and human rights advocates. The law’s passage was warmly welcomed by racist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said in a statement that “education is a central and significant factor that motivates many terrorist attacks against the State of Israel.”
Hadash-Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi during a debate at the plenum of the Knesset (Photo: Knesset)
The bill passed after a 14-hour filibuster by the opposition that began on Monday evening and continued until approximately 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday as part of an attempt to force the far-right coalition to delay other controversial laws expected to reach the Knesset plenum later this week. The bill, co-sponsored by MKs Zvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit) and Amit Halevi (Likud), was approved 55-45 in its third and final reading — immediately after it also passed its second reading — following an overnight opposition filibuster.
The bill has gone through its second and third readings, despite criticism from the Arab Education Follow-up Committee (AEFC) which slammed it as an “attempt to promote a culture of fear and suppress free speech and critical education,” and it grants the director-general of the Education Ministry the authority to fire, without prior notice, teachers who have either been convicted of a “security or terror offense,” or have “published a direct call to carry out an act of terrorism or published words of praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism or support for or identification with it.”
The law also allows the ministry to cut or reduce funding for schools in which such expressions have been found, if it has been determined that “the management of the educational institution knew or should have known about their existence.”
The bill was attacked during the debate in the plenum by Hadash-Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi, who retweeted a statement by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) arguing that its purpose was “to regulate the discourse in schools and to harm teachers whose statements and worldview do not coincide with those of the education minister and the political parties controlling the Education Ministry.”
“The purpose of the law is to threaten teachers and principals of Arab schools, to mark them and make them a target for surveillance and persecution,” the rights group stated, arguing that the tools already at its disposal before the current law were “adequate and sufficient.” “The law severely violates the rights to expression, employment and pedagogical autonomy of teachers and administrators,” it added. The teachers’ unions also opposed the bill.
A similar bill. focused on higher education, passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset this summer and is currently waiting for committee approval to go to the first of three readings necessary to become law. That bill — which was written in cooperation with the fascist In Tirzu organization and is sponsored by coalition whip Ofir Katz (Likud), among others — would require universities to fire without compensation any lecturer who “deny Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish nation, incite terrorism, or express support for a terrorist organization or an armed struggle against the State of Israel.” Addressing party lawmakers in June, MK Tibi decried what he described as a “fascist campaign” against “lecturers and academics who have a different opinion about the war.”
Describing the proposed legislation as “part of an ongoing incitement and smear campaign of a McCarthyistic nature against the Israeli academy,” the Association of University Heads warned that, if passed, it would create “an atmosphere of whistleblowing and fear on academic campuses.”
Since the beginning of the war, lawmakers have proposed several measures to police the educational system and restrict speech, prompting ACRI to caution in March that “the trends of silencing, harm to media outlets and journalists, and the intention to silence citizens who criticize the regime are intensifying.”
AEFC said they will be partnering up with human rights organizations to assess the possibility of filing a legal petition regarding the new bill, saying it was “nothing but an additional step in a systematic policy to subject Arab-Palestinian society in Israel to not present any critical thought that contradicts the prevailing thought and general approach.”
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31918
