Adalah, Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel filed on Wednesday, December 18, a petition to Supreme Court on behalf of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, the Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education, the National Committee of Arab Mayors, the National Committee of Arab Parents, Hadash faction in the Teachers’ Union, and member of the Knesset’s Education, Culture and Sports Committee MK Youssef Atawneh (Hadash).
Students and lecturers’ demonstration in Tel Aviv University, they gathered to protest McCarthyites bills. Protests were held on same day at all universisties and several colleges, December 10, 2024 (Photo: Zo Haderekh)
The petitioners are challenging a law that grants the Education Ministry authority to dismiss teachers over alleged “support of terrorism” and revoke funding from ‘recognized but unofficial’ schools on similar grounds. Passed by the Knesset on November 4, 2024, the law authorizes the Ministry’s Director-General to dismiss or suspend teachers and revoke their teaching licenses based on the Director’s determination that a teacher has expressed identification with or support for an act or organization labeled as terrorist.
Additionally, the law allows the education minister to cut funding from schools if the Minister determines that “expressions of identification with an act of terrorism or a terrorist organization, or support for them, exist within the institution, and that the management of the school knew or should have known of their existence.” The law grants the Minister full discretion to exercise these powers, without putting in place even minimal safeguards to limit their exercise.
In the petition, Adalah Attorney Salam Irsheid argued that the law is clearly racist in intent, especially given the widespread persecution and criminalization of hundreds of Arab-Palestinian citizens by Israeli authorities and other entities since the outbreak of the war on October 2023, for merely expressing entirely lawful opinions. The law’s deliberate vagueness, and the fact that it only addresses “incitement to terrorism” – which is used almost exclusively to target Palestinians – while excluding incitement to violence or racism, highlights its discriminatory purpose. By granting broad, unchecked powers to political and administrative authorities, the law enables punitive actions to be taken against Palestinian educators for expressing views that fall outside the mainstream consensus, thereby severely undermining their basic right to freedom of expression. Adalah further argued that the law breaches the principle of the separation of powers, as it grants the Education Ministry the authority to infringe on teachers’ rights to freedom of expression and occupation, effectively requiring a determination of whether they have committed a criminal offense, even if no charges have been filed against them.
The petitioners emphasized that the chilling effect that the law will inevitably have on discussions on national issues within educational spaces and on political engagement violates students’ right to education. Moreover, imposing sanctions on educational institutions amounts to unlawful collective punishment that is directed exclusively at schools serving Arab school children in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem.
The petitioners requested that the Supreme Court annul the law in its entirety, as it violates constitutional rights while serving an illegitimate and explicitly racist purpose by targeting Palestinian schools and educators, whom it portrays in a negative light, and is disproportionate insofar as it grants administrative authorities’ arbitrary powers to impose sanctions in matters that are already regulated by the criminal law.
Att. Irsheid commented: “This draconian law is a blatant attempt to intimidate all employees in the Arab education system, forcing them to avoid discussing current affairs to shield themselves from political persecution. Since the war began, we have already seen this happen many times in universities and workplaces. The Supreme Court must strike down this law, which effectively transforms the government into a political tribunal controlled by partisan political interests.”
In addition, far-right ministers convened last week to discuss legislation that would grant authorities the power to dissolve campus organizations deemed supportive of “terrorism or armed struggle against the State of Israel.” The bill introduced by a far-right lawmaker would also authorize denying a university degree to anyone convicted of a terror-related offense, even years after serving a sentence
The Education, Culture and Sports Committee, chaired by MK Yosef Taieb (Shas), continued to discuss the bill sponsored by racist MK Limor Sonn Har Melech (Otzma Yehudit), which seeks to impose restrictions on the existence and activity of a student group in an academic institution “that supports terrorism or an armed struggle against the State of Israel.” The bill also seeks to impose academic sanctions of postponing the admission into academia of a student who was convicted of support for terrorism or incitement to terrorism.
The original version of the bill, which passed in preliminary reading in July 2023, however the version laid on the committee’s table reflects understandings with the Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs, but it should be noted that the committee is not committed to it.
Ministry of Justice representatives said that the bill could constitute a far-reaching infringement of rights, and that a special law should not be created for offenses committed on campus. Ministry of Justice official Hadeel Younis: “Even after having been scaled down, the bill raises real difficulties, among other things, due to the severe infringement upon freedom of speech and the potential infringement upon freedom of occupation.”
Adv. Omri Golan of the Council for Higher Education’s Legal Department opposed the bill, saying, “It is important to ensure that the Students’ Rights Law will continue to focus on advancing accessibility and equal opportunity in higher education, without imposing upon the institutions roles that are not within the core of their activity.”
Hadash MKs opposed the proposed legislation, calling it “dime-store fascist populism and McCarthyism.” According to Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman, “The Knesset is advancing two bills targeting critical students and professors, aimed primarily at Palestinian and leftist voices in academia. These bills seek to silence any remaining voices resisting the government’s policies of occupation and war. This marks another step in the fascist agenda to suppress any real opposition to the extreme right. Heads of universities, professors, and students recognize the danger of such legislation and are voicing their opposition.
On past week, the Knesset plenum, in a preliminary reading, passed a proposed law that would amend the Students Rights Law, allowing most Israeli higher education institutions to implement gender separation. MK Son Har-Melech proposed the law, which 55 members of the Knesset (MKs) supported and 45 MKs opposed.
Also on past week, a fascist bill allowing district court judges to impose restrictions on citizens’ freedom of movement and expression based on secret evidence “in order to prevent serious damage to a person’s safety or property” passed its final reading in the Knesset. According to its explanatory notes, the new law, sponsored by MK Zvika Fogel of the racist Otzma Yehudit party, is intended as a two-year temporary measure to enable law enforcement to deal with “a significant increase in the activity of organized crime in Israel, especially in Arab communities.”
Per the law, courts will now be allowed to impose measures based on intelligence briefings by police that include “confidential intelligence material, visible evidence and any other material regarding the assessment that a person is active in a criminal organization,” along with the level of threat posed by the individual.
It also lets police deviate from the prevailing rules of evidence in presentations to the court, which its drafters admitted was “an unusual tool in which a judicial order is used to violate the rights of an individual, due to a forward-looking concern and in the absence of sufficient incriminating evidence regarding acts attributed to him in the past.” Among the options given to judges by the law are limiting a suspect’s time outside their home, prohibiting them from traveling to certain locations or communicating with certain people, stopping them from driving, and prohibiting travel abroad.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=32292
