TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – Israel’s education minister says he bans groups calling Israel an ‘apartheid state’ from teaching at schools – a move aimed at one of the country’s leading human rights groups after defeating Israel and began to describe his control. of the Palestinian territories as a single apartheid system.
The explosive term, long regarded as taboo and mostly used by the country’s harshest critics, is strongly rejected by Israel’s leaders and many ordinary Israelites.
Education Minister Yoav Galant tweeted on Sunday that he had instructed the ministry’s director general to stop organizations calling Israel “an apartheid state” or “disrespecting Israeli soldiers for teaching at schools”.
“The Ministry of Education under my leadership has raised the banner of promoting Jewish, democratic and Zionist values and acting accordingly,” he said. It was not immediately clear whether he had the authority to ban speakers from schools.
In a report released last week, the rights group B’Tselem said that while Palestinians live under various forms of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank, blocked Gaza, annexed East Jerusalem and within Israel itself, they have fewer rights than Jews in the entire area between the Mediterranean the Jordan River.
B’Tselem said that the minister’s announcement would not deter it and that the group nevertheless gave a lecture on this via a video call to a school in the northern city of Haifa.
“B’Tselem is determined to stick to its mission of documenting reality, analyzing it, and making our findings known to the Israeli public and to the world,” the statement said.
Adalah, an Arab group for legal rights, said it had called on the country’s attorney general to cancel Galant’s order, saying it was made without the necessary authority and that it was intended to ” to silence legitimate votes. “
In 2018, Israel passed a law preventing lectures or activities in schools from being supported by groups taking legal action against Israeli soldiers abroad. The law was apparently drafted in response to the work of Breaking the Silence, a bell-ringing group of former Israeli soldiers who oppose policy in the occupied West Bank. It was not clear whether Galant’s decision was rooted in the 2018 law.
Israel has long presented itself as a thriving democracy. Its own Arab citizens, who make up about 20% of the population of 9.3 million, have citizenship rights, but they often suffer discrimination in housing and other areas. Arab citizens of Israel have representatives in parliament, serve in the government’s bureaucracy and work in various fields with Jewish Israelis.
During the 1967 war, Israel seized East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – countries where almost 5 million Palestinians live and who want the Palestinians for a future state.
B’Tselem and other rights groups claim that the borders separating Israel and the West Bank have long since disappeared – at least for Israeli settlers, who can travel freely back and forth while their Palestinian neighbors need permits to enter Israel.
Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but imposed a blockade after the Palestinian militant Hamas group took power there two years later. It regards the West Bank as a ‘controversial’ area whose fate must be determined in peace talks with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, the autonomy government for its Palestinian residents.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 in a move that is not internationally recognized and regards the entire city as its united capital. Most Palestinians in east Jerusalem are Israeli “residents”, but not citizens with the right to vote.
Israel strongly rejects the term apartheid, saying the restrictions it imposes on Gaza and the West Bank are temporary measures needed for security. Most Palestinians in the West Bank live in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but the areas are surrounded by Israeli checkpoints and Israeli soldiers can enter at any time. Israel has full control over 60% of the West Bank.
B’Tselem argues that Israel, by dividing the territories and using different means of control, conceals an underlying reality that approximately 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians live under a single system with many unequal rights.