The formation of a special Ministry of Education committee, in addition to efforts by Deputy Education Minister Eliezer Moses, and threats of serious sanctions if last year’s Emanuel Beis Yaakov affair is repeated do not seem to have achieved the intended objective. Despite last year’s unprecedented protest; division in the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities; and arrests & imprisonment of parents, it appears round two is underway, this time the focus is on Kiryat Sefer.
It appears that a number of high school girls assigned to schools, primarily in Kiryat Sefer, were not actually welcomed to the schools. It appears that school administration was on hand to make certain a number of girls were not permitted into the building despite being instructed to attend the school by the Ministry of Education.
In other cases, some girls who headed to school Thursday morning were targeted with insults, by school staff as well as special instructions. In one case, a parent reports the school principal told her, “don’t worry. It won’t take too long until you decide to leave on your own”!
Earlier in the week directors of schools were warned, that barring students from schools would result in extremely harsh sanctions.
Whatever the response will be, for now, once again a number of girls are at home, without a school despite promises that there would be no reoccurrence of last year.
Kikar Shabbat reports that Yoni Mizrachi, who heads the Chareidim non-profit organization in Kiryat Sefer wished to respond to the report.
“I am personally aware of the incidents cited in the report. Our organization receives such complaints, already beginning days ago. If the ministry does not act appropriately we will have to weigh the situation and decide on a course of action. The time has come for the State of Israel and the Ministry of Education to bring an end to this practice, the wicked behavior of the principals of these schools.
“The time has come for the heads of these schools to realize that in order to receive state budgets, they must adhere to state rules, which included accepting students regardless of their ethnicity” Mizrachi concluded.
In response, the Ministry of Education released the following statement: “The incidents will be investigated. If the information proves accurate, they will be viewed as extremely serious occurrences and sanctions will be implemented. In the meantime, the ministry is focusing on integrating the girls into schools”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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7 Responses
How come here in the United States we don’t have this problem of the government telling us how to run our schools even though they fund a huge chunk of the budget?
IDT grad, we used to have this problem: In the South and parts of the North, you couldn’t attend specific schools if you were the wrong race. It took decades to get rid of that racist system, and the racists expressed a lot of resentment, often violently.
How come this article quotes only one side of this problem?
Because the governments DO NOT fund almost any part of the budget, other than some food program and textbook assistance. This is because of the separation of church and state, one of the constitutional mainstays.
Maybe check your facts first, and post second…
@1 … a huge chunk of whose budget?
Because American Jewish institutions don’t violate American laws or have the problems of sinath chinam at the ethnic level that some schools have in Eretz Ysrael. Lehavdil, black gentiles in America once paid gasoline tax that maintained beaches which they weren’t allowed to attend. You can’t believe the devastation that such school official behaviour has on the rejected girls & the consequences are on the heads of these principals.
#1, we do have that. Look in most newspapers or magazines and you’ll sometimes see a non-discrimination policy that schools must post.