Arab students in Israel face more challenges than Jewish students, but receive fewer budgets and are tightly supervised. No wonder, than, that their scores in the international examinations are lower.

When Israel's Minister of Education commented on the low scores of Israeli students in the international reading examinations, she mentioned that they stem from the low performance of Arab students, in relation to the Jewish students: "These examinations show that in Israel there are two utterly different lingual societies….We have a high level Hebrew lingual society, one of top ten world wide. The acquisition of the Hebrew language is on track. Arabic speaking students are in a great crisis in terms of language acquisition. Ranking higher than the rest of the Arab world is not a great consolation. The whole Arab world is suffering from problems in this realm, but it doesn't mean that we are not responsible for changing the situation."

The connection the minister finds between the failure of the Arab citizens of Israel and the failure of the citizens of other Arab states in the examinations is surprising. What are the borders of the state of Israel? Where does it end, and where do other states begin? What is the Israeli government, including the Ministry of Education, responsible for? It seems that the minister of education is not able to define these limits.

The Arab societies in the Middle East were never considered in Israel as candidates for comparison, or as sources of consolation. Why, then, do they suddenly pop up in Tamir's words as worthy of comparison? Maybe, they were invited to the public discourse this time only to allow the minister to distance herself from the shame of the low performance of the Arab students.

The Arab states suffer from low performance in reading skills due to low budgets, rather than diglossia (the existence of a spoken and written language). The Arab societies, except for those in the Persian golf, suffer from extreme poverty. Comparing the Israeli education system, having similar budgets to western countries, to the poor Arab education system, is irrelevant.

The comparison between Arab students in Israel and Arab students in the Arab states is incorrect, as the Arab students in Israel are required to learn the Hebrew language, as opposed to the Arab students elsewhere.

Yet, the minister does point out the difficulties faced by Arab students in Israel, in comparison to Jewish students. While the Jewish student faces two challenges –learning the Hebrew and English languages, an Arab student faces four challenges: In addition to Arabic, Hebrew and English, he has to learn the differences between spoken and modern standard Arabic.

The true reason for the differences between the achievements of Arab and Jewish students is reflected in the ministers' words, which have a objective-academic tone: "These examinations show that in Israel there are two utterly different lingual societies." The minister is ambivalent: on the one hand, she is ostensibly an objective observer; on the other hand, she is responsible for the Israeli schools. Her words actually normalize the existence of two unequal educational systems.

The gaps between the achievements of the Jews and Arabs actually stem from the way the Israeli educational system was founded. Under the British mandate there were two separate educational systems. A national system for the Arabs, and an autonomous system for the Jews. The national schools were funded by the British alone, and were supervised by them as well. The Hebrew schools were funded by the British, and by western Jewish organizations. They were seemingly superciliously. These two educational systems exist today too, including the gaps between them. The Arab schools are still low-budgeted, and tightly supervised.
The difficulties in the instruction of languages in Arab schools are old news. They have been around for 60 years. In order to deal with this reality, the minister of education must assume full responsibility over them. In order to do so, she must allocate more budgets to Arab schools, which will allow for an improvement in the instruction of languages, and reduce their supervision, so that Arab experts will be able to lead these schools to their true objectives.

“She Laughed, She Laughed – and Died”

By: Yoad Eliaz, published in David Shasha's newsletter titled "Sephardic Heritage Update"

I heard the following story from a cabdriver that I once traveled with, and I recall it from memory:

“My mother died while she was still in Yemen, we were three brothers, and my father remarried a widow who also had three children. After we came to Israel another three children were born to them; two sons and a daughter. The girl was called Rahel. When Rahel was eight months old she fell sick. My parents took her to the hospital and left her there. They had no choice as there were still the other children in the house, and the situation was not at all easy.

“After a number of days they returned to the hospital to visit Rahel and saw the baby sitting among the other babies and seemed healthy. They recalled that she laughed when she saw them. The authorities told them to return in a few days. When they returned to the hospital they were informed by the female doctor that Rahel was dead.

“My parents recalled that Rahel had been in good health when they last saw her on the previous visit and said: ‘But how can it be that she is dead – just a few days ago she was laughing?’

“The doctor responded: ‘She laughed, she laughed – and died.’

“This sentence recurs each time the death of Rahel is recounted by the family. This sentence has become part and parcel of the memory of baby Rahel in our family.”

Two versions of the story, or two histories, are provided in Israeli society regarding the disappearance of children from families who arrived in Israel from Yemen in the 1950s. The history that is told by many of the immigrants themselves as well as by many of their family members describes an organized conspiracy that was enabled with the full knowledge of the Israeli medical establishment of that time. The dimensions of this conspiracy can be gleaned from the horrible fact that even today many Yemenite families continue to repeat such stories of children who have disappeared in similar circumstances.

These children were all brought to Israeli hospitals and were lost there. The parents of these children were generally informed that their son or daughter died and had already been buried.

The second version of this history is told by Israelis who are not Yemenite immigrants or the children of the immigrants. According to this version of the story, there exists a “mystery,” or a “claim that has yet to be proven” in connection to the lost children who disappeared in the early 1950s.

In the struggle between these two opposed versions of the story, there have been a number of investigations as well as citizens’ groups who have been organized to fight to have the tragic story that is told in their families confirmed by the authorities.

At present, neither the investigatory bodies that have examined the matter nor the citizens’ groups have succeeded in definitively settling the matter. However, a number of empty graves have been discovered that were purported to be the graves of the Yemenite children who were claimed to have disappeared.

But until now there has been no presentation of “definitive proof” that would confirm once and for all for the general Israeli public that the stories told by the Yemenite families is true.

The story of baby Rahel is capable of providing such historical confirmation to the Israeli public of this tragic episode.

It is possible to imagine the moment when Rahel’s parents were told the frightening sentence, “She laughed, she laughed – and died”: the parents came to the hospital and said that they just wanted to take their daughter home. The doctor told them that the baby had died. The shocked parents said: “But we had just seen her a few days ago and she was laughing.” It was then that the doctor spoke this callous sentence in a mocking tone.

This was the manner in which an official representative of an Israeli hospital told these parents that their child had died. The parents’ words helped the doctor to more pointedly mock them. She used the laughter of the child in order to laugh at the mournfulness of the two parents who stood before her, as if she was saying to them: “But for primitives like you there is little difference between laughing and crying; joy and pain; your universe is one that lacks human emotions, bereft of thoughts and language.”

The preservation of the doctor’s response by the family encapsulates the memory of their horrible tragedy of the loss of their baby Rahel.

As for the Israeli society, this sentence acts as a witness to the tragedy of the Yemenite Jews, and the racism that was their lot in the Promised Land.

Translated from the Hebrew by David Shasha
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All in Favor by Jessica Balaban

3. All in favor

With so many Jewish and other Israeli issues needing to be addressed, why should world Jewry rally to the aid of Israeli Arabs?

Written by Jessica Balaban, published in Haaretz.com