This Is How the Israeli Occupation Attracts 'Students' to Become Its Future 'Soldiers'
During recent years, studies and press reports mentioned information showing the extension of the arms of the Israeli occupation army to schools with the aim of recruiting the younger generations into its ranks from an early time.
In addition to its intervention in the curriculum itself, it even urged professors to encourage students to join the army, in an attempt to confront its conscription evasion crisis.
The militarization of classrooms in Israeli schools and universities is evident in the overwhelming presence of the Israeli army in the educational system and the presence of the fingerprints of its military units with the aim of encouraging students to join the conscription program adopted by "Israel," which lasts for three years.
“There are many agreements between the Ministry of Education and the Israeli army to control educational programs,” studies pointed out, as the Ministry of Defense sends about 7,000 soldiers to 450 schools.
Military Educational Programs
A report prepared by New Profile, a socio-political movement that aims to reduce the militarization of Israeli society, revealed that “Israeli schools incorporate the military character into their educational curricula, with the knowledge and support of the Ministry of Education. These schools recruit students under the age of fifteen and force them to assimilate within a military nature imposed by the school administration.”
“The Israeli occupation army also engages children in military exercises in various fields, part of it is done through volunteering and part of it is being included in the context of the student's duty in the school,” according to the report.
The report stated that “the Israeli army, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of War, has since its establishment run two broad programs directed to school students: The Teacher Soldier Program and the Young Mentors Program.”
The Teacher Soldier Program is a program to train soldiers to become teachers of Hebrew or Arabic, part of the emphasis in this program is to strengthen students in ways that will benefit the army later, for example, the integration of Arabic language learners into the intelligence service.
As for the second program, which allows army soldiers, in which it calls them "Young Mentors," to serve in schools as coordinators and trainers for programs of readiness for military service, with their obligation to wear the army uniform, adhere to military laws, and submit reports to their civilian and military supervisors.
In his book After Israel, Marcelo Svirsky, the Israeli writer, says: “The Ministry of Education has designed a program called The Next Generation, which is a joint project between the Ministry of Education and the IDF, with the aim of encouraging young people to serve in the military in combat units; as high-ranking IDF officers meet students in schools to share their personal and combat stories, and help them choose the combat units that they will join in the future.”
Militarization of Education
The writer Hajit Gor sees in his research study titled (Militarization of Education in Israel) that “the militarization of educational curricula in the Hebrew countries over the past years has been embodied in three main aspects.
“Instilling the concepts of militarism and strength in the hearts of students, assigning military personnel to run educational institutions and even practice the teaching profession themselves, and the emergence of military religious schools, which is considered the most dangerous manifestation of the militarization of the Israeli educational curricula, because the students within it are brought up on militarism and on religious extremism in its darkest forms,” writer Gor says.
“Whoever looks at the educational curricula in Israeli schools at all levels must draw his attention to the general trend based on educational upbringing on the spirit of militarism and volunteering for the army and preparing the child to grow up to be a warrior, to consecrate the Spartan spirit,” Israeli researcher and journalist Erna Kazin says.
Writer Gor comments in his study on this by saying: “This spirit that has prevailed among the Israelis since 1948, it has penetrated all Israeli official and unofficial bodies in an attempt to create the new Jewish Israeli, who emerged victorious against seven Arab armies and established a state after a thousand years, the makers of the Israeli educational philosophy like to enshrine this in the minds of children and youth, and other mythical claims.”
One of the most prominent manifestations of the militarization of education in "Israel" is the assumption by senior IDF reserve officers of important administrative positions in the education system and the management of educational institutions.
The Ministry of Education in "Israel" is funding a project called (Staff), this project aims to rehabilitate retired army and intelligence officers to engage in education.
The project graduated 300 officers, who were integrated into educational institutions, some of these officers studied for one year and obtained a license to practice teaching, some of them were immediately appointed to jobs such as school management, and some were appointed to educational jobs.
Dr. Yonatan Mendel, a researcher at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, revealed that the Arabic language curriculum is prepared and taught to children in Israeli schools by officers from a military intelligence unit called “Telem,” a branch of Unit 8200 whose job is to eavesdrop on the lives of Palestinians.
“The Israeli army is an integral part of the education system, the aim of teaching Arabic is to teach children to be useful elements in the military system, and to train them to become smart intelligence officers,” Mendel told Middle East Eye.
But schools and universities are not the only institutions that the Israeli army uses to recruit children or the consolidation of the concepts of militarism among the younger generations, there are also summer camps specially designed in the military style.
“Where these camps provide all the basic training followed by the Israeli army through games and competitions that simulate counter-terrorism operations, in addition to activities more related to technology; there are sections dedicated to electronic warfare, espionage, and cybersecurity,” according to the Israeli newspaper, Calcalist.
However, what is interesting in the case is the identification of the Israeli Ministry of Education with the security and military penetration of the occupation army in the educational curricula. This identification reached its climax when an evaluation of the performance of teachers was conducted in post-primary schools, and one of the evaluation criteria was related to the percentage of school graduates enrolled in the Israeli National Service.
Child Recruitment
In 2017, an Israeli newspaper revealed that elementary school-aged Israeli settler children had received training in the use of weapons, at a summer camp inside an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.
In 2016, a school in Tel Aviv gave a presentation on weapons to eight years old children, this included the use of sound bombs, pepper spray and electric detonators.
In 2015, the Center for Globalization Research, a Canada-based NGO, explained that “Israeli teachers believe that the army and schools work side by side and that the situation has worsened under the Education Minister Naftali Bennett at the time.”
Naftali Bennett, who took over the Israeli Ministry of Education in 2015, and who became prime minister of "Israel" in June 2021 as the first leader of a far-right-wing religious party to head the government in the history of the Jewish state.
The center's report at that time revealed that “the close ties between the military and educational institutions mean that Israeli students are being raised to be good soldiers rather than good citizens, and that many teachers expressed concern that they would be expelled if they were seen as critical of official policy.”
It is noteworthy that pictures of Israeli children carrying weapons and conducting military exercises are always spread in the media during many Israeli military ceremonies, these photos reveal the extent to which Israeli society has been militarized and how Israeli children are not immune to this.
“It is horrifying that children are given weapons and encouraged to imagine themselves as murderers, knowing that such activities violate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that Member States shall refrain from recruiting anyone under the age of fifteen into their armed forces,” according to rights groups.
