Enquiry into Herzlia School curriculum
Zionist undermining of constitution, contravening of SA Schools Act
Preface:
On 30 August the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Cape Town (PSC CT) submitted a letter to the South African National Minister of Basic Education and the Western Cape Provincial Minister of Education requesting that they conduct an enquiry into the educational curriculum of Herzlia School Cape Town. The reason is that their curriculum ostensibly undermines the South African constitution because it promotes the state of Israel that imposes colonialism, apartheid and genocide on the Palestinian people. This school might also be facilitating the recruitment of its alumni (as volunteer soldiers) by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) in violation of local law. In addition, the letter requested our engagement with the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) for their collaboration with the state of Israel and Herzlia school.
As a co-author of that letter I share its core arguments with you my readers, in this article. Rest assured that PSC CT and I will be targeted as antisemites (in my case, as ‘a self-hating Jew’) by our Zionist opponents,[1] a theme I have covered in several past articles. This makes it important to give some background to why we have made this demand in respect of a private Jewish Zionist school. The issue is not the Jewish identity of the school but rather its Zionist identity, or its fusing of Jewish and Zionist identities. Zionism as a settler colonial[2], apartheid and genocidal ideology should have no place in our liberated, post-apartheid society, yet it persists, ignored by our national educational ministry and supported by our provincial educational ministry.
On 08 September we received acknowledgement of receipt of our letter by the Western Cape Ministry of Education. Today, more than 60 days later the National Ministry of Basic Education has yet to acknowledge receipt of the letter, and neither the national nor the provincial ministry have provided a substantive response. Consequently, we decided to start a petition to support our demands for the national and provincial education departments to investigate and act against United Herzlia schools’ unlawful acts. Click on the link below to go to the petition page.
The question of private Jewish schools promoting Zionism, which has been identified as a form of apartheid by five human rights organisations, is a matter of concern for organisations in our South African communities that take seriously Nelson Mandela’s comment that ’we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians’.
As one of the concerned organisations the PSC CT contends that there is a prima facie case to be made that Herzlia violates the principles and values embodied in the preamble to the Constitution (Act no 108 of 1996), the values embodied in the constitutional right to education, as well as the values expressed in the preamble to the Schools Act (no 84 of 1996) through:
1. Promoting colonialism and racism as a norm in its teaching curriculum;
2. Facilitating actual support for attacks on Palestinians and violation of their human rights;
3. Violating the standard of freedom of conscience referred to in the Schools Act;
4. Undermining the constitutional values espoused by the Department of Basic Education; and,
5. Violating the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act through facilitation of post-matric alumni from Herzlia volunteering[3] to serve in the IDF.
Israeli apartheid
Five reputable scholarly analyses (by Human Rights Watch [HRW], Amnesty International, b’Tselem, Human Science Research Council and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia), demonstrate that since 1948 Israel has established an apartheid regime that entrenches an ethnocracy[4] that guarantees Jewish political supremacy, reduces Palestinian Israeli citizens to a second-class status[5], and since 1967 militarily occupies the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (which, notwithstanding the withdrawal of direct occupation forces and settlers, remains under military siege by Israel since 2007). Besides the four million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation a further four million live abroad (mainly in neighbouring countries), the descendants of refugees forcibly relocated from historic Palestine by Jewish militia in the 1948 founding of the state of Israel (known as the Naqba) and again after Israel’s military conquest of the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula during June 1967 (known as the Naksa). On 07 October 2023 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and other Gazans broke through the cordon-fence surrounding Gaza and attacked a music festival and several kibbutzim and local military bases. In the ensuing melee many of the Gazans and about 1 400 Israeli citizens were killed, although it is unclear to what extent this happened through ‘friendly fire’ from IDF counter attacks. Israel responded by massing troops near the cordon and bombarding the built areas in Gaza. Currently we are witnessing the next catastrophic ethnic cleansing as Israel attempts to relocate more than a million people from the north of Gaza, as a preliminary to its further bombardment of and already-commenced ground invasion[6] of the area. A curriculum that promotes Zionism elides these facts, thereby becoming complicit in their commission.
Israel’s apartheid regime of domination and control is systemic, intentional and systematised in law and political and social practices. In repressing (both armed and non-violent) resistance in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the IDF functions to persecute organisations and people opposing apartheid. It has attacked Gaza nine times between 2006 and 2023, the latest being the current indiscriminate bombardment. Blumenthal[7] chronicled IDF atrocities in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (2014), also the subject of a movie, “Killing Gaza”, by the author and photographer Dan Cohen[8]. Halper[9] noted disproportionate attacks, attacks on civilians and the willful destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the killing of significant numbers of civilian men, women and children during Protective Edge: of the 2,200 people killed two-thirds were civilians. In 2018 HRW,[10] and in 2019 the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor,[11] documented further IDF human rights violations and war crimes. In the latest attack on Gaza, in retaliation for the Gazans’ break-out and attack on surrounding kibbutzim and military bases, 8 000 people have reportedly been killed, tens of thousands are displaced and a signifcant number of residential superstructures and infrastructure destroyed.
There are many examples of apartheid from studies made of the reality of historic and contemporary Israeli society. One, which should resonate with South Africans familiar with forced removals in our apartheid past, is the demolition of houses of Palestinians by the state of Israel, chronicled by the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions.
Israel demolished at least 108 000 Palestinian houses since 1947, more than half of which were in the West Bank and Gaza following their 1967 conquest.[12] Within Israel proper — the 1949 armistice lines, so-called Green Line[13] — there have been ongoing demolitions amounting to thousands of houses mainly belonging to Bedouin living in the Naqab (Negev desert). But Palestinian citizens of Israel other than the Bedouin have not been spared the trauma of having their homes demolished, an example of which is the village of Dahmash on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Unequal investments to different areas flow from this principle of Jewish supremacy, resulting in underdevelopment of the settlements of Palestinian citizens and their second-class status nationally and culturally. Both apartheid South Africa and Israel share the fact that ethnic cleansing played a significant role in establishing their systems. In South Africa between 1960 and 1983 3,5 million black people were forcibly relocated from their homes in areas prescribed for people interpelated as whites, to other group areas, mainly bantustans.
Another similarity between South Africa and Israel is the apartheid landscape. Committees which control access to living spaces in Israel according to a person’s ‘profile’ (which is code for his/her ethnic identity) are the instruments through which residential areas are segregated into Jewish and Palestinian. We remind our educational ministries that residential segregation is closely correlated with educational segregation. Under Israeli apartheid there exist two educational systems, one for Jewish Israelis and privileged, and the other for Palestinians and degraded. The latter is further segregated into six subsystems: 1) within the Green Line; 2) Gaza; and, 3) the West Bank. And within the West Bank there are: Area C, East Jerusalem (illegally annexed by Israel) and the H2 area of Hebron. The school system within the Green Line is effectively (although not legislatively) segregated. The state discriminates through differential funding and budgets: Palestinian children receive an inferior education. The curriculum framework of all six systems is based on ethno nationalist identities and the imposition of silence through censorship on open discussion of different viewpoints about the founding of Israel, the Nakba, and the Palestinian refugees, resonating with Herzlia’s elision of these historical facts.
A United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children Education Cluster report of 2020/2021, describes far worse educational conditions in the occupied territories, reflecting ongoing violent imposition of colonial domination: The are severe, moderate and mild forms of mental disorders amongst 270 000 Gazan children. Gaza’s fragile education infrastructure has suffered repeated damages and destruction through 12 years of blockade with multiple escalations of hostilities. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem education-related violations include attacks on schools, military use of schools, threats of attack against school staff and students and interference with access to education. In Area C there are also armed and search operations, firing of tear gas into the vicinity of or inside schools, one third of the area lacks primary schools and children consequently have to walk long distances to and from schools (often through two military checkpoints). In the H2 area of Hebron, there are 21 permanently-staffed checkpoints — 7 000 Palestinians must cross a checkpoint merely to leave and return to their homes. Here 4 200 scholars have their journey to school obstructed by checkpoints every day. Herzlia reinforces these cruel practices by punishing its scholars when they dare to raise questions about conditions for Palestinians.
Promoting apartheid values:
Herzlia School articulates its Zionist orientation on the ‘About’ section of its website. About relocations of the indigenous population, corralled into segregated, militarily pacified, areas, official Herzlia says nothing. Its point of departure is the moral rectitude of a nation state for Jews in historic Palestine. By omitting Israel’s atrocities Herzlia’s curriculum falsifies what is in fact taking place in Israel and Palestine. Impressionable minds are being educated based on deceit and lies. But it is also what Herzlia explicitly says and does that arguably violates both the Constitution and the Schools Act.
Its practices are consistent with its Zionist orientation.
1. For example in 2016 its High School principal cited mention of the words ‘Palestinian struggle’ by an alumnus, in an address to the school assembly, as ‘unacceptable rhetoric’.
2. During 2017 the Herzlia Director of Education described as ‘almost antisemitic’, anti-Zionist posters on the campus of Vista High School (Bo-Kaap) that said ‘Yes to Judaism, No to Zionism’ and ‘Israel is a terrorist state guilty of ethnic cleansing in Palestine’. Herzlia had twinned with Vista through an outreach and upliftment project.
3. In 2018 Herzlia disciplined two students who ‘took the knee’ during the singing of the Israeli national anthem: this was consistent with the school’s policy of inculcating Zionism.
While there is no direct evidence of IDF recruitment on the Herzlia campus, in a recent video interview (see video below) the Director, Geoff Cohen, and a colleague mentioned that about 20 per cent of their ex-pupils spend their post-matric year in Israel and of these there are those who serve in the Israeli army. We submit that Herzlia alumni’s service in the IDF could make them criminally complicit in the violation of fundamental human rights of the victims of Gaza and the West Bank.
The practices of Herzlia referred to above have the effect of framing issues to ensure an acceptable narrative about Israel and the Palestinians and then enforcing this on all public addresses on its campuses. It reportedly punished pupils ‘taking the knee’: removed their honours blazers, forced them to write an apology letter and long essays about what they did wrong, required them to attend meetings with ‘community leaders’, barred them from a farewell ceremony and disallowed them from speaking to the press. It attempted to censor open debate at another school (Vista), demanding an unreserved apology and removal of all the anti-Zionist posters.
Teaching (or implying to) young people that it is good and right for them to volunteer to fight in the IDF could well be a contravention of both the South African constitution as well as the South African Schools Act. Herzlia’s actions against the expression of opposition to Zionism on — and off — its campuses flies in the face of the Schools Act’s imperative to combat unfair discrimination and intolerance and undermines the rights of learners to free speech.
Collaborate or resist?
Two of the three episodes referred to above met with resistance and opposition, but not from the WCED which on the contrary collaborated with Herzlia and the state of Israel. Instead, opposition came from the community served by Vista High School and from Herzlia alumni.
In 2017 the Bo-Kaap community, ex-pupils of Vista, community activists and ulama (Muslim scholars) rallied for the Vista deputy principal, articulated that the posters were not antisemitic and criticised the principal. The school governing body then terminated its collaboration with Herzlia. Vista school withdrew disciplinary steps against the deputy-Principal, noting that the law placed a prohibition only on party political activities and not on all political activities.
In 2018 100 Herzlia alumni, including ‘five former head or deputy-head boys or girls’, signed a letter condemning the school’s actions against the two learners who ‘took the knee’ and expressed support for freedom of thought and peaceful expression of dissent. This demonstrates that while Herzlia presents a façade about a Jewish consensus regarding what constitutes ‘acceptable’ forms of criticism of the state of Israel, in reality there is widespread disagreement regarding this among Herzlia’s alumni, including prestigious ex-scholars. This underlines Herzlia’s practice of framing the way dissent should be articulated, thereby effectively undermining the expression of oppositional views among its learners.
On the other hand, in 2017, the WCED took Herzlia’s side in its challenge to free political expression. In the altercation regarding the anti-Zionist protest posters at Vista, the Vista principal initially responded that the anti-Zionist protest went against the school policy. The WCED said it would investigate the incident for expression of hate speech, gross insubordination and the carrying out of political activities at the school (which their spokesperson said was expressly excluded by the Employment Educators’ Act). As already noted, the Bo-Kaap community and an alliance of other social groupings presented a different view and used their power through the school governing body to defend freedom of political expression at the school. In engaging with a Zionist-influenced organisation the WCED also reinforced the equivalence of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
In 2019 the WCED in collaboration with the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre (CT H&GC) embarked on a ‘study-tour’ of Israel, ostensibly to better inform teachers and officials about the German genocide of European Jewry and Israel’s position in the Middle East. This raised protest from the African National Congress Western Cape and the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU). It was reported that the trip was hosted by the CT H&GC in partnership with Yad Vashem School of Holocaust Studies to address the moral and ethical ramifications of genocide history while addressing issues relating to prejudice and racism. The protests appear to have been ignited by photos of senior WCED officials posing with armed Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem, posted on social media. The protests criticised the study tour on the basis that the state of Israel, through the IDF, is involved in egregious violations of human rights and international law.
The SADTU release said that it was aware of tours of the CT H&GC and that it had not detected that these were biased in favour of Zionism. But this elides the fact that at least three of the CT H&GC’s trustees are self-proclaimed Zionists and a further three are likely to be Zionists.[14]
Conclusion:
In short, the problematic practices of the WCED goes far beyond the posing of its officials with Israeli soldiers. Israel interpellates antisemitism through a lense on the genocide of European Jewry (holocaust), assuming that the Jewish nation requires political sovereignty in its own state to survive future genocidal attacks. Anti-Zionism is deemed to be antisemitic because it struggles against the regime that makes Israel exclusively the nation state of those interpelated as Jews. Scholar Michael Rothberg in “Multidirectional Memory” (page 176), links the perceived risk of genocide to the perceived exceptional suffering of Jewish people.[15] His concept of multidirectional memory is a critique of competitive memory, to explain how different memories of racial and colonial violence interact and mutually influence one another’s ideological development. There is no hierarchy of suffering; and, our memories of trauma are always in relation to others’ trauma. Progressive political practice as part of an ideology of human liberation must include conscious dialogue between the memories of racial violence within Europe and the colonial violence outside of Europe. Through participating in this study tour WCED officials in effect reinforced the exceptionalist view of Jewish suffering, contradicting a central tenet of our constitution and the Schools Act: the inherent equality of all people and cultures.
In an earlier article I used the term ideological state apparatus (ISA) to explain how specific social identities are interpelated (called). Schools are a critical (but not the only) component of ISAs. The important take away from this is the fact that states are involved in the articulation and implementation of ideologies that frame the world view of young people who are being socialised at schools. In the example of Herzlia explored in this article the ISAs of both South Africa and Israel converged to reinforce historically specific identities of being Jewish, antisemitism and Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish ethno state.
Instead the WCED should be charged with the question of how the memories of European racial violence in Europe and its earlier manifestation in the colonies (particularly in Africa and Latin America) can be developed in their universal meaning of human pain, suffering and degradation. PSC CT subscribes to this view, an understanding of citizenship constructed from below, at times in opposition to the state and at times in conjunction with it. This is an ideological struggle that operates within the confines of civil society and beyond.
As our letter indicated we find ourselves — with other social groupings — in opposition to the WCED, on the question of memories of past and present human pain and suffering and the inter-relationship of specific genocidal moments in various parts of the globe. We therefore asked to have further engagement with both the National Department of Basic Education as well as the WCED on this matter and also about the specific issues we raised concerning Herzlia’s practices
Our letter is based on information in the public domain that we have researched over a number of years. We are committed to continuing this research and exposing educational practices that violate both the spirit and content of our constitution and the Schools Act, and also monitoring the performance of the Department of Basic Education and the WCED in ensuring that educational institutions comply with and reflect these values in their curricula.
Paul Hendler, Solidarity with Palestine, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 31 October 2023
After reading the above, please decide where you stand on this issue. If my argument has convinced you please click on the link below and sign the petition.
The following two interesting comments are from former Herzlia alumni who have signed the petition:
[1] This equating of criticism of Israel’s policies with antisemitism provides a powerful disincentive to opposition to its suppression of Palestinian rights.
[2] Settler colonialism is arguably a key concept for understanding the situation today in historic Palestine, that does not reduce itself to a symmetrical balance of forces between two competing nationalisms. Readers interested in understanding this should find Mike Hazou’s “Zionist Volksgemeinscaft’ useful.
[3] The Defence Minister’s authority is required before a SA citizen can volunteer to serve in a foreign army or force.
[4] For further argumentation that the Israeli state is an ethnocracy (and not a democracy) see Jeenah, Na’eem 2012 Pretending democracy, living ethnocracy, in Jeenah (editor) Pretending Democracy — Israel, an Ethnocratic State, AMEC, Johannesburg, pages 3–23. Israel claims to be Jewish and democratic. The Jewish aspect of the state is “illustrated by the Law of Return, which grants Jews from around the world the right to claim citizenship of the state. Thus for Israeli Zionists the notion of a ‘Jewish state’ refers to a state belonging to all Jews around the world and not to all its citizens or even its Jewish citizens. This unique formulation of nationality helps to justify discriminating against non-Jewish (especially Palestinian) citizens while privileging Jewish citizens and Jewish non-citizens” (page 8).
[5] Comparable to the second-class citizen status of people interpelated as coloured and Indian under South African apartheid.
[6] At the time of writing this article a report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersch, based on insider-Israeli intelligence, described the ground invasion as consisting of mainly tank and artillery fire to flatten many buildings in Gaza City that are said to be located above a maze of underground tunnels where both Hamas/Islamic Jihad fighters and hostages are sheltering. The logic behind this is to minimise IDF casualties by holding back infantry soldiers from hand-to-hand fighting.
[7] Blumenthal, Max 2015. The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, Verso, London, New York.
[9] Halper, Jeff 2015. “War Against the People — Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification”, Pluto Press, pg. 119.
[10] The IDF’s lethal force used against Palestinian demonstrators who posed no imminent threat to life may amount to war crimes, according to a 2018 HRW report. Based on eye-witness accounts, this was in response to the IDF killing more than 100 protestors in Gaza by end of March 2018, and wounding thousands with live ammunition. The background was that between March and June 2018 Palestinians in Gaza had engaged in weekly demonstrations near the fence between Gaza and Israel to protest the 11-year closure of Gaza and to commemorate the expulsion and flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees when Israel was established in 1948. The killings were reportedly based on an explicit IDF policy to use live ammunition against people who approached or attempted to cross or damage the fences.
[11] In December 2019 the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, stated in conclusion of a preliminary examination, that she was satisfied there was a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine, pursuant to article 53(1) of the Rome Statute. In brief, the ICC prosecutor was satisfied that (i) war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip (“Gaza”) (for specifics, see paras. 94, 95–96); (ii) potential cases arising from the situation would be admissible; and (iii) there were no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice.
[12] Administrative demolitions (for lack of a building permit) accounted for 20 per cent of this total (mainly on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem), while land clearance and military demolitions (linked to land clearance with a military goal and the killing of Palestinians as part of extra-judicial executions) accounted for 66 per cent of 56 000 units demolished after 1967 in the occupied territories.
[13] Judged by the International Court of Justice to be Israel’s de jure border
[14] See my earlier article about the function of the CTH&GC, specifically in influencing an important Constitutional Court ruling regarding what constitutes antisemitic hate speech.
[15] See another of my earlier articles, critiquing the weaponisation of the German genocide of European Jewry, and how this is linked to the necessity for a Jewish state, Israel, in the logic of Zionist ideology. The point is that trustees of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Centre use their economic and financial class muscle to establish hegemonic ideas about the identities of being Jewish, antisemitism and Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. The hegemony of their ideas is realised when key officials in the provincial state, schools and judicial apparatuses internalise these ideas.
