The Geography and Political Context of Human Rights Education: Israel as a Case Study

Abstract

Studies have shown that human rights education (HRE) can help promote democracy and social progress by empowering individuals and groups and pushing governments to fulfill their obligations towards residents. Assuming that such assessments are accurate, I argue that the successful application of human rights education requires much more than what is generally discussed in the scholarly literature: adjustments to curriculum, additional resources, and adequate teacher training programs. Using Israel as a case study, I show that despite government investment in human rights education, the majority of Jewish youth still do not believe that Palestinian citizens of Israel should enjoy equal rights. This, I maintain, is because other forces, both structural and subjective, always hinder the individual and institutional internalization of HRE's basic precepts. Next, I describe the almost complete segregation among Jews and Palestinians in the educational system as well as the centrality of a hyper-ethno-nationalist ideology, and argue that the specific spatial and political context within which the educational process takes place helps determine to what extent human rights education is successful in promoting the values and practices associated with tolerance, respect, and protection of rights. I conclude by offering an example of an alternative desegregated pedagogical model that tries to provide meaningful human rights education.

Notes

¹Volker Lenhart and Kaisa Savolainen (2002) mention three other issues—human rights in education; education and training of professionals confronted with human rights issues; and educational and social work aspects of the rights of the child—which in my opinion are all a subgroup of the second major issue.

²The right to education is included in several international documents and declarations of the United Nations and other regional or supranational organizations, the most important of which are the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1981), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).

³For example, “World Plan of Action on Education for Human Rights and Democracy” adopted by the International Congress on Education for Human Rights and Democracy, Montreal, Canada, March 8–11, 1993. Online at http://www.unesco.org/webworld/peace_library/UNESCO/HRIGHTS/342–353.HTM; Resolution on the UN-Decade for Human Rights Education, G. A. Res. 1994/184, U.N. Doc. A/RES/49/184, (23 Dec. 1994). See also the “Declaration and Integrated Framework of Action on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Democracy” endorsed by the General Conference of UNESCO at its 28th session, Paris, 1995. Online at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001128/112874eb.pdf; Plan of Action for the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education, 1995–2004, United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Questions: Human Rights Questions, Including Alternative Approaches for Improving the Effective Enjoyment of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, December 12, 1996. A/51/506/Add.1, Appendix. Online at http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/ percent28Symbol percent29/A.51.506.Add.1.En?Opendocument.

⁴HREA has an annotated bibliography of resources involving HRE online at http://www.hrea.org/index.php?doc_id=323. Another resource is the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library online at http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/.

⁵According to the Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)7 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on the Council of Europe Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (Adopted by the Committee of Ministers on May 11, 2010 at the 120th Session) human rights education means “education, training, awareness raising, information, practices and activities which aim, by equipping learners with knowledge, skills and understanding and developing their attitudes and behavior, to empower learners to contribute to the building and defense of a universal culture of human rights in society, with a view to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms” (Council of Europe Charter 2010).

⁶The World Program for Human Rights Education (UNGA 2005) maintains that HRE needs to encompass (1) Knowledge and skills—learning about human rights and mechanisms for their protection, as well as acquiring skills to apply them in daily life, (2) Values, attitudes, and behavior—developing values and reinforcing attitudes and behavior which uphold human rights, and (3) Action—taking action to defend and promote human rights.

⁷This does not include the Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem, who have residency but not full citizenship and therefore do not have Israeli passports.

⁸The state, official Israeli institutions, and most of the Jewish public refer to the Palestinian citizens, using the more generic word Arab, but the Palestinians prefer to be identified as Palestinians.

⁹The poll was carried out by carried out by Maagar Mochot for the School of Education at Tel-Aviv University. The results can be found online at http://www.maagar-mochot.co.il/home/artdetails.aspx?mCatID=14283&artID=9450 and http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3861092,00.html.

¹⁰These are the categories used in the poll and I quote them verbatim, even though I find some of them offensive and believe that polls deploying such terms can have a negative impact on the respondents.

¹¹The Arab public seems to be even less tolerant than the Jewish public when it comes to living as neighbors with people who are “other.” In this case, the most undesirable types of neighbors are homosexual couples (70%), ultra-Orthodox Jews (67%), and former settlers (65%). The most “tolerable” neighbors, in the view of Arab respondents, are foreign workers (48%) (Arian et al. 2010).

¹²For more on segregation that is not induced by laws, consult David Harvey (2008). It is also well documented that the resources available to the Jewish schools are much greater than those provided to the Palestinian schools. Palestinian citizens of Israel enjoy the right to education, but they are, nonetheless, discriminated against. In a study carried out by Daphna Golan-Agnon with the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, “all school principals in Israel had to reveal the budgets they have, not including teachers’ salaries. We found that for each Jewish student, schools have an average of NIS 4,935 a year (approximately US$1,097), and for each Palestinian-Israeli student, NIS 862 (US$191). In the south, for each Palestinian-Israeli child, there are some NIS 270 (US$60) compared to children of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, for whom there are some NIS 6,906 per year (US$1,535). Even though the resource gap has decreased in recent years, in comparison to their Jewish counterparts, Palestinian elementary schools, for example, have about 20% more children in every classroom. There is an 18% gap in the average number of teaching hours per child in favor of the Jewish population, in both elementary and secondary schools. In terms of pedagogical infrastructure, one important variable is the educational level of the teachers. There are 5% more academically trained teachers in the Jewish population than among Arabs. It is difficult to determine the precise gap between Jews and Palestinians in terms of per capita expenditure for education, since published figures range from 500% more resources allocated to Jews to 20% more for Jews. Yet, even if one accepts the lowest figures, the gap is still substantial. Given the vast inequality in resources, it is not very surprising that Palestinian students have the highest dropout rates—7% as compared to 4% Jewish dropout—and lowest achievement levels in the country. The percentage of university students in the 20–34 age group is 9.0% in the Jewish population—almost three times the 3.3% in the Arab population” (Golan-Agnon 2006).

¹³There are a number of other Jewish cities which are home to Palestinian citizens, like Beer-Sheva that has approximately 2,500 Palestinians out of a population of 190,000. Statistical Abstract of Israel 2010 online at http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnatonenew_site.htm.

¹⁴There are Palestinian children who study in Jewish schools, but the curriculum in these schools is not attuned to the history of the Palestinians, their language, culture, traditions, etc. There are no available figures, but one could estimate that several hundred Palestinian children study in Jewish schools.

¹⁵Interview with Hagit Damri, Executive Director of Hagar, May 3, 2011.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Neve Gordon

Neve Gordon is the author of Israel's Occupation as well as the co-editor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel and the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights. His writings have appeared in numerous scholarly journals as well as in publications like The Washington Post, LA Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Ha’aretz, and Al Jazeera. During the first intifada, he was the director of Physicians for Human Rights–Israel.

I would like to thank JHR's anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions and would like to acknowledge the German-Israel Foundation for Scientific Research and Development for supporting the project “Human Rights, Spatial Negotiations and Power Relations in Israel and Turkey” from which this article materialized.