Ethno-nationalism in citizenship education in Israel: an analysis of the official civics textbook

Abstract

Over the past few years, the civics curriculum for Israeli high-schools has become the centre of a heated political debate. Following this debate, in May 2016 a revised official textbook was introduced. This paper draws on an in-depth analysis of the revised official textbook, comparing it to the previous official textbook published in 2000. The analysis focuses on the discursive changes that took place regarding the ways in which the revised textbook conceptualises Israeli citizenship. A particular focus is placed on how the revised version of the official textbook often prioritises the ethno-national model of the nation state over and above the commitment to democratic values, including minority rights. The main argument of this paper is that these changes are a reflection of the penetration of a neo-Zionist discourse into the civics curriculum.

Keywords:

• Civic education
• textbook analysis
• ethno-nationalism
• neo-Zionism
• Israel

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who carefully read and commented on our paper. Their comments were most valuable and the paper is much improved as a result. We would also like to than our dear friend Prof. Haggai Ram for commenting the final draft and making editorial suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors

Notes

1 First and second Temple refer to two periods in Jewish ancient history. They both represent in Jewish modern narrative, glorious time of Jewish existence and sovereignty in the Land of Israel. The first temple refers to the first Jewish Kingdom between 1025BC and 586BC. It includes the period of Kind David and King Salomon and ended with the distruction of the first temple by the Babylonian exile. The second temple refers to period between 538BC and the return to Zion and rebuilt of the temple, and 138 AD – after the second temple was destroyed and the majority of the Jewish people in Zion was exiled by the Romans.