Bill to bar left-wing groups from schools cleared for final readings

A controversial bill empowering the education minister to ban organizations critical of the Israeli military from entering schools was approved Tuesday by the Knesset Education Committee for its second and third readings at the plenum.

The committee voted in favor by seven votes to five.

In February, the bill passed its first reading at the plenum by a 35-23 margin.

If it passes its second and third readings, it will be signed into law.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the Jewish Home party, who is co-sponsoring the bill with party colleague Shuli Moalem-Refaeli, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, “Whoever goes around the world attacking soldiers of our Israel Defense Forces loses the right to go into our schools.”

The bill is largely aimed at curtailing the activities of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO that gathers and publishes largely anonymous testimonies by former Israeli combat soldiers about alleged human rights violations against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.

The organization, panned by the right-wing as traitorous, most recently during a special meeting about the plight of Gaza’s children on Monday, has been a frequent target of ire.

It has often locked horns with the Israeli political and military brass and its critics have denounced its reports as dishonest, inaccurate, and part of an advocacy campaign intended to harm Israel’s image overseas.

The group and its supporters say it performs a vital service in exposing to the Israeli public the realities faced by young Israeli soldiers who have to control a civilian Palestinian population on a daily basis.

Bennett first proposed the legislation in December 2016 after three high school principals ignored his guidelines on prohibiting the organization from speaking to students.

Reacting to the Education Committee vote Tuesday, Likud lawmaker Amir Ohana said Tuesday, “Pupils in the Israeli education system are not and will not be the guinea pigs of Breaking the Silence and their like.

“We have heard testimony from pupils that what Breaking the Silence had to say [to them] just before they were recruited into the IDF was that it was a rogue army in which it was better not to serve or at least not to serve in any significant capacity. We will put a stop to this absurd situation.”

Michal Rozin of the left-wing Meretz Party hit back, saying the government “continues to prove that it is frightened of free thinking, of different opinions, of democracy.

“It begins with the silencing of organizations like Breaking the Silence and the Bereaved Families Forum (which brings together Israeli and Palestinian families which have lost children to the conflict), and continues on a slippery slope that will include all the issues that the government is trying to hide from the public eye — recruitment of women, LGBT, Reform Judaism and others.”

Two years ago, Israeli lawmakers passed into law the controversial Transparency Bill, which dramatically increases transparency requirements for fewer than two dozen Israeli NGOs — Breaking the Silence among them — that get most of their funding from foreign governments.

A Justice Ministry analysis of the legislation showed that nearly all the Israeli organizations affected by the law were groups that oppose Israel’s presence in the West Bank.

Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would not meet with visiting foreign dignitaries who also meet with representatives of the group.

He even canceled a planned meeting with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel after the latter defied a warning not to meet with the organization.