Knesset passes law allowing government to fire teachers it asserts identify with terror
Right-wing MKs call new law an important tool in preventing radicalization; rights group ACRI says it ‘violates the rights to expression, employment and pedagogical autonomy’
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
The Knesset on Monday morning gave final approval to a law authorizing the Education Ministry to fire teachers who publicly identify with an act of terrorism, drawing immediate condemnation from human rights advocates.
The bill, co-sponsored by MKs Zvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit) and Amit Halevi (Likud), was approved 55-45 in its third and final reading — immediately after it also passed its second reading — following an overnight opposition filibuster.
It grants the director-general of the Education Ministry the authority to fire, without prior notice, teachers who have either been convicted of a security or terror offense, or have “published a direct call to carry out an act of terrorism or published words of praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism [or] support for or identification with it.”
The law also allows the ministry to cut or reduce funding for schools in which such expressions have been found, if it has been determined that “the management of the educational institution knew or should have known about their existence.”
Teachers are among the most significant influences on children and the bill was “designed to make sure that a teacher does not use their influence for terrorist activity by their students and that the school does not allow this to happen,” explained Fogel.
According to its explanatory notes, the bill is primarily aimed at Arab schools in East Jerusalem where alleged incitement turns minors “against the State of Israel” and terrorists are glorified in a way that has a “destructive and long-term effect [that], among other things, may be expressed in the large number of minors living in East Jerusalem who carry out or attempt to carry out terrorist attacks.”
The law’s passage was warmly welcomed by ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said in a statement that “education is a central and significant factor that motivates many terrorist attacks against the State of Israel.”
Teachers who identify with terrorism can teach “in Tehran, Gaza or Ramallah today, but not in our schools,” Halevi declared in a celebratory statement after the bill’s passage.
“As we know, a bomb is not created and does not explode by itself. Its basic components are the brain and the heart, the destructive intention, and the emotional fervor to carry it out, and these are created first of all in the education system,” he said. “One teacher may raise dozens of ticking bombs every year. One idea can be more destructive than a thousand tanks.”
The legislation was almost immediately panned by Hadash-Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi, who retweeted a statement by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) arguing that its purpose was “to regulate the discourse in schools and to harm teachers whose statements and worldview do not coincide with those of the education minister and the political parties controlling the Education Ministry.”
“The purpose of the law is to threaten teachers and principals of Arab schools, to mark them and make them a target for surveillance and persecution,” the rights group stated, arguing that the tools already at its disposal before the current law were “adequate and sufficient.”
“The law severely violates the rights to expression, employment and pedagogical autonomy of teachers and administrators,” it added.
Dismissing teachers who support terror is a good idea but the new law is a bad idea, said Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz, a former educator.
“What Fogel and Halevi did… is to give the director-general of the Education Ministry, a political appointee, the power to decide what terrorism is. It can be real terrorism and it can also be a leftist who doesn’t like Bibi. The authority will be at the discretion of the director-general,” he tweeted referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his nickname.
Fogel and Halevi’s bill defines identification with terrorism in accordance with Israel’s Counterterrorism Law, which bans acts of “identification with a terrorist organization, including by publishing words of praise, support or sympathy, waving a flag, displaying or publishing a symbol, or displaying, playing or publishing a slogan or anthem.”
None of the large, non-governmental educational organizations such as the Teachers’ Union or National Parents’ Association released statements on Tuesday morning regarding the law’s passage. A Times of Israel request to the Teachers’ Union for comment received no reply.
Policing the universities
A similar bill, focused on higher education, passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset this summer and is currently waiting for committee approval to go to the first of three readings necessary to become law.
That bill — which was written in cooperation with the National Union for Israeli Students (NUIS) and is sponsored by coalition whip Ofir Katz (Likud), among others — would require universities to fire without compensation any instructors who deny Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish nation, incite terrorism, or express support for a terrorist organization or an armed struggle against the State of Israel.
Addressing party lawmakers in June, MK Tibi decried what he described as a “fascist campaign” against “lecturers and academics who have a different opinion about the war.”
Describing the proposed legislation as “part of an ongoing incitement and smear campaign of a McCarthyistic nature against the Israeli academy,” the Association of University Heads warned that, if passed, it would create “an atmosphere of whistleblowing and fear on academic campuses.”
Since the beginning of the war, lawmakers have proposed several measures to police the educational system and restrict speech, prompting ACRI to caution in March that “the trends of silencing, harm to media outlets and journalists, and the intention to silence citizens who criticize the regime are intensifying.”
Gavriel Fiske contributed to this report.
