Knesset passes law allowing Education Ministry to fire teachers who publicly identify with acts of terror

A law authorizing the Education Ministry to dismiss teachers who publicly identify with an act of terrorism passes its final reading in the Knesset 55-45.

According to its explanatory notes, the bill, which also allows the ministry to cut funding for schools that have shown support for or identification with a terrorist act or a terrorist organization, is primarily aimed at Arab schools in East Jerusalem where there is “incitement of minors against the State of Israel alongside the glorification of terrorists” whose “destructive and long-term effect, 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.”

“Education is a central and significant factor that motivates many terrorist attacks against the State of Israel,” says far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Teachers are among the most significant influences on children and the bill was “designed to make sure that a teacher does not use his influence for terrorist activity by his students and that the school does not allow this to happen,” says bill co-sponsor MK Zvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit).

Teachers who identify with terrorism can teach “in Tehran, Gaza or Ramallah today, but not in our schools,” declares co-sponsor Likud MK Amit Halevi.

“As we know, a bomb is not created and does not explode by itself. Its basic components are the brain and the heart, the consciousness of destruction, and the emotional fervor to carry it out, and these are created first of all in the educational system,” he adds. “One teacher may raise dozens of ticking bombs every year. One idea can be more destructive than a thousand tanks.”