education

By Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye

Close ties means Israeli pupils are being raised to be "good soldiers" rather than good citizens

HAIFA - The task for Israeli pupils: to foil an imminent terror attack on their school. But if they are to succeed, they must first find the clues using key words they have been learning in Arabic.

Arabic lesson plans for Israel’s Jewish schoolchildren have a strange focus.

Those matriculating in the language can rarely hold a conversation in Arabic. And almost none of the hundreds of teachers introducing Jewish children to Israel’s second language are native speakers, even though one in five of the population belong to the country’s Palestinian minority.

The reason, says Yonatan Mendel, a researcher at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is that the teaching of Arabic in Israel’s Jewish schools is determined almost exclusively by the needs of the Israeli army.

Would you like to take action against the militarisation of youth? You can join War Resisters' International's week of action from 14 to 20 November (as an individual or as a group).

War Resisters' International is organising the 2nd International Week of Action Against the Militarisation of Youth this year from 14 to 20 November. The week is a concerted effort of antimilitarist action across the world to raise awareness of, and challenge, the ways young people are militarised, and to give voice to alternatives.

Lawrence Wittner - In 1915, a mother's protest against funneling children into war provided the theme of a new American song, "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier." Although the ballad attained great popularity, not everyone liked it. Theodore Roosevelt, a leading militarist of the era, retorted that the proper place for such women was "in a harem―and not in the United States."

If Roosevelt were still around today, a century later, he would be happy to learn that preparing children for war continues unabated.

By Franzi Vier 

When were these images last seen in Germany? Children clamber on tanks, sit in military helicopters, hold anti-tank weapons in their hand and receive orders from soldiers in uniform about their functions. The army and military equipment are shown as a seemingly acceptable part of free time and family excursions.

These images come from Germany’s armed forces day, the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Bundeswehr on June 13. “Believe it or not, it was 60 years waiting for this day,” states the Bundeswehr’s official homepage. But now it was finally here: “German armed forces day is being celebrated for the first time at 15 locations nationwide.”