A session of the Knesset Education Committee, scheduled for Monday, June 20, was initially intended to focus on the question of freedom of expression in educational institutions. Yet, ahead of the meeting, Dr. Zeev Degani, Principal of the Herzliya Gymnasium, and Ram Cohen, Principal of Public High School Aleph of Tel Aviv, were summoned to attend the meeting in light of their statements: Degani had criticized the campus visits made by IDF officers encouraging enlistment in combat units, and Cohen had spoken openly with his students about the Occupation. Last week, the Committee decided to add to the session the issue of the Islamic Movement and its penetration into educational institutions.
In a letter sent on June 20 by Atty. Dan Yakir, ACRI’s Chief Legal Counsel, Yakir notes that the summons of these two (and only these two) specific principals raises suspicions that the Education Committee is attempting to de-legitimize certain political and/or social positions. Additionally, he notes that the two issues up for discussion – freedom of expression in educational institutions and the inception of private bodies in educational institutions – are both extremely weighty matters, each requiring its own separate and thorough hearing. The decision to connect these two issues raises additional concerns that extraneous and inappropriate political considerations are involved.
According to Yakir, “ACRI has requested several times in the past that the Education Committee hold a principled debate regarding the inception of private bodies in the education system. The Committee has never found time for such a hearing, and yet they have suddenly found time to discuss one specific movement. The inclusion of the Islamic Movement in the discussion, tacked onto the question of freedom of expression, only increases the fear that this session will serve as a populist platform for hurling invectives against the Islamic Movement and the school principals, lopped together and characterized as a single ‘enemy.'”
