Yuli Tamir indicates will use school system to educate to support withdrawal
plan?

Aaron Lerner Date: 5 May 2006

"It is necessary to differentiate between party questions and political
question - and political questions certainly have a place also in our
educational system. For example, what happened during the course of the
disengagement concerned me very much, and mainly the phenomenon of
alienation that it brought about.

If a government decision is passed to continue with the evacuations, then I
expect that the educational system will prepare the students for it, that it
will talk to them about it, even if the matter is subject to deep public
dispute"
Minister of Education, Culture & Sport Yuli Tamir - interviewed in Yediot
Ahronot 5 May 2006

During the early Oslo period the Rabin and Peres governments turned the
Israeli educational system into what might best be termed "peace-plan
education camps" - with various programs and activities to educate (or as
critics put it - "brainwash") students of all ages to support Oslo.

Does Tamir want to do in the school system what she was blocked from doing
at the Rabin Center?

The following are excerpts from an article that appeared immediately after
Tamir resigned from the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies:

The following are excerpts from
Looking back in anger
By Vered Levy-Barzilai Ha'aretz (Magazine section) 15 November 2002
www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=230426&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

. Tamir declared a rule that she had adopted, and that she recommended that
members of the center adopt: No one who was on the balcony in Zion Square at
the infamous right-wing demonstration in July 1994 (meaning Sharon,
President Moshe Katzav, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert) would ever stand on the stage at the Rabin
memorial service in Rabin Square.

. When Yuli Tamir was appointed as head of the center, in April 2001, she
believed that she would bring changes with her, that she would succeed in
setting a new order of priorities. She found the center involved mainly in
attempts to bridge the gaps between religious and secular, and right- and
left-wing, populations. Tamir had reservations about this activity. She
considered it a deviation from the main issue.

Tamir repeated her position: The Rabin Center must focus on the
commemoration of Rabin and his legacy by discussing the murder, the
incitement that preceded the murder, and the damage done by this political
assassination to Israeli democracy. At the same time, the center must engage
in commemorating Rabin and his activity by turning to broader sectors

."I understand that there is some cognitive dissonance here. People who were
a central part of the incitement [against Rabin] are now running the
country. One is the prime minister. One is the president. One was the prime
minister. One is the mayor of Jerusalem. It's a problem.My problem is that
they are a daily reminder of failure. Of what we don't want to remember:
that in the State of Israel, you can do something that is extremely grave,
and the public won't punish you, but rather will reward you.

"I have another problem: How will we teach children and youth what democracy
is, what democratic debate is? How will I explain to them the difference
between an opponent whom you want to confront, and an enemy you would like
to destroy, when the most basic laws of democracy are not observed by the
highest-ranking members of the state? .

"For 2003 I prepared a budget with a different order of priorities: as much
money as possible for education and for direct commemoration, no budget for
this whole story of `mending rifts.'

.But the last straw, says Yuli Tamir, wasn't Sharon's men, but the memorial
gathering for Rabin that took place on November 2.

.." What kind of an assembly did you want to see?

"A political gathering, with a clear political statement. I want there to be
political

" What do you think could be gained from such an assembly?

"A reconstruction of the pain. Tens of thousands of people who will emerge
with a broken heart and with total political commitment."

. " I presented my ideological positions from the moment I came to the Rabin
Center, and I have stuck to them all along. My political and
social-educational positions have long been known."

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il