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Haaretz
Original
Article
Wed., August 12, 2009 Av 22, 5769 | Israel Time: 02:12 (EST+7)
Removing hypocrisy
By Edna Ullmann-Margalit
The High Court justices made some emphatic statements last Thursday when
they issued a precedent-setting ruling banning the segregation of Ashkenazi
and Sephardi girls at the Beit Ya'akov Girls' School in Emmanuel. The right to a separate education based on ethnic affiliation
is not an absolute right when it clashes with the right to equality, the
judges ruled.
The High Court was asked to hear the case after a second school - a
reclusive Hasidic institution, most of whose students are Ashkenazi - opened
its doors two years ago in the same building as the Beit Ya'akov Girls'
School, most of whose students are Sephardi.
The story borders on the unbelievable. In order to segregate between the two
schools, which are located on different floors of the same building (the
Ashkenazi school on top, the Sephardi on the bottom), the Hasidic school
begins its academic year a few days before the Beit Ya'akov school. The two
schools begin their days at different times, and students go on break at
different times as well. They have separate entrances divided by a plaster
wall, and the yard has been covered with jute screening to separate the
students. Each group has its own uniform, and even the teachers have
separate rooms.
The Education Ministry tried to persuade the court that the separation was
legitimate because the motivation was not ethnic or racial, but rather due
to different worldviews and lifestyles. This reasoning is justified in
Israeli law, which recognizes "cultural pluralism."
Last week, the court tore off the cloak of hypocrisy. The judges denounced
the school's argument that the segregation was due to religious, not ethnic,
considerations, calling it "camouflage for discrimination" cloaked in
cultural disparity.
The importance of this ruling is immeasurable. No longer can claims of
sectarian autonomy and multiculturalism be made to automatically justify
discrimination. In April 2006, Judge Yehudit Tzur issued a courageous
ruling, forbidding ultra-Orthodox Beit Ya'akov seminaries in Jerusalem from
rejecting Mizrahi girls.
Discrimination in the education system cannot be accepted. In the last
decade, the Supreme Court has addressed this disgraceful practice many
times. In a landmark 2006 ruling, the High Court struck down a government
decision delineating so-called national education focus zones, which had
codified a method that allotted preferential status to just four Arab towns,
in contrast with almost 500 Jewish towns.
In a dramatic, unanimous ruling by a panel of seven judges, the court ruled
that "the government decision ... does not dovetail with the principle of
equality, for its results create unacceptable discrimination against members
of the Arab sector in realizing their right to an education, thus making it
unconstitutional."
It is a bitter irony that the Supreme Court, which vociferously demanded
that the government provide Arabs with equal opportunities in the name of
Israel's Jewish and democratic values, is now denouncing an attempt by Jews
to blatantly discriminate against other segments of the Haredi Jewish
population on the basis of ethnicity.
The story of how this state came into being is not limited to Israel's wars.
It is also the story of several landmark court rulings - both positive and
negative - like the Rudolf Kastner case, Kafr Qasem, Brother Daniel and the
Shalit family, Leah Shakdiel and Alice Miller, Elon Moreh and Jenin, the
banning of torture, the Kaadan case, and others.
Two court rulings that make a clear, principled statement in favor of
education equality and that strike down educational discrimination based on
nationality and race, between Jews and Arabs, and Ashkenazi and Sephardi
girls, are worthy of mention in the State of Israel's historical record.
The writer is head of the School of Education at Hebrew University.
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