Education for democracy in Israel: Structural impediments and basic dilemmas

Abstract

Abstract Research in Israel has shown a high level of non-democratic, and even anti-democratic, attitudes among Israeli high-school students. Similar findings in the adult population indicate that this is not a “childhood disorder” that evaporates with age, but something which could pose a threat to Israel's young and fragile democracy. The article analyses the constraints on and dilemmas of effective democratic education in Israel. These impediments include the non-democratic countries of origin of the vast majority of Israel's Jewish and Arab population (Eastern Europe and the Arab Middle East); the partially non-democratic political traditions of the main political camps (the Left, the Right and the Orthodox); the lack of a liberal-democratic written constitution as an educational tool; the absence of a national consensus (especially among the political elites); the problems posed by occupied territories under military government; the salience of the security issue, which leads teachers and parents to perceive democracy and human rights as a luxury in the context of war and terror; the problem of religion and state, and the attitude of Israel's Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox that in a Jewish–democratic state, Jewish should come first and democratic second; and finally examples of non-democratic behaviour of the political leadership.