Published: 2 December 2024
Last updated: 3 December 2024
A new front in the Gaza war opened in Australian Jewish day schools last month when the Emanuel School in Sydney invited two members of the Israeli-Arab peace organisation Standing Together to speak to Year 12 students.
In a microcosm of the battle for hearts and minds that has accompanied the Gaza conflict, the Standing Together presentation on November 12 set off a chain reaction of outrage, apologies and criticism across the school’s community, spanning students, teachers, the school board, advocacy groups, and even former students from the school.
Collectively, the incident has ignited difficult questions about the responsibility of Jewish schools to their students regarding discussion about Israel and the Middle East.
Standing Together describes itself as “a progressive grassroots movement mobilising Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality, and social justice”. Its visit was sponsored by the progressive New Israel Fund.
The two speakers, Nadav Shofet (Jewish) and Dr Shahd Bishara (Arab), had been invited by the school to speak about the group’s efforts to build bridges between Israel’s Jewish and Arab communities.
Comments1
Ian Light3 December at 06:20 am
In a super humane world a secular messianic human rights democracy there would be no Tribal Wars . This was the dream of the utopian socialists one of the most well known being Robert Owen ( 1771-1858 ) and there were others particularly in the first Russian Revolution led by the idealist Prince Lvov and then Alexander Kerensky . But primordial tribalism and innate hate destroyed these idealists and Marx and Lenin mocked them mercilessly . So with Israel -Palestine a intractable cruel atrocity ridden war . Nevertheless the Israeli’s have vastly more mercy and humane regard even with their serious war crimes .