Gaza war lands direct hit on Australian Jewish schools

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.

Their presentation also veered into robust criticism of the Israeli government, and its conduct of the war, including the claim that Israel “was on the path towards a fascist state”. The speakers also criticised Hamas and Hezbollah during their addresses, and called for the release of the hostages, and a hope for coexistence and peace.

However, this summary does not capture the nuances of the session that caused such outrage. The Jewish Independent understands that the two speakers arrived about 20 minutes late and, short of time, cut the time allotted to their discussion of peacebuilding and co-existence, according to parents of students in the room. As a result, the session was dominated by criticism of Israel, which was delivered with what parents described as inflammatory language.