Rethinking how we educate young people about Jews and Israel

The Australian reported recently that the Anti-Defamation League has found 20% of Australians hold “an elevated level of antisemitic attitudes”. I am not surprised by that figure, given the relentless campaign of activism against Israel and the increasing incidence of acts of discrimination and violence against individual members of the Australian Jewish community. But I am certainly alarmed.

As an educator who played a pioneering role in implementing Holocaust education programs in Sydney’s Jewish day schools, I am now prompted to ask whether we failed in our mission to design and deliver educational initiatives that would insure the Australian Jewish community against resumption of traditional antisemitism.

I am particularly curious to know whether any research has addressed the extent to which the investment in Holocaust education has provided students with the tools to distinguish between perpetrators and victims. The Israel-Hamas paradigm has made this a slippery and complex area of disputation.

I have not been alone in anticipating a more accurately tempered response to the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7. When addressing the recent Birkenau-Auschwitz Memorial ceremony, Holocaust survivors who have shared their painful stories over and over again expressed their surprise and dismay at the recurrence of antisemitic tropes.

Like me, they had hoped that the sharing of experiences of dehumanisation and persecution would have put paid to the very idea, let alone the overt expression, of antisemitism.  

But the message of “never again” that drove a range of educational experiences designed to demonstrate the consequences of antisemitism to Australian students now sounds hollow.

It would be too much to expect a dynamic spokesperson emulating Greta Thunberg to emerge from Holocaust education as a champion of Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas’s strident threat of extinction.

But I expected that the seeds sown in education about the Holocaust would insure the community against the outpouring of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and antisemitic vitriol that has disrupted the sense of safety previously taken for granted by Jewish Australians.

I wonder now whether the transmission of the Jewish Holocaust experience can provide an enduring antidote to such an ancient and entrenched scourge as antisemitism. Perhaps it is, at best, a counterweight that contains the situation by, for example, motivating the police to put security measures in place to protect Jewish property and lives.

Not enough, it is true, but dramatically different from the situation in Germany in the 1930s.

The complexity of issues around historical and military contexts as well as questions of moral responsibility have now become crucial points of reference in any rational discussion of how a permanent peace between Palestinians and Israelis can be achieved.

Educators need to understand why a rhetoric grounded in misrepresentation and vilification is trumping historic truths, even among rational people, including a small minority of the Jewish population.  Only after this has been done should we think about developing an educational program with any hope of overturning the narrative that turns victims of genocidal aggression into perpetrators of genocide.

The enthusiasm with which substantial numbers of young Australians across the spectrum have embraced an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and in some cases antisemitic agenda suggests that programs have not fulfilled expectations.

Indeed, their fervour might be taken as evidence that misrepresentation of the historical facts about the Arab-Israeli conflict that featured in school text books produced in the 1980s remains embedded in the simplistic alternative narrative accepted by anti-Israel demonstrators.

I would argue, therefore, that there is an urgent need to carry out a systematic review of the goals and outcomes of established educational initiatives. It was thought these might prepare young Australians to understand the historical connections between the Jewish people and the territory now inhabited by Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, as well as the role of the Holocaust in realising the return of the Jewish people to their traditional homeland.

The evolution of educational initiatives has been ongoing. The Sydney Jewish Museum has been a work in progress since the 1990s. It has consolidated its educational outreach to thousands of teachers and students, as well as presenting a succession of historical and cultural exhibitions.

The NSW Board of Deputies, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation and other community bodies, secular and religious, have worked tirelessly to establish good relations with the wider community, including business and other ethnic bodies. Thousands of speakers have visited schools to sow the seeds of harmony and goodwill in the student population.

The late Professor Colin Tatz made an extraordinary contribution to the tertiary study of genocide in general and the Holocaust in particular. Many teachers attended his courses; it was hoped that they would bring facts as well as understanding of what genocide is into their classrooms.

The travelling exhibition, Courage to Care, has attracted tens of thousands of school students across Australia to participate in a program of student activities that stress the importance of the head, the heart and the spirit in making sense of the world and the need to feel empathy for those who are victimised.

Yet it is hard to avoid the suspicion that a sizable representation of young people who have been exposed to Holocaust educational programs might be among those who have supported the condemnation of Israel. It is a matter of urgency to try to understand precisely why we are not holding our own in the current public debate around the Israel-Hamas conflagration.  

Have the experiences offered to students encouraged them to think critically? Have they been given the tools to distinguish the true from the false in a narrative, when the context and circumstances change as they have since Israel has been involved in a war of self-defence?

I have read statements written by students testifying to their empathy and compassion for Holocaust survivors following visits to the museum and participation in oral history programs. Why has empathy for victims of the genocidal attack on October 7 not influenced the dominant public rhetoric?

In retrospect it might be asked whether the program of educational activities has achieved its objectives.  How many teachers have identified, in their classrooms, the genocidal intentions toward Israel on October 7?  My own involvement in the methodology and philosophy of the Courage to Care program of activities has prompted me to ask pertinent pedagogical questions.

What has been the “collateral learning” of students as they participated in facilitated discussions following their sessions with Holocaust survivors? The emphasis on, first, the significance of empathy and, second, the regrettable failure of bystanders to protect victims during the Holocaust, has perhaps blurred distinctions between victims and perpetrators.

Perhaps the history of efforts to negotiate a two-state solution might be made central to the conceptualisation of educational programs. Such a curriculum would trace and explore each of the lost opportunities to achieve both peace and two states for two peoples, starting in 1947 and following through to the Abraham Accords.

In today’s context thousands of young people have chosen to support the Palestinian cause as countless Gazan citizens are represented every night in the news as the victims of Israel’s military might. In this scenario, perpetuated assiduously by the media, they are never portrayed as the tragic sacrificial lambs of Hamas, victims of the terrorist organisation they elected as their governing body.

This is the context in which research and re-examination should be undertaken as a prelude to the planning and implementation of future educational programs. We also need to learn from the successful communication of the counter-narrative, especially the role played by repetition in its dissemination.

A technique that strengthens connections in the brain and helps children learn, repetition has been partly responsible for consolidating the pro-Palestinian message in the collective consciousness. Repetition has been played for all it is worth in consolidating the anti-Israel narrative in people’s minds. We too need to embrace this learning strategy when deciding how to convey the realities of Jewish history that makes sense of the current tragic reality in Gaza.

Easier said than done, but the task is urgent.