Transcription
I grew up in a kind of a normative Israeli little town in the north. Um, and I was a really good student. So, an excellent student even. So, I was really immersed. I was really immersed in the system as a student, as a pupil.
Um, and the experience is when people ask whether Palestinians or how Palestinians are represented. I mean, the short answer is they're not represented at all. I mean, the only thing that you learn as a child and actually later as a teenager in high school, um, is that, um, it's a lot about the Jewish, um, history, which, um, is also limited, and there are the Arabs. I don't even remember using the words Palestinians in school. Arabs was there, and they're always some kind of in a context of being our enemies. So, it's really as simplistic as that.
So, that coming out of that system, and of course, I have to say that it's, uh, in parallel to what you hear from the media. So, there's some kind, it's, it's coherent in a way that Arabs are our enemy, and Arabic is a language of which I'm afraid. When I hear Arabic on the street, I feel uncomfortable because it's my enemy. They might hurt me. They want to kill us. They want to throw us all to the sea. And it implements itself in, in many ways.
So, there is this enemy that we have as, as the Jewish Israelis, and in parallel, there is our story as Israelis. And I remember that in every classroom, and I, I studied in different schools during my life, but there was something very common, and also I saw other schools, uh, outside of where I studied, but there was something by the state that the classroom, the way it's organized and designed, is very nationalist, actually. So, in every classroom, there is a picture of the map of Israel. I remember also as a kid looking at that map. It's a huge map. You always see it on the side of next to the where the teacher is standing, actually. It's always in front of you.
And I didn't know much about, um, the, the '67 green line and all kinds of things that are actually quite basic. But in the map, it was very, very mildly marked. So, I always had thoughts about it. What is that line? And, but I didn't know. We didn't learn. What you learn is in from history books is that there was a war, the Six-Day War, and we, you know, we, we won that war within six days, very heroic kind of storytelling, the Jewish Israelis against all Arab, um, military, um, just one. And, and then they don't say occupied, but then we took more of the land that belongs to the Jews.
And the, the storytelling is also always connected in reference to what we learn in other classes apart from history, which is the Bible. There's a special class, uh, that you learn from second grade, and maybe nowadays it's already first grade, until the 12th grade where you graduate, and you have to also take, uh, the final test about the Bible. So, we learn, um, really stories from the Bible. You cannot learn the whole book because it's, it's really huge. But you learn a lot of major parts of it. You learn to analyze the texts and to learn the stories, and they, they teach it a little bit academically. So, I could really learn, let's say, on the level of literature about that book.
But it's always passed on to you. Even if the teacher is not believing in the story of the Bible and understands it as a myth, it is very strongly the way you understand your identity. You are connected to that. That's our people. And you learn a lot about the enemies we used to have, you know, thousands of years ago. And that's maybe the only place as a child where I would say that the word closely to Palestinians, we have the word in the Bible, it says, so these were also our enemies. And then I think the connection that I would make as a kid when I started hearing the word Palestinians, I connected it. The connotation was to these pushim from the Bible who were our enemies. So, there are all kinds of linguistic things that are happening.
And in addition to this map next to the teacher, there was always, there is still always the, the role of independence. It's called, it's quite a short text, but they print it a bit larger. That was signed on by David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel in 1948. in May 1948 when the, the Israeli state was announced, founded, approved by the UN, and it was, it's a big historical moment. You learn a lot, uh, like not the details of what happened on that day, but you learn a lot about how that came to be, and the, the world approving us as a state, and this declaration.
And I think that's interesting because the declaration in itself, when one reads it, so it's, and you see it as a kid a lot. It's the text is in Hebrew, and we can always refer to it and look at it, or the teacher can refer to it. It's exactly this kind of spirit in which the state was founded. The spirit is liberal Zionism. And that's exactly what, like with the years when I grew up and I became an activist and understanding this, the real story of Israel-Palestine, and where I grew up, nowadays, one of the main criticisms I have as an adult is against, uh, this liberal Zionism because it's, it has a lot of contradictions within it. And this, as I said, this text of this declaration of independence has really beautiful words, as well as being quite racist if you really look deeper into it.
And, um, it declares us as a democracy regardless of, you know, of the, the race or the gender. So, it's supposed to look at the world, you know, um, to show the world we are a democracy on top of everything. And of course, apart from the map and the declaration of, of independence, there is the Israeli flag. So, these three items that are really like burnt in your brain as a kid from a very young age. I mean, sometimes it's also in kindergarten, you already see it. And, um, it creates a strong part of your identity, and you look at it in a very, very positive light.
And you learn through the history books and all kinds of other books, and as I said, with the Bible, and in, uh, literature class, and there are all kinds of extra classes in addition that are nowadays even more like not Judaism classes, they call it, um, like a heritage. So, you learn specifically about the heritage of Judaism, but it's all Zionism, actually. Um, that's another thing as an adult that I had to relearn Judaism when I came out of Israel because there is so much, so much history, rich history of Judaism in Europe and in other places that, um, you cannot learn in school because it's so focused on Zionism and what it means, you know, to be a Jew who survived the Holocaust and came to Israel.
And it always leaves a lot of, uh, a lot of questions. So, who are those Jews that are sitting next to me? But they are not from Europe. Like, they are not descendants from Europe. They are from North Africa. They are from Asia, from Arab countries. Um, so I would say that as a child, I was exposed to all of this. It made sense to a certain extent. And it was very nice to grow up and feel like I'm on the good side. I'm, I'm the good guys, you know, and, um, it's, it's very effective.
With the time, I saw that, um, in high school, I was, um, we were indoctrinated also towards the army. It starts from a relatively young age.