Meanwhile, back in the real world, my friend Ruth Ludlam has blogged on her recent attendance at a Business Forum for Jewish and Arab women, which was held in Haifa:
http://ruthludlam.blogspot.com/2008/12/israeli-businesswomens-conference.html
This blog makes fascinating reading and is typical of the type of positive interface between Arabs and Jews which actually exists in the real Israel.
In addition, two excellent pieces in today's Times. The first, on the importance of rote learning in education, features Michael Gove MP in his parliamentary role as Shadow Schools Secretary. See it here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5270092.ece
The argument is that facts are important in education and that discussion is not possible without a 'store of knowledge in your head to draw from'. This is definitely the Israeli model, in contrast to much of current education in England. Here, learning has become increasingly personalized - the 'feel-good' factor being all important. Maybe Israel leans too far the other way, but the desire of Israelis to better themselves through knowledge is admirable, and serves her citizens well, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Druze, Bahai or 'other', as we Jews are often labelled in the apparently all-embracing English racial monitoring system.
Speaking of which, there is another fine article in today's Times, by David Aaronovitch, entitled
Psychotic terrorists in search of a grievance:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5269730.ece
It starts:
So why kill the rabbi?
and explores the mentality which actually seeks out 'a few Jews', including the Chabad rabbi in Mumbai, and concludes that it is 'a psychosis in search of a grievance, not an expression of an existing grievance'.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1042932.html
Most worryingly, Aaronovitch links the psychology which may result in this type of atrocity to teachings discovered in 'the Deobandi religious school in Bury'. This is my neck of the woods. My own daughter went to school in Bury, to a school a million miles apart, both intellectually and psychologically, from this Muslim school, which - according to a Times reporter -
banned TV, art, chess, music and football. One of its graduates claimed in a sermon that music was part of a "satanic web" erected by Jews to pervert Muslim youth.
In addition, it appears that one of the teachers at the school
cautioned that Muslims were in danger of picking up the habits of unbelievers, who were an "evil influence".
This strikes me has somewhat ironic given that when I taught music at a mixed denominational school in Jaffa, exactly a year ago, some of the most enthusiastic pupils, at all age levels, were those who also kept Ramadan. I seem to remember that many of these played three or four instruments, as well as chess, loved Israeli TV (even in Hebrew) and football, and even indulged in art from time to time.
And all this in the state that some love to call 'apartheid'.
Comments