Israel advances bill requiring Shin Bet to vet Arab teachers

The Israeli government is pushing a bill that includes a clause requiring the Ministry of Education to transfer a list of the ID numbers of all teachers to the Shin Bet each year so the security agency can check whether there are indicators of “suspicion of support or endorsement of terrorism” and it can investigate those who fall under the category.

There had previously been opposition to the clause and it was removed from the text of the draft law, however it was raised again by Likud MK Amit Halevi and a committee is due to decide on its inclusion tomorrow. In a statement issued last year by the Prime Minister’s Office, under whose authority Shin Bet operates, stated that “the Shin Bet does not see the teachers as a threat, and therefore does not carry out a comprehensive analysis of them.”

At the time, the Secretary-General of the Teachers’ Union, Yaffa Ben-David, expressed her opposition to Shin Bet’s supervision of teachers, saying that the law “harms the teaching public” and considers teachers to be more suspected of “terrorist” activities than other groups of people. She also noted that “due to a few cases, a law is being passed against the entire teaching public.”

It is worth noting that the term “terrorism” is defined by Israel, an occupying state, as any expression, criticism or position against the occupation, or even against the racial discrimination suffered by Arab society.

This law, which was introduced by Halevi and MK Zvika Fogel of the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party, also includes a clause that stipulates cancelling the budgets of a school “in which there are or permitted to be acts similar to a terrorist act” and dismissing a teacher through quick procedures on the basis of these allegations.

Opposition MKs criticised these clauses, pointing out that the decision to dismiss teachers should only be within the authority of the Ministry of Education.

Oshrat Elmaliah, Education for a Shared Society project coordinator, said: “From now on, any Arab teacher in the country must know that if they want to express a political opinion or hold a dialogue within the school, they are subject to the judgement of the ministry’s director general and the minister, and could be accused of supporting terrorism and lose their job without following the procedures that are usually followed.”

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