The Political Education research team has undertaken the mission of evaluating the political failure of Israel's education system and of determining feasible measures to take to resolve this problem. An historical survey is crucial for understanding the ongoing mistakes that have been made and the effect they have had on Israel's social structures. In addition, it is important to examine the Israeli context and its implications, which are better understood when compared with the German model.
From a political point of view, Israeli and German social structures have much in common, with one major difference. Like Israel, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded after World War Two; like Israel, the Federal Republic has had to reevaluate the magnitude of the trauma that followed the war and the Holocaust; and like Israel, the Federal Republic was engrossed in a geopolitical struggle, which drew most of the attention away from the democratic values that led to the Great War.
The main distinction is one of historical perspective. Germany considered itself guilty of genocide and, therefore, stressed the importance of political education throughout German society. The State of Israel, on the other hand, saw itself as a victim of circumstance – a geopolitical Western solution to harbor those who survived the Holocaust. Paradoxically, Israel eventually abandoned political education, focusing instead on the "victim narrative". Our research will demonstrate that although German and Israeli educators were inspired by many of the same theorists and philosophers, and while many of Israel's educators had a predominantly German background, the German and Israeli educational interpretations were entirely antithetical.
In our research paper, we will try to interpret both accounts – of political education in Germany and of political education in Israel – as two parallel aspects of the same history. In Part I, we will make a serious attempt at evaluating the Federal Republic's early efforts to make the issue of "political education" a top national priority, which was already included in the constitution. At this point, it is important to emphasize the generational rifts and struggles in context – although the responses to the Holocaust of Germany, as the aggressor, and of Israel, as the rehabilitated victim, were very dissimilar, they are comparable from a structural point of view. In Germany, the memory of the Holocaust and the War repeatedly drew public attention to the importance of a democratic political education. In Israel, the focus became armed conflict and the immediate geopolitical threats. In other words, the upcoming paper will point out two very different ways of interpreting the same historical lessons.
Click here to download a select chapter from the upcoming research project (Hebrew)