Israeli Schooling and the Pedagogy of Hate
Martin Gak
337 views Nov 28, 2025 Inconclusive Thoughts
Hadas Emma Kedar is an Israeli academic based in Germany, a doctoral student in communication studies with previous training in art, education, and teaching. For years she worked as an art and video teacher and as a moderator for alternative news in Israel. In recent years she has become a visible figure within the pro-Palestinian movement in Germany, combining public activism, participation in demonstrations, and systematic work within the university environment, where she gives talks and organizes discussions with students and colleagues. Her trajectory places her in a singular position: she speaks as a researcher, as an educator, and as someone shaped by the Israeli educational system which, as she explains, forms political identities from childhood.
In her conversation, Kedar describes with precision how Israeli education is structured, above all, as a Zionist ecosystem that operates without naming itself. She defines it as “the air you breathe”: an ideology that shapes the historical narrative, school content, ethnic hierarchies, and the relationship with Palestinians. Kedar details how this system instills the idea of Jewish superiority, the notion of a democracy reserved primarily for Jews, and an emotional structure centered on permanent victimhood, built above all through Holocaust instruction. Her testimony describes how the national narrative links historical trauma directly to the need for militarization, turning schools into spaces where soldiers and teachers share functions, and where the transition into the Israeli Defense Forces is presented as a natural destiny. Drawing from her experience as a student and later as a teacher, Kedar exposes the depth of the dehumanization of Palestinians in classrooms and the impossibility of introducing even minimal elements of empathy without facing sanctions, threats, or censorship. For her, Israeli society —and its educational system— have reached a point where no meaningful change can emerge from within: only international intervention, she argues, could break the ideological structure that today sustains violence and denial.
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제공된 자료는 이스라엘 교육 시스템이 어떻게 아동들에게 시오니즘적 가치관을 주입하고 팔레스타인에 대한 배타적 시각을 형성하는지, 전직 교사이자 반시오니즘 활동가인 하다스 엠마 케다르(Hadas Emma Kedar)의 경험을 통해 심층적으로 다루고 있다
이스라엘 교육 시스템의 세뇌 메커니즘과 그 비판적 고찰
1. 주요 내용 요약
가. 타자의 존재 부정과 단순화된 적대감
이스라엘 교육과정에서 팔레스타인이라는 용어는 거의 언급되지 않으며, 대신 '아랍인'이라는 포괄적이고 모호한 명칭으로 대체된다
나. 물리적 환경을 통한 국가주의 주입
교실에는 이스라엘 국기, 독립선언문, 그리고 거대한 이스라엘 지도가 항상 배치되어 있다
다. 군사주의의 일상화와 교육의 결합
이스라엘 교육 시스템은 군대와 밀접하게 연결되어 있다. 초등학교 때부터 군복을 입은 '교사-군인'들이 학생들을 돕는 모습을 보며 군대를 친숙하고 인도주의적인 존재로 인식한다
라. 홀로코스트의 정치적 도구화
교육의 정점은 폴란드 수용소 방문이다
2. 비평: 시스템이 설계한 눈머멂과 각성의 가능성
가. '희생자 민족주의'의 역설
이 자료가 보여주는 가장 비극적인 지점은 인류 보편의 인권 교육으로 기능해야 할 홀로코스트가 특정 국가의 군사력을 정당화하는 '희생자 민족주의'의 도구로 전락했다는 점이다. 교육 시스템은 학생들에게 '영원한 희생자'라는 지위를 부여함으로써, 현재 이스라엘이 타자(팔레스타인)에게 가하는 폭력을 정당한 방어 기제로 오인하게 만든다. 이는 과거의 피해자가 현재의 가해자가 되는 구조적 모순을 정교하게 은폐한다.
나. 자유주의적 수사와 인종차별적 현실의 괴리
케다르는 이스라엘 독립선언문에 담긴 민주주의와 평등이라는 아름다운 단어들이 실제로는 인종차별적 현실을 덮는 화려한 수의에 불과하다고 지적한다
다. 교육 현장의 통제와 공포의 대물림
전직 교사였던 케다르가 가자 지구의 피해를 언급하려 했을 때 느꼈던 해고의 두려움과 학생들의 고발 가능성은 이스라엘 교육이 얼마나 경직되어 있는지를 보여준다
라. 담장 너머를 보는 눈: 각성의 희망
평론의 끝에서 주목할 점은 그럼에도 불구하고 진실에 도달하는 개인이 존재한다는 사실이다. 수용소 담장 너머의 방관자들을 비판하던 학생들이 현재 가자 지구의 장벽 너머를 떠올리는 지점은, 국가가 설계한 완벽한 세뇌 시스템 안에서도 인간의 보편적 공감 능력과 비판적 사고가 살아남을 수 있음을 시사한다
결론적으로, 이 자료는 국가 주도의 교육이 한 세대의 정신세계를 어떻게 황폐화하고 폭력을 내면화할 수 있는지를 경고하는 강력한 보고서다. 이스라엘의 교육은 팔레스타인에 대한 물리적 점령을 지속하기 위해 학생들의 '정신적 점령'을 선행하고 있으며, 이러한 순환을 끊기 위해서는 역사와 타자를 바라보는 근본적인 교육 패러다임의 전환이 필요함을 역설하고 있다.
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Transcript
So Hadas, can I ask you to introduce yourself? Yes, thank you for having me. I'm Hadas
Emma. I'm a doctoral student for communication studies here in Germany. H
previously I studied art and education and I I'm a teacher actually
professionally. I used to teach art and video and I also used to do back in Israel um
TV news moderation for alternative news. Um but in the last couple of years I've
become much more seriously active in the proalestinian movement here in Germany
and also you know demonstrations but in parallel also as part of my um
academic um environment I would call it we've been
organizing events and I've been speaking um within the academic uh with students
as well. So I guess um you have become quite
prominent in German circles. I mean uh among other things because you'd been very present in demonstrating and you'd
been quite outspoken. uh very recently you gave an interview to TRT talking about uh Israeli education and the way
that Israeli education has shaped your view or [snorts] shapes public
views of Arabs and Palestinians in particular. Uh so let's make that our
chapter one so to say uh and take you back a bit to that also because you were
part of the pedagogic sort of system in Israel. So you would have both sides of that story I imagine
to tell. And I'm I I will say I mean one of the reasons why I was very interested in talking to you is because in a lot of
the discussions that one finds oneself online one of the things that I'm sure you have heard repeatedly
[clears throat] is that the Palestinians teach their children to be anti-semmites
essentially and then everything that is added to that is murderous anti-semmites and sort of violent anti-semites and so
on and so forth. uh and there is a cor a narration that a parallel narration
which is hidden I think which is what happens in the Israeli educational system. So if I can bother you first
with that. Um yeah and I think I I also became
myself much more aware of how much this is not really known outside of Israel.
Um and then I figured yeah of course it's a bit like in every society you don't really understand what's going on
inside and I understood that it is very important to talk about what's going on
inside because it reflects on the deeds and the behavior of that society and
education was just um it's just one aspect and because I have also a very good
memory of my own childhood and growing up um I think I have this contribution to
be able to describe what I've experienced and because it always interests me and also later as a
teacher. So I kept this a bit like as a recorded uh
so material how do you remember I mean what what is the general characterization you'd make
of that education process as a student? Um, first and foremost, Zionist,
something I had to relearn, delearn, and understand better as an adult. So, can I ask you, I mean, what what
does that mean? I mean, it just every time I talk to to Israelis, and I talked to quite a few,
uh, there is I mean, I think that the best line was actually Abram Borg uh, former president who I said, well,
will Syanism uh, survive this? and he responded I thought brilliantly uh by
telling me that's a completely stupid question. Sayanism doesn't exist anymore. It's no longer an issue.
Interesting. It is still in progress. I myself am
still learning Zionism, but I can definitely tell Zionism is the ideology
which we as particularly as Israelis grow up on without
the title. So, we don't know it's really Zionism. It's a word we do here and it's
it appears in many official documents and and songs but um it's a bit like the
the air you breathe. So you're a scientist without knowing that you're a scientist. Yes. Yes. Literally I had to come out of
this and give it a name in order to start dealing with it then later. So
when I say that you grow up in an education system that is first and foremost Zionist, it means that
everything you learn in that system is adhering to that ideology which yes you
can define it in different ways and it has developed over time and has changed
but I think that I can give a few uh highlights of what has always been
there. First of all, it's the superiority of Jewish people above um
everyone else actually, but particularly Arabs and Palestinians, the natives of
the land. And it's also um the the kind of uh combination with
democracy, but in a way that not every democratic country might agree on
because it's a dem democracy for the Jews and always in questions for the
Palestinians whether they are um Israeli citizens or not.
And I think there's another factor within Zionism which I don't think many
people understand. Um it's very based on the victimization of the Jews. So the
whole idea of Zionism is the alternative, the only alternative for
the Jewish question just like the Zionists used to call it in the past is
becoming their own nation and later becoming their own nation in the land of
Palestine. with this notion you grow up as a kid even if these words are not talked to you like that.
Do you remember stories or do you remember tales as to that that would I
guess um represent this dynamic? Two children.
Wow. many but I mean I'm asking you because I as you
were talking I mean something that strike me which really I'm just repeating something you just said which is people of course people would not
know uh and I think that very often we just completely forget about the place
that primary and secondary education which is almost verges with the intimacy of the home right I mean you don't go
really looking into classrooms to understand what is the more general political outlook of a public sphere. But I think
that the point you make is actually really quite fantastic because it's probably precisely there where we we
begin to understand. So I'm wondering what kind of stories are told to bring that sort of to flesh that out.
One thing that comes up is the way we are taught taught about the Holocaust
and I heard about from Americans that it's very similar there but I think we know that Zionism is way beyond the
borders of Israel. whatever those borders are. By the way, but Americans
and especially American Jews also talk about having very similar kind of uh
education about Judaism. And one of the things about the
Holocaust, first of all, it's it's the most important topic in school. It's
also the most important topic generally. And you are being taught about it from
the age of I like to say zero because that's literally the way it is. And once
you get into kindergarten, you are already having to um experience the once
a year of course this there's a memorial for the Holocaust for the survivors.
And for me it was much more personal because in my own family I had uh four
grandparents. Each of them was a survivor of the Holocaust from Poland and from Hungary. And for me it was also
coming from within home. One as my my Hungarian grandmother used to tell me a
lot of stories about the Holocaust. Um and therefore uh within school it was a
whole you know it was so merged the kind of um story of the Holocaust of being so
real and so scary and so terrible so that my whole identity was actually
built on top of that. And I remember very clearly a teacher in it was high
school already. My teacher said we talked about the Holocaust. was the Memorial Day and we had a conversation
as always where she talks to the students and we have to say what we think and she said
you know that said that Jews were led like a flock to the slaughter house.
It wasn't the first time I heard that sentence. It's very repeatedly said to Jewish to to children that one critique
of the Jews in the Holocaust is that it's a bit their fault in a way like they really just
you know they didn't fight they didn't object right
idea like that the eternal victim which is actually a very old Tionist insult as
a matter of fact yes yes And I remember that already
there. I wasn't so I once I wasn't aware politically at all because I grew up in a very norm normal house where this was
not talked. So I always got hunches about things. I didn't like the way she
asked it because she was being critical and she didn't accept certain answers in
class. So it was really just about telling us this is what it was. Jews
went like uh to the slaughterhouse like flock and uh this is the narrative like there was not even it wasn't a real
discussion that's what I want to say it's also and um
now nowadays when there's a recently a book that was published about the
radical Jewish tradition and now came out in German also so there was um some
events here and uh I met the authors I had the honor and uh I have to say she
She she she she talked about this Janie Stone. She talked about this uh belief or or this um um it's it's quite it's
quite a fake kind of a notion that Jews just did that. And she emphasizes how
much objection Jewish did have Jewish people during the
Holocaust. And I really thought, wow, imagine growing up like that, believing
that we were fighting for our own freedom. And also because it's a human thing. That's the thing. You don't have
to be a very certain kind of ethnicity or religion to think that once you're being oppressed and pushed so hard, you
try to survive. It's a survival mode. You try to fight if you have the capacity. and to tell us kids that Jews
were like that and that's why it's a bit on us and therefore the state of Israel
is we all we have so everything else doesn't matter the Arabs the they didn't say Palestinians in school they would
say Arabs everything and we have to fight and protect ourselves so we became from a victim to a perpetrator actually
in school they would talk about it as a heroic uh protection of the only land we
have. And [clears throat] this was always connected in Israel. The memorial day of the Holocaust is a few days
before the memorial day day for the victims of um soldiers being killed in
war. So it's a whole week in the system where you are dealing with those
questions from it's really literally also chronologically from the Holocaust
and towards nowadays and Israel. It's quite remarkable because I mean being a
Jew from the diaspora uh I actually have been the butt in many ways of precisely
this kind of discourse uh from I wouldn't even say the scionist machine.
I would say from Israelis very often which many of them would not even they would only recognize themselves as if
you really just push all the way through. But I mean as you were pointing out is this is not scionism. This is
just what nature would give to anybody with a capacity for reason. Uh and you
know I mean coming from where I come my heroes were people like
Marelman I mean second in command or M the Hayan Levage right who who fought uh
in the war so ghetto in their with their bare hands to stop to stop an army. Uh but I think that was was also always
very interesting was that it extended way beyond the question of the sheep to
the slaughterhouse which actually Hanarent also talks about this figure in Aishman in Jerusalem. Um it really was
just a generic dislike for the Jews of the so-called diaspora was a sense that
they were just not good enough. they were, you know, essentially every Jew out there was an Israeli impotence which
was not actualized and once only once actualized it would really be able to,
you know, be respected as such. So to so to say and I always found that incredibly offputting. Um, I wanted to
uh ask you about your memories of the way that the the Arab was presented and
the suppression of course of Palestinian identity within that within that context.
[snorts] um for that I think I can give an example already as as a teacher because
I think it's also telling when there was one of the operations
uh in the 2000s 2010s um I was there teaching also high
school and it was very difficult for me because as always the students so the
the Jewish part of the population feels attacked and um is again in this
victimized mode and therefore it's almost impossible to talk about anything else but as a teacher I felt like we
have to talk about the picture also you know from an intellectual point of view
and I took um there was a very nice project online
where um it was an art project they filmed um Israeli children from Gaza and
from Stot which is uh the closest city to Gaza. And they made some kind of a
parallel. They they designed it in a parallel way just to try to
higher the the the level of humanity of the Palestinians. So to show these are
children and here is another child the same age with similar dreams talking about himself from beyond the fence. And
I found it amazing to to use it as an educational tool [sighs and gasps] because it was clear to me that my
students as much as of the left school that I was a relatively left is of course liberal Zionist left h that's the
left existing in Israel apart from very small
fraction of real left of combining Arabs
and Israelis together. [snorts] And um I showed this project uh just to
go come back to the human level and some students were uncomfortable
and one girl was standing up at some point and she said, "My father is in the
army and I'm going to report on you." And she left stormingly the classroom.
And of course I was like um scared and because I knew that um even in a school
relatively open like mine there are limits where I'm not allowed to talk about certain things. Uh but in this
case I just didn't expect it because I was talking about children about the humanity of children and there was
nothing even political really political about it per se [snorts]
and just the fact that I was trying to show someone that to to them is our
enemy to show the humanity of her enemy although it's child no
and threatening that um she would report on me I really understood that uh this
is way beyond what one thinks. The dehumanization
of the Palestinians among the Israeli society is so deep that they don't see
anything beyond that. That was quite a telling experience for me.
There is a story of um Mayor Baruknin, I think it's the name. Um I mean I don't know if you followed it but also a high
school teacher this after the 7th of October. Uh the stories actually I mean
obviously reminded me of that immediately because he was showing pictures of victims civilians I think
that to a large degree children not only he was fired but he was uh jailed put in
I believe solitary confinement for a couple of days. So I imagine that since those days um the situation must has be
must have become a lot more difficult. Do you have any sense of what is the
state of conversation now inside elementary schools and high schools? um not necessarily inside schools but
some of my ex students are still following me on social media and some
teachers that I used to work with and mostly agree on things but I went more
uh radically left than them of course and uh because I started to relearn a
lot of things that a lot of people in Israel just are completely unaware of unfortunately And uh the situation I can
I can tell from the discourse that I'm seeing it's uh really horrible. And on
some social media posts some ex- studentents of mine would react
in a serious attack against me and that I should be ashamed of myself. And this
could be on something some more radical things I publish regarding for example the torture and the rape in Israeli
prisons which is something that at the moment uh these days is very uh
bothering me and also some other kind of documentation that I've been seeing from
Gaza students would attack me ex students attack me and it's quite acceptable uh
to to discuss this way to attack you for just exposing
all kinds of informations from what is going on even without your opinion on it
and that's that's more extreme that than my time because I
always used to do such things on social media also as a teacher I have to say and nowadays if I would still live in
Israel I don't think and having also a young girl like I have I don't think I
would risk my life like this It's much more risky. Um I was just thinking I mean in I think
it was around 2014 2015 uh Liblin uh then president of Israel and president
Netanyahu I mean said that Israel was a nation sick of racism. Uh this was not
really coming from the left right. I mean this was not actually somebody who represented um this was not a of Kasif
or somebody like that. I mean it was really somebody that came from the establishment. Uh and he actually even
built a campaign. And I remember one partic particular episode in which he brought like Arab children or maybe one
Arab child to the presidential office and sat him there. And uh you know in
during the period I mean 2014 2015 2016 even I think there were quite a few
studies coming out of schools in Israel on the question of racism anti-Arab and
anti-Palestinian racism. How how prevalent do you remember it being besides the question of
Palestinians or Arabs being thought of as the enemy? How prevalent was this kind of racism in the education
especially in the earliest years I suppose especially in the in the elementary school years?
Um I think it's it's um it's a nuances. For
example, teachers or other adults would say
he's an Arab, you know, they would whisper it.
That's already telling a lot because it's a bit like Arab is a is a bad word. So you don't you shouldn't pronounce it.
It took me years to get out of that and start saying Arabs, you know, just like I would say Jews or Christian. It was
it's it's quite strong. And it would also present present itself in the way
you've been taught history. For sure. For sure. Arabs were always um first of
all, they always had some kind of a description of what they were. whether they were um you know um fighters or or
terrorists or whatever. Talking about Israel you know establishing itself and having all kinds of wars. The Jewish um
um fighters were heroes. These words were used also. No. And um and the Arabs
were you know the the oldfashioned also whenever you would see a picture you
would see like that they are oldfashioned more connected to desert
riding on camels and uh the Jews are strong. Huh?
Tribal and sort of tribal not just old fashioned but essentially
primitive. Yes. And uh this is something also that
you can see in also in Zionist texts of how they looked generally very western
view of of the east in a way. And this was very present as if the people who
wrote this history books or taught teachers how to teach history learn it
from a very certain you know perspective on the east. But you know it's so weird
as a child as a Jewish child to grow up like this thinking wait a minute but we
are also from here in a way that's part of the story right that we used to be
thousands of years ago we used to live here and of course they are Jews who still as a minority have lived in
Palestine through the years but you don't talk about them by the way they don't exist I had to discover this thing
much later in my in my adult life Um but you do talk about Jewish people um or
the Hebrew people as the biblical historical connection to this land. So
were we also not very much alike you know this Abrahamic kind of culture like
the Arabs that was for me always a bit uh you know staying with a lot of questions never dared to ask and in
parallel I would also say that whenever you are taken to a school trip this is also a huge part of uh discovering the
country there is a a big value to getting to know the land and I used to love those school trips besides that
it's fun and and and and with your friends, but you also really get to know the land where you are. And whenever
there is a ruin of something that is before 48,
it's there is silence around it or that there is some kind of a story being told
of how the Jews fought to the Arabs and look there is this and that and you get
the story from a complete you know very strongly Zionist
heroic point of view not asking anything about you know the real events happen
taking place. So it's becoming most mostly like a myth. We are learning mythology about the Jewish fighters at
the time and uh yeah it's um
I wanted to it's quite astonishing about the um
about the movement of the sort of educational thrust in sanionism and the heroism of the Jew and essentially the
almost wilderness out of which the Arab comes uh in relation to the
militarization [snorts] of society and the militarization of children because ultimately I think that there I imagine that there is an
understanding that we're talking about preparing an entire society to exercise lethal force. Um and I wonder what is
this transition exactly or is there a transition or is it quite simply sort of a waiting room for the for the for the
IDF the way that sort of the education system operates?
Yeah, the army um has a big part of society in Israel. Um first of all
everybody is obliged to join it and as a child you already grow up with um seeing
soldiers around you even if you don't have someone in your family within school since 1948 if I'm not mistaken or
a little bit later Ben Goon decided that there should be an arm of the army which
goes into education um and therefore
I myself was also a teacher soldier we call it. So um and then later I also be
became more like a like a co coordinator of teacher soldier. So I saw the system also a bit more from above, the
education system and the army collaborating on that project. And it took me years to see that putting
these teacher soldiers is not really just for the sake of helping the system
which is just not functioning maybe well enough, the education system to help children. It's like a it's not like an
extra personnel. It's for children to live around soldiers and feeling good about it. And
actually, this is quite what Ben Goon already said about it. So, as a child,
you grow up already with with soldiers around you with or without weapons. Depends on their job. And then you you
learn already to see soldiers as something which is not only part of society, but it's a heroic part. You
want as a child, you want to become a soldier. You want to become part of that army and you know that
in the context of a very well-defined other right a very well- definfined
object of that kind of heroism which will be the Arab the Palestinian and so
on yes and you are being told that in the army you can do almost anything because the
army is such a huge apparatus in the Israeli society that it's true you can
become like you can work with computers you and therefore also the whole education system provides you telling
you also directly if you want to be a computer programmer in the army you should focus now within school on on
programming and mathematics and it's all aimed there you know um it's uh it's so
strong that uh the education system itself of like the education material
being taught to you in school already since middle school and high school for sure is very much working together with
the army to put to to sort the different children into their best job and it's a
it's a huge collaboration and as a child you're not even being asked
whether you want to go to the I mean that's not a question it's it's obligation it's only a question of what
you're going to do there inside there and I want to ask you we have about four
minutes left uh and I guess This is really the biggest question to be
answered in the shortest possible time. But in the context and in the aftermath of a genocide and this degree of
violence and destruction, how hopeful are you about the future of
Israeli society and particularly its education system?
Um I don't know about hope. I have to say I am very pragmatic actually. Um I really
believe that in order to create change an international um intervention has to
happen. The Israeli society the way I experience it now
is so deep in denial and uh ignorance as
well unfortunately that uh you cannot move them to any direction anymore.
There are very very small minority of people who are also you know realizing
things differently but they are such a big minority that there's nothing to work with. We need an intervention from
the outside and we need law to impose on and sanctions to impose and to change
the so the the the behavior of the society because the way it is that I've
experienced the Israel society also beyond education I have to say is that
we deserve everything. I grew up as a Jewish person believing that I owe
everything. and I owe the world. If I travel to South America, which I I did, and many travel to India, you hear a lot
about the Israeli behavior of I own this place. You owe me. And this is one of
the things that hurt me the most because that's not Jewish. You know, I have to I
have to emphasize this. This is something else. And you can call it Zionist or imperialist or um capitalist
everything inside but it's a kind of a society that I would really really wish
to change but it's not going to happen from the inside. This is we are way beyond the the you know the edge of the
abyss. We are deep deep in a very very bad understanding of reality. You cannot
you cannot do it within the society. We need an intervention. Has Kalad thank you very very much for
your time. Um I can keep this up for like the next 354 minutes. Uh but it's
all the time we have. Thank you very much. Thank you Martin.
Okay so it goes let me call you very briefly on the other side. Yes. Okay. Mhm.
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