The CEO of the state-owned Israel Railways has rejected calls for announcements of upcoming train stations to be made in Arabic, in addition to Hebrew and English By Issa Edward Boursheh Regrettably, the CEO of Israel Railway has chosen to ignore calls for train stations to be announced in Arabic, claiming it would “make the train ride noisy.” Currently, announcements are in Hebrew and sometimes in English. The CEO's claim about the purported noise would have made sense if there were no announcementds at all, with passengers forced to rely solely on signs in the train stations and the trains. That…

Many have argued that the US is no longer a neutral broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I'll take it one step further: is English even the appropriate mediating language? William Shakespeare famously asked, "What's in a name?" I (less famously) will ask, "What's in a language?" Today, I called the mobile provider Orange to argue about my bill. I was asked to provide them (again) with my email address. Me spelling it out went something like this... Me: “R” for Roee, Romeo, like the Hebrew letter “raysh” Orange agent: “M?” Me (thinking to myself): “How the #$%W#$ did…

After 62 years, the Ministry of Education has finally decided to introduce Arabic language studies starting from the fifth grade. The new initiative will allow students at 170 public schools in northern Israel to learn the second official language in Israel starting from a relatively young age. Today, students are obligated to study Arabic during junior high school but then it becomes optional during high school days. Students can choose to continue studying Arabic, French, Russian or Amharic as a second language at the latter stage. The new suggested program will require Arabic studies during elementary school which is usually…