In an Israeli school, the bullies win

If school children learn that dismissal of human dignity, aggression and force are legitimate means of interaction, no wonder there’s so much rage in daily life in Israel. Have we forgotten about the beauty and wonder of our fellow human beings?

A short piece in Haaretz this week called “Democracy in Sixth Grade” gripped my heart unexpectedly. During my fourteen years in Israel, one of the most troubling experiences has been the rage ignited by routine interpersonal relations. I’m not talking about the famously charming Israeli directness, but about the deep dismissal of human dignity that occurs when everyday experiences inevitably involve aggression and brute force. No one seems to celebrate, or even seek the beauty and wonder of our fellow human beings; I find myself wondering if we even know they exist. Sometimes I fear that all traces of Martin Buber in Israel 2012 are gone.

Over the years, I’ve theorized that the awful dismissal of fellow human beings – Palestinians, Arabs, Russians, Ethiopians, women and the guy driving in the next lane or standing behind you on line – emerge from psychological scarring of combat, war, terror. This article made me shiver to realize that we are preparing our children for those experiences by installing the scars upon setup, like a computer program; that the source and the consequences have become fused and confused. Ofra Rudman’s article (Hebrew only) shows how seminal the rage is – I’ve translated large excerpts here:

…This week my son got a lesson in politics. For years, a small group of boys in his class has reign over the class with an agenda terror and fear. They change the rules of the game to suit themselves, they taunt and humiliate anyone who doesn’t bow to their rule. If they want make it clear to a child exactly how poorly they think of him is, they call him a “stinking Arab,” or “Filipino maid.”

I’ve appealed to the principal and to the staff, but they’ve been unable to handle the problem. My son, by the way, manages pretty well. But one girl, a gifted girl who writes poetry, has become the victim of this group. This week the boys harangued her with humiliating words. The girl remained silent, but they continued…under the teacher’s eye. To peels of laughter from their friends, they took turns kicking the girl’s schoolbag, one after the other. It was during an art class. The kids were just finding creative means of expression. Finally the girl lashed out, and jumped one of them. Only when a real fight ensued, did the teacher free up to separate them, accidentally suffering a blow from one of the boys.

The next day…both the boy and the girl were suspended, and that was considered a sufficient response to the incident.

Here the author moved into an understated, but painfully clear political allegory:

There was no response to the boys who initiated the abuse at all. That’s how my son got a lesson in politics in sixth grade: in the name of fairness, balance and the desire to show an unambiguous message against violence, the two children were treated equally.

Moreover, during the inquiry into the incident, which was left to a substitute teacher (the regular homeroom teacher was on leave), one brave girl stood up for the battered girl. Most of the children refused to confirm her testimony (some said she was a “traitor,” and “crazy”) and the teacher chose not to make it an issue. You wanted democracy, right? The majority decides. My son also stood up and took the side of the two girls. He told the teacher that the majority was keeping silent out of fear. But the majority maintained its silence, and with that the meeting ended. Either way, by the end of the day, the girl who suffered this abuse was suspended from school. Is anything else needed to teach our children how democratic values risk being exploited by those who would destroy it?

This may happen in other countries too, but I live here and I suffer the consequences every day. My stomach sank when the story began to sound familiar and then it dawned on me: it was familiar because I had already heard pieces of the incident – in fact I know the little girl in the article. She is wonderful, smart, funny, loving, affectionate and sensitive. The source of her rage should have been addressed long before it got to this point.

Otherwise, our society will remain filled with two camps: the thugs, and the masses cowed into silence in the face of screaming injustice. And we will continue to dull our senses with the self-deception that must be employed to bear the weight of such wrongs.