Radical columnist Gideon Levy summed up the week’s Yom HaZikaron/ Yom HaAtzma’ut events in the left-wing with a blistering attack on Israeli society, including a “suspicion… that Israeli parents don’t really love their children.”
To “proove” his point, Levy criticises Israeli schools who encourage small children to light memorial candles to honor Holocaust victims and fallen IDF soldiers, and proceeds to ask if Israeli parents “really” love their children when the parents “remain quiet, or who may even get excited, when the brainwashing campaigns planting fear, jingoism and militarism begin” in Israel, meaning Holocaust education and instilling feelings of pride for the IDF and its committed soldiers.
“”Does a mother love a daughter when she bakes a cake for a soldier who will come to kindergarten and tell the little one about his heroic acts in the territories? Do we love our children when we sign them up for the monstrous “Adopt-a-barricade” campaign?,” Levy asks.
The author also compared Israel’s educational system to that of North Korea, strongly hinting that Israeli schools are little more than brainwashing factories.