The Knesset’s plenum on Monday approved in a third and final reading a bill that prohibits the employment of teaching staff and denies budgeting from educational institutions that support terrorists or terrorism.
Submitted more than two years ago by MKs Zvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit) and Amit Halevi (Likud), the bill received the support of 55 MKs, against 45 who opposed it.
According to the new law, the Director General of the Ministry of Education is authorized to fire without prior notice a teacher who works for the state who has been convicted of a serious security offense or a terrorist offense, or publicly identified with an act of terrorism or published a direct call to commit an act of terrorism.
In addition, the Director General is authorized to refuse the employment of an education worker under similar circumstances.
Likewise, the Minister of Education may deny or reduce the budget of an educational institution if it has shown support for terrorism.
Chairman of the Education, Culture, and Sports Committee, MK Yosef Taieb (Shas), who presented the bill, stated that its purpose is “to eradicate the support for terrorism and identification with terrorism that find a place within the walls of educational institutions in the Jewish state, whose impact on the youth studying in these institutions is extremely serious.”
“It is not conceivable that teachers who supported or identified with one or another act of terrorism to teach in the State of Israel,” he added.
The explanation notes accompanying the bill state that the phenomenon of support of terrorism in schools occurs primarily in eastern Jerusalem, and it includes “the incitement of minors against the State of Israel along with the glorification of terrorists.”
“Its destructive, long-term effect is expressed in the large number of minors living in eastern Jerusalem who carry out or attempt to carry out terrorist attacks,” the bill notes.
MK Zvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit), Chairman of the Committee for National Security, stated that “a teacher in the education system is one of the most significant influencers on the children and youth in educational institutions in the State of Israel. The bill is intended to ensure that a teacher does not use his influence to promote terrorist activities of his students and that the school does not facilitate it.”
MK Amit Halevi (Likud) added that the Knesset “is doing the most essential thing in the war against our enemies: inflicting damage on the strongest infrastructure of terrorism – education.”
“Supporters of terrorism can no longer be teachers in Israel,” he concluded, adding, “And schools that identify with terrorism will be deprived of their budget. The law will ensure that the students of Israel will be educated in justice and kindness and not in injustice and barbarism,”
Multiple Arab minors have been involved in acts of terrorism over the years, several of the attacks ending with lethal results.
Similarly, Arab teachers teaching in Israeli schools have been exposed as supporters of terrorism. The police recently arrested a female Arab teacher who expressed glee on the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre carried out by Hamas terrorists.
