Court orders Israeli–Palestinian bereaved Families Forum back in to schools

The hearing on the petition filed by the Parents Circle – Families Forum in the Jerusalem District Court, April 2024

Shira Kadari-Ovadia reports in Haaretz on 23 April 2024:

The Jerusalem District Court ordered the Israeli government on Monday to allow a group representing Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to operate in Israeli schools.

The decision was made following a petition filed by the Parents Circle – Families Forum against the Education Ministry’s decision to remove the organization from the list of approved external programs in schools.

District Court Judge Avraham Rubin criticized the ministry’s handling of the issue, saying that it did not base its decision to ban the organization on a factual examination of the content of the forum’s events.

Typically, the Parents Circle – Families Forum arranges meetings between students and Palestinians and Israelis who have lost a loved one. It also operates an annual summer camp, as well as a joint memorial ceremony for victims of the conflict.

Judge Rubin noted that he ordered the immediate reinstatement of the program in order for schools to be able to offer it to their students in the current school year. He noted that the state failed to present him with any new evidence that could justify the continued banning of the program, and that the state did not even present a plan to conduct an examination into the content conveyed in the group’s meetings with students.

“I was not presented with a claim that the respondents [the Education Ministry] intend to take the course of an expedited and proper factual examination of the allegations against the petitioner,” Rubin wrote in his decision, and ruled that the state must pay the organization 20,000 shekels in legal fees.

The Families Forum’s petition, which it submitted together with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was filed in September following the Education Ministry’s decision to remove the group from the list of approved external programs in schools.

Explaining the decision to exclude it from the list, the external programs manager Lilah Aplaton said the Forum’s goals “are in contradiction to the values of the Education Ministry,” and that “any comparison between the bereavement of the families of IDF casualties of war and victims of terror attacks with the bereavement of victims of IDF defensive operations is unacceptable, and has a detrimental impact on the memory of the fallen soldiers and the feelings of their families.”

The Families Forum submitted a request to the Education Ministry’s external programs committee asking to be reinstated, but it was rejected on the grounds that since October 7, “sensitivity towards IDF soldiers who sacrificed themselves as part of the war has only increased,” and that “understanding has increased among the population regarding the essential role of the IDF in protecting the citizens and the state of Israel against terrorist acts.”

During a hearing held on the petition last week, the state’s representative admitted that he did not know what examinations were done into claims by right-wing organizations against the Families Forum – claims that served as the basis for the Education Ministry’s decision to ban the program from schools.

In the letter sent to the ministry by the right-wing organization Betzalmo, it is claimed that the Families Forum represents families of terrorists. To the judge’s question as to which inspections were done to verify this claim, the state representative replied: “I don’t know.”

He later argued that it was “impossible” to conduct proper examination of the content conveyed in the group’s meetings in schools since “it’s clear that when [something] explosive [is said] in the classroom, [it] will be hidden when there is an inspector.”

Co-Director of the Families Forum, Yuval Rahamim, welcomed the court’s decision, saying that “the disappointment of the program being denied to the students in [the previous schoolyear], will now be appropriately remedied.” He also expressed gratitude for the support the group received “from school principals, teachers, students and parents throughout the year.”

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which represented the Families Forum, said in a statement that “Education Minister Yoav Kisch’s populism was blocked in court today,” and the verdict shows that the ministry “failed to do even the minimum before making a decision concerning the education of our children.”

This article is reproduced in its entirety