Israel’s Education Minister announced a ban this week on human rights groups from entering Israeli public schools, a move seen by many as a response to a bombshell report from B’Tselem, one of the country’s leading human rights groups, calling Israel an “apartheid state”.
Minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday that he was banning members of groups that “call Israel false derogatory names” from entering Israeli schools — something commonly practiced by groups like B’Tselem to educate Israeli youth on their work documenting human rights violations in places like the occupied Palestinian territory.
According to the Times of Israel, Minister Gallant send a directive to his office and school district managers across Israel instructing them to prohibit entry of “groups that act in contradiction with the education system’s goals, including calling Israel false derogatory names, opposing Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state, discouraging meaningful service in the Israel Defense Forces, or acting to harm or humiliate IDF soldiers during or after their service.”
While B’Tselem was not mentioned by name in Gallant’s letter, the group’s report on Israeli apartheid has been widely condemned by Israeli leaders and pro-Israel actors around the globe, who for years have vehemently opposed the label of “apartheid.”
In response to Gallant’s ban, B’Tselem said it is “determined to keep with its mission of documenting reality, analyzing it, and making our findings publicly known to the Israeli public, and world wide.”
In fact, despite the announcement of the ban on Sunday, B’Tselem’s director Hagai El-Ad spoke virtually to hundreds of 12th grade students at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa during a lecture titled “Military control in Judea and Samaria and protecting human rights – can they go together?” “The @btselem lecture did take place this morning. The Israeli government will have to contend with us until the apartheid regime ends,” El-Ad tweeted.