The Education System as a Mechanism for Political Control: The Education System for the Druze in Israel

Introduction

Contrary to popular belief, education systems serve as mechanisms for social and political control. They reinforce the dominant group’s value system and work to maintain that group’s economic hold on society. This is done through school structure and programs. The hegemonic group determines which knowledge is ‘legitimate’ and which knowledge is not. Through censorship and erasing the knowledge of the ‘other’, the hegemonic group regards only its own knowledge as legitimate while presenting it as objective and neutral (Apple, 2004; Freire, 1997; Giroux, 1987).

The majority group’s control of the education system has played a central role in oppressing and controlling minority groups. Historically, colonialist powers have used education systems to assimilate and ‘civilize’ minority groups or, in other words, to erase minority group identities by replacing their language, culture and religion with that of the colonizer (Dyck, 1997; Halverson et al., 2002; Joseph and Matthews, 2014; Peacock and Wisuri, 2002).

In this article I discuss the way in which the State uses its education system to construct identity by examining the case of the Druze in Israel. I will demonstrate how education in the Druze villages was mobilized to complement the 1956 law imposing mandatory military service on the Druze. The education system in Israel reinforced the State’s aim of separating the Druze from other Arab citizens. I demonstrate this by exposing the process that led to separation of the Druze schools from the rest of the Arab education system in 1976, by analyzing the new educational programs and curriculums that were introduced in the Druze schools in particular and by examining the mechanism that was established to guide this process.

The Druze in Israel: The context

The Druze are a religious community that arose from the Ismailiyah movement in Islam in the 9th and 10th centuries AD and from the Fatimid Caliphate founded by that movement. The Druze religion spread during the period 1017 to 1048, initially in Egypt. As it emerged, the new faith evoked violent opposition on the part of Sunni and Shiite Muslims alike. Druze called the following years, with its unceasing persecution, Al Mahnah, or ‘the tribulations’ (Abu Izzadin, 1990; Firro, 1992).

Today the Druze live mainly in the Middle East and are concentrated in four countries: Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. No current statistics are available on the number of Druze worldwide. In the mid-1990s there were approximately 1 million Druze around the world, with some 450,000 in Syria, 350,000 in Lebanon, and about 10,000 in Jordan (Halabi, 2014). Approximately 130,000 Druze live in Israel today (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2015).

Despite their ties with the Druze communities in Syria and Lebanon, a different national identity has developed among the Druze in Israel over time, along with a distinctive political behavior, primarily as a consequence of the activities of the Zionist movement in Palestine and, thereafter, the establishment of the Jewish State in Israel. At the inception of the Zionist movement there were about 7000, Druze living in Palestine, representing less than 1% of its total population. As a tiny minority living amidst a Muslim majority, the Druze at times suffered religiously motivated harassment. This harassment and the absence of an intellectual leadership led them to adopt a position of neutrality towards the conflict around them. Their stance exacerbated the tensions that existed already between the Druze and other Palestinians (Firro, 1999; Parsons, 2000).

Firro (1984, 1999) contends that this rift between the Druze and the other Arabs in Palestine was exploited by the Zionist movement, which used any possible means to encourage the Druze to retain their neutrality and even tried to woo them to its own side in the conflict. Though tempted by the Zionist movement, the Druze maintained their neutrality all along, even during the 1948 war. Some incidents, together with the growing power of the Jewish army, created an opening for agreements signed during that period between the Druze and the Jews, effecting a transition from Druze neutrality to a stance supporting the Jewish side, on the condition that the Druze villages would not be harmed (Parsons, 2000).

After the founding of the State, the Israeli establishment continued the policy of separating the Druze from other Arabs as a means of fragmenting and weakening the Arab-Palestinian minority and controlling it. The law mandating compulsory conscription into the Israeli Defense Forces was extended to cover Druze youth in 1956, despite the opposition of most of the Druze leadership, particularly the religious authorities of the time (Zeedan, 2015). From a social-political standpoint, military conscription of the Druze was a significant turning point in shaping the identity of the Druze community in Israel in two major ways. Druze conscription is experienced by the other Arabs in the country as a stab in the back of the Arab nation (Firro, 1999; Frisch, 1993; Halabi, 2014). It is also significant from an economic standpoint because military service has become economically central for many young Druze. More than 40% of male breadwinners earn their living as members of the various Israeli armed forces (Hassan, 1992).

In 1957 the Druze community was recognized as an autonomous religious community. A Druze Religious Council was established along with Druze religious courts. In 1962 the term ‘Druze’ replaced ‘Arab’ as the ‘national’ classification on Druze citizens’ ID cards and birth certificates. Druze, from that moment on, ceased being considered Arabs from an official standpoint (Lustick, 1985; Oppenheimer, 1979).

In 1976 the education system serving Druze villages was separated from the overall Arab school system and a distinct education system was set up for the Druze. This system was staffed mainly by Druze and featured an intensive, purposeful effort, both in terms of the formal curriculum and informal education, to create an Israeli-Druze consciousness among the students. (Halabi, 1997).

In light of this history and the development of Israel’s policy towards the Druze, the goal of this research is to examine the circumstances and causes that led to the separation of Druze education, the establishment of a special committee for Druze education, the goals that were set for this committee, the steps taken to reach these goals and the ways in which these goals served interests of the Druze community in general, and of Druze students in particular.

Separation of the Druze schools from the Arab education system

The introduction of compulsory military service for the Druze was met with resistance by the Druze community from the very beginning. Many of the Druze youths opposed conscription and refused to appear for it when called. This resistance led to a brief postponement of the planned conscription with implementation of the new law beginning in April 1956 rather than in February. Even then only 50% of those Druze who were called up actually appeared for service. The State dealt severely with the resistance, imprisoning tens of youths who refused to serve. Along with stringent enforcement of compulsory conscription, the State embarked upon an intensive campaign to advocate military service and break the resistance. By the third cycle of conscription the resistance had died away and military service began to be regarded as an established fact (Zeedan, 2015).

Even after the Druze youths had come to accept military service as a part of their reality, certain leaders of the community continued to struggle against it. Hundreds of letters were written to the Minister of Defense and to the Prime Minister demanding to revoke the compulsory conscription law. Conferences were held calling for resistance. One of the leading opponents was Sheikh Farhud Farhud, a respected religious leader, who organized such a conference in March 1956 (Zeedan, 2015).

Though opposition to conscription subsided over the years it never disappeared, continuing to be expressed in different ways. In 1971, Sheikh Farhud Farhud set up the Druze Initiative Committee, putting on its banner opposition to military service for the Druze. Many Druze intellectuals joined the committee and it continued to gain strength. In 1973 the committee sent the Defense Minister and Prime Minister a petition with 10,000 signatures calling for an end to compulsory conscription for the Druze (Al-Qasem, 1995; Halabi, 1997).

The committee’s struggle reached its peak in 1974 with the disruption of a visit by Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had come to greet the Druze community during the celebrations and pilgrimage honoring the Druze Prophet Shuaib. The committee’s opposition was not only to military service but to the attempt to politicize a pilgrimage to the most sacred site of the Druze. Protestors clashed with the police and many were injured and arrested (Al-Qasem, 1995; Farhud, 2005).

The activity of the Druze Initiative Committee, along with other developments over the years, demonstrated that the Druze were continuing to question the State’s true intentions behind conscription. Following a motion by the Druze Knesset member Jabar Mo’adi, an academic committee headed by Ben Dor of the Haifa University and a parliamentary committee headed by MK Schechterman set out to examine the causes of discontent among Druze youth. The conclusions and recommendations of the two committees were similar. I will focus on the parliamentary committee since their recommendations were applied, influencing the nature of relations between the Druze and the State until recently.

The Schechterman Committee’s conclusions were summarized as follows:

“The committee believes that the State of Israel has not provided adequate education that can build an Israeli-Druze consciousness, nor has it done enough in the educational field to advance an Israeli-Druze consciousness among the Druze youth. This has been detrimental to the State and to its image. The application of the compulsory conscription law to the Druze should have pushed the State of Israel to encourage the educated classes among the Druze to develop foundations of an Israeli-Druze consciousness as an ideological base that would provide the Druze youth with a logical explanation and emotional preparation for their full identification with the State and for their agreement to fight for it while preserving their uniqueness as Druze.”

(The Schechterman Committee, 1975; p. 2721 - translation from Hebrew).

The committee submitted many recommendations regarding all aspects of Druze life in Israel, such as additional water allocations for agriculture, recommendations to create a new Druze village and more, along with a recommendation to implement change in the education system. Hardly any of the recommendations were acted upon except for those regarding the education system, which were mainly as follows:

In contrast to the way in which committee recommendations in Israel tend to get bogged down in bureaucracy and stashed away for years in a drawer, the Schechterman recommendations regarding education were adopted immediately. This demonstrates how important it was to the State and its institutions to contain the discontent among the Druze and facilitate their conscription in the army. In no time a committee was established under the directorship of Salman Falah, a Druze who until then was an English language supervisor in the Ministry of Education. The committee began to implement the Schechterman recommendations without any regard for accepted procedures nor for the wishes of the Druze community, as I will show below (Halabi, 1997).

As recommended, this committee now took it upon itself to develop an Israeli-Druze consciousness. To accomplish this, they set out to detach the Druze schools from the Arab education system and establish a new unit responsible for Druze education. The task of this new unit was to create special educational programs and curriculums for the Druze student that would advance the new identity that they wished to introduce. The first thing that the unit did to this end was to create a new school subject: Druze heritage.

Druze ‘Turath’– heritage

The preparation of a new curriculum in the name of Druze ‘Turath’, which means heritage in Arabic, was the primary task of the unit for Druze education. The first meetings of the staff focused on defining this new topic and deciding upon suitable content, appropriate grade level and who would teach it. In the staff’s third meeting it was decided that Druze heritage would be taught from second to twelfth grade, two hours a week for each class. It was also decided that high school students would be tested on the topic for their matriculation exams. The idea was to begin to teach Druze heritage to all of the classes at the same time and prepare textbooks for the primary school, junior high school and senior high school levels (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1976).

The content suggested for the curriculum can be divided into two categories: one category was about the Druze community itself, addressing topics such as customs, manners, leaders and holidays etc. The other category was about the connection between the Druze community, the Jews and the State of Israel. The latter included stories of Druze in the Israeli army, Druze soldiers who received medals of honor, Druze who gave their lives for their country, Druze-Jewish relations during the period of the British Mandate and Druze consciousness and military service (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1976). There were no arguments regarding the first category. There were a few dissenting voices regarding the second category, but these voices carried little weight and were easily ignored (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1976).

It was clear that the teachers of this topic had to be Druze. In accordance with the Ministry of Education’s recommendation, it was agreed that children at the primary school level would take religion classes in the ‘hilweh’, or prayer hall, under the title of Druze heritage, and from the seventh grade on they would take heritage classes in the schools. The above program was contingent upon the approval of Sheikh Amin Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze community at the time. It was decided to introduce the topic of Druze heritage into the Druze schools for two hours a week in the framework of religious studies, beginning on 1 September 1977 (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1977).

Contrary to the above agreement, Falah’s Committee decided to introduce Druze heritage lessons into the schools for two hours a week from first until twelfth grade. The spiritual leadership under Sheikh Amin Tarif opposed the decision. It was made in breach of the Education Ministry’s promise, without the leadership’s approval or support. Cooperation with the spiritual leadership was certainly to be expected regarding religious matters that were to be taught in school.

On 6 October 1977, one month after introducing the Druze heritage curriculum into the schools, a meeting was held between the Druze spiritual leaders and Mr Salman Falah, director of the Druze education unit. Following this meeting it was concluded:

Despite these explicit promises made by the chairman of the Druze education committee to the spiritual leaders of the Druze community, Druze heritage lessons continued to be taught in their schools as previously planned. The determined opposition of the religious leaders may be what led the Ministry of Education to commission research, headed by Shevah Eden, to examine the Druze values that could serve as a foundation for a program on Druze heritage in their schools. The assumption was that this research could help the Ministry of Education endow the program with enough legitimacy in the eyes of the broader Druze community, enabling them to circumvent the veto imposed by the spiritual leadership.

The research report was sent to the Ministry of Education’s center for educational programs in 1979. The findings showed that, within the Druze community, general agreement could be found for addressing only four of the topics that were included in the Druze heritage program. These were the individual and his/her beliefs, the individual and his/her community (ethnic group), the individual and his/her family and the individual and his/her friend. Opinions were divided over the topic of the Druze and the Arab world. The two topics – the individual and his/her country and the Druze and the Jews – were absolutely rejected as inappropriate content for the Druze heritage program. Goals such as

“the Druze student will recognize the spiritual connection between Moses and Jethro as a symbol of Druze-Jewish relations;” and “the Druze student will recognize what the Jewish and Druze religions have in common” received the lowest rating, meaning they were altogether rejected (Eden et al., 1979).

In the summary of the research it was stated explicitly:

The goals that were found to be acceptable and agreed upon were those in the field of religious belief and those concerned with maintaining the unity and uniqueness of the Druze community … These goals will serve as a foundation for preparing educational material, specific problems stemming from life in a Jewish State are not a suitable topic for Druze heritage (Eden et al., 1979. pp.301–302).

According to Eden’s research the topics relating to the Druze religion, focusing on the Druze’ uniqueness as a religious group rather than as a people, were those that should be included in the Druze heritage program. Yet, as we saw above, the Druze spiritual leaders on their part were unequivocally opposed to any discussion at all about religion. The only options left would be the most general topics such as those regarding friendship and family.

Careful examination of the Druze heritage textbooks that were introduced into the Druze schools shows that the authors not only ignored the agreement reached with Sheikh Amin Tarif and the Druze spiritual leadership, they also ignored the conclusions reached in the Ministry of Education’s research regarding the content that the Druze community would like to see in the program. All of this was ignored in order to implement the recommendations of the Schechterman Committee regarding the necessity of constructing a Druze-Israeli consciousness and identity by stressing the blood alliance and the destiny shared by the Druze and the Jews.

In a book on the Druze holidays (Falah and Azzam, 1979) there are explanations of the holidays of Prophet Jethro, Prophet al-Khadr, Prophet Sabalan and the holiday of ‘Id al-Adha. We see that half of the book is devoted to Prophet Jethro even though ‘Id al-Adha is actually the only Druze holiday that exists. The other events listed are pilgrimages to tombs of the prophets and they are not regarded as holidays. Upon further examination of the book the authors’ motivation becomes clear. Most of the texts regarding Jethro’s tomb are about Jethro’s connection to Moses who married Jethro’s daughter, Tzipora. The problem is that this version of the story and most of the texts that are quoted are taken from the Bible. The Druze’s own version is altogether different. According to the Druze version Jethro never had a daughter since, like all of the Druze prophets, he never had a wife. This is not something unknown to the authors. They modestly make note of the Druze version in four lines on page 24 of the book.

This distortion repeats itself even more bluntly in Falah and Azzam’s (1983) Druze heritage book of collected texts:

There is another similarity between the Druze and the Jews. Both peoples share a common fate as minority groups. The Druze also suffered persecution and oppression at the hands of the majority group. They were always a minority group among Muslims or Christians and as such they always suffered from oppression and sometimes they were even massacred. All of this brings the Druze closer to the fate of the persecuted Jewish minority on account of their religion and their loyalty to their people. (p. 171).

At two pages later, the textbook stresses again the connection between Jethro and Moses: ‘One of the most highly respected prophets of the Druze is Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses. The Druze’s pilgrimage to Jethro’s tomb is similar to the Jews’ pilgrimage to Mount Meron and to Tiberius. There are other tombs that are also sacred to Druze and Jews alike’ (p. 173).

The declared reason for introducing Druze heritage studies was that the Druze do not teach religious studies in school in the way that Islam or Christianity is taught in the other Arab schools. In practice Druze heritage became a means of constructing a Druze-Israeli identity as envisioned by the educational programmers, ignoring the opinions of most of the Druze community as reflected in Eden’s research (1979) and against the wishes of the spiritual leadership (Halabi, 1997).

Educational programs in humanistic studies

As stated above, the unit for Druze education in the Ministry of Education was established in order to develop an Israeli-Druze consciousness. At first the idea was to develop this consciousness by introducing the Druze heritage curriculum into Druze schools in 1977.

However, in 1980, in addition to the Druze heritage, the curriculums for all of the humanities courses were replaced with new programs drawn up specifically for Druze schools. Until then the Druze schools were based on educational curriculums used by all of the other Arab schools in the country. The problem, according to the director of the Druze education unit, was that the other textbooks did not address Druze history without which the curriculum could not serve the goal of developing a particularly Druze awareness. Textbooks were replaced with those that could serve this goal (Falah, 1988, p.8). From 1980 to 1985 new texts books on history, Hebrew, Arabic and civics studies were introduced into the Druze schools.

Like the Druze heritage program, the new history program introduced into the Druze schools also aimed at constructing an Israeli-Druze identity. The two new textbooks introduced into the Druze history program in 1980 reflected this trend. The first one addressed the early history of the Druze (Falah, 1979) and the second one addressed modern Druze history (Falah, 1980). Druze history became the primary focus of the entire history program. This can be illustrated by the way in which the history matriculation exams were structured. Druze history accounted for one third of the material that the Druze students had to learn for these exams. The other two thirds included Arab history, Middle Eastern history and modern history.

In Falah’s (1980, pp.185–205) book, the texts that appear under the heading ‘Druze history’ include various quotes regarding Druze villages in Israel. Jewish historians are quoted describing the Druze in a positive light while Arab historians are quoted describing the Druze negatively. For example, al-Damasqi, an Arab historian, is quoted explaining, ‘The inhabitants of that mountain are Druze. They are liars who deny Islamic law, believe in reincarnation, eat pork’. (p.193) On the same page in the name of another Arab historian, el-Othmani, we learn, ‘The Druze ignore prohibitions regarding marriage relations and diet. They eat pork, drink alcohol, engage in forbidden relations and grow hashish…’

On the other hand, a few pages later, we find the following text about the Druze written by Ben Zvi, the second president of Israel: ‘[the Druze] were first described by the Jewish historian Benjamin Metudela as inhabitants of the hills and mountains around Mount Hermon…and as people who loved the Jews…this is how he described them’. (p.196) Ben Zvi points out that this is a subjective description not based on research, but that it is still important to stress the good relations between Druze and Jews as described in the text. Ben Zvi went on to state, “The Druze nation has a uniqueness that distinguishes it from other nations. The Druze bear characteristics similar to those of the Jewish nation. We see for example that the Druze religion and nation are one. The Druze are also similar to the Jews in that for years they have been dispersed among the nations of the world and, despite that, they still manage to preserve their uniqueness.” (Falah, 1980)

We see in the history program, just as in the Druze heritage program above, that the aim is not only to instill in the students Druze consciousness and pride, but to emphasize the historical connection between the Druze and the Jews on one hand and to weaken the Druze connection to the Arab people on the other. This is done with questionable methods using selective quotes.

Until 1981 the Druze learned Hebrew with the same books used by all of the Arab schools in Israel. Then, two new books were introduced into the Druze schools: “Chapters of Hebrew Literature for Druze Schools volume 1 and 2” (Falah and Araida, 1981). The connection between the Hebrew books and the aim of developing a Druze consciousness requires some investigation.

Examination of the Hebrew textbooks introduced into the Druze schools shows that the texts are actually very similar to what was offered before. The only difference is the addition of texts written by the Druze and about the Druze. For example, in chapter one of the textbook “Chapters in Hebrew Literature for Druze Schools” (Falah and Araida, 1981) under the title “Nabi Shuaib takes revenge upon the people of Hittin” (p.120) a seven-line text appears, without any reference cited, in which it says, “the Arabs of the village of Hittin abandoned Jethro (Nabi Shuaib) rather than provide for him.” On the other hand, pages 56–73 include stories, names and texts that also appear in the Druze heritage textbook on holidays. On pages 102–109 we read various Jewish sources about Jethro, each of them naturally emphasizing the connection between Jethro and Moses.

It must be noted that in 1994 a new Hebrew textbook for Druze junior and senior high schools was published by Shoresh, a department of educational programming in the Haifa University. The story about the Arabs of Hittin was taken out of this book because the authors understood the sensitivities involved. The stories of Jethro remained and two new texts were added. One was written by the director of the unit for Druze education, who was not an author. The second text was written by a Lebanese Druze and translated into Hebrew from the original Arabic.

“The Arabic language is the Druze student’s mother language. It is the language in which the Druze speak, think and write. The Druze religion was also written in this language” (Faraj, 1989, pp.7–9). This excerpt appears in the introduction of the Arabic language program for Druze schools. This being the case, it raises the question why a special language program is needed for the Druze schools. We find the answer later in the paragraph: “…in order for the student to learn about Druze literature and Druze writers and in order to enable the student to feel connected to his homeland and his heritage.” It is not clear which homeland the author had in mind.

In accordance with the above goal and in total disregard for another eight goals, most of which were about Arab culture, a new textbook was written for Druze schools: “Literary Texts for Druze High Schools” (Falah and Faraj, 1980). All of the texts included in this book were by Druze writers and poets, without any regard for the quality of these texts. This book was also replaced by a book entitled ‘el-Munah’ab’ that was written by the department for educational programs of the Haifa University. The vast majority of texts included in this book are by writers and poets who are not Druze. About 10% of the texts are written by Druze and only two of those texts are by Israeli-Druze. One of those texts is the same one that appeared in the Hebrew textbook, written by the director of the Druze Education Unit. The other one is written by the Arabic language inspector for Druze schools. Neither of these people, it must be noted, are recognized as writers. On the other hand, Israeli-Druze writers and poets who do exist for some reason do not appear in the book. The poet Samih el-Qasem, the writer Muhammad Nafaa’ and the writer Salman Natur are Israeli-Druze whose works are regarded as among the best and most famous not only in Palestinian literature but in the Arab world at large. We learn from this that the goal of acquainting the student with Druze writers and literature can only be met by exposing them to very particular kinds of writers and literature – those who can illustrate what distinguishes the Druze from other Arabs.

Structure and administration

The thinking that led to the creation of separate Druze education is not only reflected in educational programing but in the very structure and administration of the Druze education system, for example in the divisions of authority between the different bodies and the ways in which teachers and education inspectors were chosen. Here we will take a look at the connection between the State’s ideology and the way in which this structure evolved.

Salman Falah was an inspector in the Arab education system of the Ministry of Education until 1975. He was then appointed to head the new committee for Druze education which had been created to separate the Druze from the Arab education system. Responsibility for the Druze had previously been in the hands of the Arab Affairs Advisor. The task of Falah’s committee was to coordinate the work of passing that responsibility from the Arab Affairs Advisor to the hands of the various government ministries. Falah’s committee worked in coordination with a committee of general directors of the various government ministries – a committee that met in the Prime Minister’s office. Contrary to the original plans, both of these committees became permanent and Falah became the Druze figure with the greatest power in the State.

As director of the unit for Druze education Falah was no longer responsible for pedagogical questions alone, as was originally intended with his appointment. He now became the director of a unit responsible for every aspect of Druze education, formal and informal education alike. He appointed teachers and inspectors, he allocated teaching hours and resources, he was responsible for adult education, for the community centers and even for the Druze Scouts. Falah became the only Arab public servant with such extensive authority

Falah actually replaced the Arab Affairs Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office between 1975–1992 and became the Druze Affairs Advisor in the office instead. Committees which originally recommended taking responsibility for the Druze away from the Arab Affairs Bureau had specifically warned against this development. The Ben Dor Committee (1976, p.3) stated: ‘The committee wants to emphasize in the strongest possible terms that we do not want to recommend creating a position for a special advisor for Druze affairs (a sort of ‘Druze Commissioner’), rather it is our recommendation that this position be defined in advance and limited to a period of 1 to 2 years’.

In the fourth meeting of the Druze education committee on 2 April 1975, it was explicitly stated that the committee’s role is restricted to addressing pedagogical questions and that all administrative matters, including supervision, are the responsibility of each school district (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1976). The report written by this committee on 14 July 1981 shows that this decision only remained on paper. Supervision had become the joint responsibility of the Druze education unit and each district. The report shows a total of eight supervisors appointed by the district. The Druze education unit appointed another 10 supervisors responsible for special subjects such as Druze heritage, history, Arabic etc. (Ministry of Education, 1981).

In a Druze education report from July 18, 1986 we learn that supervisors were now appointed exclusively by the Druze education unit: ‘In addition to the director of the unit there are now 7 general education inspectors, 13 inspectors for specific subjects, 23 educational supervisors and another 9 coordinators for the Scouts, not including the special supervisors appointed by the district’. (Falah, 1987, p.27). That is to say that the supervision became the responsibility of the Druze education unit, leaving the district with responsibility for supervision of specific topics, mainly in the sciences with which the Druze unit had little concern.

The aim of the Druze education unit was not only to draw up new educational programs but to replace the non-Druze Arab teachers with Druze teachers in the Druze schools. This was not a concealed aim by any means. Rather it was a point of pride. In a 1985 report the director of the Druze unit wrote that in 1967 over 50% of the teachers in Druze schools were not Druze, while in the 1985–6 school year the percentage of Druze teachers reached 72% (Falah, 1987, p.27).

It should be clear that the reference to teachers who were not Druze were Arab teachers. The Ben Dor Committee (1976), for example, warmly recommended the integration of Jewish teachers into the Druze education system particularly in the hard sciences, despite the language barrier. There is in fact a tendency to follow this recommendation in Druze schools. It must also be noted that the Druze education unit opened a special center for teacher training in Druze education in the village of Yarcha. In 10 years the percentage of uncertified teachers in Druze schools fell from 60% to 3% (Bamoreshet vehinuch, April 1987, p. 52).

Today in Israel there is one system for training both Arab and Jewish teachers in the public schools. The speed with which the Druze teacher training center was established and the number of teachers who were hastily trained there raise questions that require additional research on the quality of this teacher training and on the implications of this training for Druze education.

The education system in the Druze villages became absolutely autonomous, similar to the autonomy of Jewish religious education but even more so. In 1982 a separate center was established for drawing up Druze matriculation exams even though at that time there were only five Druze high schools (‘al-Nidaa’, 1987). As a result, a situation arose in which teachers checked examinations in an atmosphere of ‘it all stays in the family’. The Druze education system – from the director of the Druze education unit to the inspectors, teachers, testers and educational programmers – became a system that was purely Druze. This could ostensibly appear as an example of the kind of cultural pluralism that the other Arab schools in the country are fighting for. However, the Druze never demanded this separation and most of them opposed the policy of detaching the Druze from their Arab heritage, history and identity. A decisive majority of Druze were displeased with the way in which their schools functioned and they were particularly displeased with the educational results. The achievement level of the Druze students dropped and the percentage of Druze who succeeded in entering the university reached its lowest level (Halabi, 1997). The opposition led to a public struggle that continued for a number of years until the Druze education unit was dismantled in 1991. The Druze schools were then put under the direct responsibility of their school districts without any additional intermediary.

The period of the Druze education committee ended, but in practice the reality that it created during its 15-year duration remains in place and continues to have a very significant influence on Druze education until today. The inspectors and educational supervisors who were appointed by the Druze education unit continue to function through the school districts. The Druze teachers who were introduced into the system in that period serve as the foundation of Druze teaching staffs. The special educational programs that were introduced at that time are not only still in use today; there is now an education inspector responsible for Druze education whose primary role is to oversee the pedagogical development of the Druze heritage program and other subjects in the humanities (Halabi, 1997).

Discussion

As we can see, the State uses its education system to advance its interests and policies regarding the Druze – those interests being to detach the Druze from their Arab identity and turn them into submissive citizens and obedient soldiers. This is done through the educational programs, the teaching staffs and the education inspectors who were chosen to put State policy into practice.

As we saw in the report of the Schechterman Committee, the conclusions state explicitly that the State has not done enough to prepare the Druze youth for the military and that this is detrimental both to the State and its image. Not a word is written in this regard about the interests of the Druze or about the damage and injustice that is done to them. The only interest that exists in this equation is that of the State – the goal being to create an Israeli-Druze consciousness through the education system in order to facilitate the Druze youth’s enlistment in the military without dilemmas or hesitation.

After the goal was set, everything was done swiftly in order to reach it not only without regard for the Druze’s interests but even in contradiction to the wishes of the Druze community and its spiritual leaders. The goal was to create the desired consciousness by, on one hand, emphasizing the commonalities between the Jews and the Druze in the past while, on the other hand, separating the Druze from the other Arabs by stressing hostility and hate between them – particularly between the Druze and the Muslims. This was done by introducing a new subject into the Druze schools: Druze heritage. The spiritual leadership opposed the introduction of this subject into the schools, and research examining what the Druze did regard as their heritage showed that they totally rejected the idea that they have any kind of special relationship to the Jews. This did not slow down those responsible for the program who continued unabated to impose their message on the Druze community through the new Druze heritage curriculum and through other subjects in the humanities.

Naturally this policy was drafted by the establishment, but it could not have been implemented without its Druze agents. The parliamentary committee was established thanks to the proposal of the Druze Knesset member Jabar Mo’adi. The committee’s recommendations were implemented largely through the work of Salman Falah – a Druze academic who mobilized other Druze academics for the task. This is in line with Bourdieu’s (1977, 1993) claim that agents, whose thought patterns are shaped by the system, act to preserve that system. These patterns, along with the mindset that leads people to act in ways that suit the conditions of their lives without challenging them, are referred to by Bourdieu as ‘habitus’. The rules which these agents internalize, according to Bourdieu, are products of the existing power relations and they establish the range of possibilities for action that are available to these agents. That is precisely what we see in the case of the Druze who acted in accordance with establishment policy for the purpose of implementing that policy. They ‘cut their coats according to their cloth’.

It is important to note that this educational policy did in fact achieve the goal as defined by the establishment. Over 80% of the Druze men in Israel serve in the army and this is the highest percentage of any social group in the country – higher than that of the Jews (Ofer, 2015). Most of the Druze men even remain in the army beyond their compulsory service, choosing to be employed by the various military branches rather than go to the university. As a result, 70% of the Druze university students are women (Zeedan, 2015). The identity of the Druze youth, constructed over the years with the encouragement of the establishment, is in fact different from that of the other Arabs in Israel. The Druze and Israeli components of their identity are dominant and among some of the youth we find alienation from and even hatred towards their Arab identity (Halabi, 2014; Radai et al., 2015).

The Israeli policy also created an identity problem and, in recent years, a growing frustration among the Druze youth. While the State has been encouraging the Druze to develop an Israeli identity and consciousness, the Druze are not actually regarded as Israeli in every respect nor are they seen as equal citizens. Defined as a Jewish State, Israeli policy cannot be fully inclusive in regard to citizens who are not Jewish. We see this duality towards the Druze in discriminatory policies towards them in all fields of social life – particularly when it comes to planning and development where we see no distinction between the Druze and other Arabs in Israel. Like other Arabs in Israel, the Druze are left with little choice but to build illegally. Thousands of their houses were built without proper permits and are now at risk of being torn down (Kol- Alnass, 2017).

This discrimination frustrates young Druze who aspire to integrate into the country as equal citizens, leading them to question the ‘blood alliance’ between Druze and Jews. The State originally created a Druze education system in the 1970s in order to contain the Druze frustration. Along with the recommendations regarding education towards an Israeli consciousness, there were also recommendations in the economic field aimed at closing the gap between Druze and Jews citizens. The latter recommendations were ignored. Consciousness, however, does not help to pay the bills. If no serious steps are taken to integrate the Druze youths as equal citizens – particularly if no solution is found for the problem of housing and development – this may lead to a rift between the Druze and the State unlike any that was seen before.

In my opinion, in the long-term it will benefit the State, the Druze and other Arab citizens along with all ethnic minorities in the country if the States realizes the importance of introducing a multicultural education system – a system that takes into account the interests and aspirations of all of the different groups and social identities rather than an education system as we have today that only sees the narrow short-term interests of the dominant group.

A more comprehensive revision will be required regarding the Druze in particular on account of the special status that they were given with the application of compulsory conscription. The definition of the State as Jewish will continue to make it difficult to create a situation of equality, with the Druze treated as full and equal citizens. The solution is not to offer symbolic acts of inclusion every time the pressure cooker is about to explode. There is certainly no option of redressing injustice by using the education system to inculcate among the youth a consciousness of something that has no foundation whatsoever in reality.

What is needed is a change of policy that includes development of the infrastructure, planning and construction in the Druze villages, along with investment in economic enterprises that will raise the level of employment in the villages. The kind of effort that was invested in integrating the Druze youth into military service must also be invested in integrating them into the civic life of the country.