Sirak Yekealo is a nine-year-old fourth grader at the Gvanim school in south Tel Aviv. He was born in Israel and has lived here his whole life, but despite being only two years away from middle school, Sirak still struggles with basic Hebrew reading and writing exercises.<\/p>\n
The reason is the source of an ongoing struggle between asylum seekers and NGOs on one hand, and the state and municipality on the other: Sirak and his siblings are among thousands of children of African asylum seekers studying in segregated elementary schools and kindergartens in Tel Aviv, starved of resources and isolated from the children of Israeli citizens \u2014 in a city that markets itself to the world as the pinnacle of liberalism. Now, their parents have taken to the courts to demand integration.<\/p>\n
A Haaretz investigation<\/a> from December 2020 found that over 90 percent of children of asylum seekers in Tel Aviv\u2019s elementary schools do not share a classroom with a single Israeli child, thus finding themselves in what experts and activists are calling \u201ceducational ghettos.\u201d This is despite the fact that Israel\u2019s Students\u2019 Rights Law<\/a> forbids discrimination in the registration of students on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, or religion, and in spite of various Supreme Court rulings from recent decades ordering an end to the segregation of other groups in Israeli schools, such as the children of Ethiopian Jews and Sephardi ultra-Orthodox Jews.<\/p>\n South Tel Aviv is home to more than 10,000 asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan. Since their arrival in the country over the past decade and a half, successive Israeli governments have systematically refused or simply ignored their asylum requests in all but a handful of cases, making Israel\u2019s recognition rate of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers the lowest<\/a> among Western countries at less than 0.5 percent (compared to averages of 60 to 90 percent elsewhere). Dehumanizing rhetoric toward asylum seekers emanates from the highest levels of Israeli politics, where they are routinely described as \u201cinfiltrators<\/a>;\u201d in 2012, Likud MK Miri Regev (who would later become Minister of Culture) called asylum seekers \u201ca cancer in our body<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The current struggle to end segregation in Tel Aviv\u2019s schools began about three years ago, when Sirak was in first grade. A group of asylum seeker parents, including Sirak\u2019s father Biemnet Yekealo, came together to attempt to force the state and the municipality to enroll their children in integrated schools. They tried all manner of tactics, including going on strike and refusing to send their children to school for several months. \u201cWe also wrote a letter to the Tel Aviv municipality, we went to the Ministry of Education in Tel Aviv for several meetings, but it\u2019s always the same story: they don\u2019t have a solution,\u201d says Yekealo.<\/p>\n Having exhausted all of their other options, the parents turned to the legal route with the support of several human rights NGOs. After an initial petition<\/a> for desegregation in November 2020 was rejected by the court, another one<\/a> was launched in August 2021 on behalf of 325 children of asylum seekers alongside the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel (ASSAF), and the Levinsky Garden Library, which provides after-school educational support for such children in South Tel Aviv. The petition, which is also supported by the parents of nearly 100 Israeli children, was submitted by attorneys Tal Hassin of ACRI and Haran Reichman of the Clinic for Law and Educational Policy at Haifa University.<\/p>\n After two preliminary hearings for the current petition<\/a> were held at the Tel Aviv District Court in August and December of 2021, a third last week, on Jan. 12, also failed to produce an agreement between the sides. The defendants \u2014 the Tel Aviv Municipality and Israel\u2019s Education Ministry, currently led by MK Yifat Shasha-Biton of the right-wing New Hope party \u2014 are accused of operating four elementary schools and nearly 60 kindergartens that solely educate the children of asylum seekers, but they deny that they are acting contrary to the law.<\/p>\n Tel Aviv is just the latest focal point in a struggle that has been waged in cities across Israel throughout the past decade. As far back as 2012, a court-mediated agreement ended segregation in schools in the southern city of Eilat, and local struggles against segregation also succeeded more recently in Petah Tikvah<\/a> and Lod\/Lydd<\/a>, among other cities. In the case of Tel Aviv, however, where the vast majority of asylum seekers in Israel reside, the municipality and the Education Ministry are proving much more obstructive.<\/p>\n For its part, the Tel Aviv Municipality denies that there is any deliberate segregation in its schools. It argues that whatever separation exists is a result of the concentration of asylum seekers in certain neighborhoods of the city, given that the school registration process aims to enroll children in a facility as close as possible to their home.<\/p>\n In a statement provided to +972, a municipality spokesperson said: \u201cIf life were a movie, members of the asylum-seeking community and their children would be scattered among all the neighborhoods and cities in Israel and enjoy the many opportunities that\u2026 Israeli society provides. But in the reality we live in, most asylum seekers live in a number of specific neighborhoods around the Central Bus Station and, like all city kids, their children attend schools near their place of residence. We reject any attempt at attributing any hidden intentions to this simple reality.\u201d<\/p>\n The municipality\u2019s argument of schools reflecting their surrounding demographic reality goes some way toward explaining how two of the four segregated elementary schools \u2014 Bialik-Rogozin and Hayarden, both located in the under-resourced neighborhoods of Neve Sha\u2019anan and Hatikva \u2014 came to exclusively educate the children of asylum seekers. But Haaretz\u2019s investigation, which reviewed recordings of conversations involving city officials, found that the two other segregated elementary schools \u2014 Keshet (opened in 2017) and Gvanim (opened in 2019) \u2014 were built by the municipality specifically<\/a> for the children of asylum seekers. Furthermore, several of the asylum seeker parents who signed the petition stated<\/a> that their children have been enrolled in kindergartens or schools outside of their neighborhood, despite the existence of integrated alternatives closer to home.<\/p>\n In the eyes of ACRI\u2019s Hassin, the municipality\u2019s response misses the key point. \u201cOur argument is that if the system produces an invalid result [i.e. a situation that violates the law against segregation], then we need to do the enrollment differently \u2014 changing or expanding the registration areas, for example. There can\u2019t be a situation in which one group, because of their skin color, finds itself in \u2018educational ghettos\u2019 for asylum seekers who arrived from Africa. In the most liberal city in Israel, in the 21st century, it\u2019s just incomprehensible.\u201d<\/p>\n The Education Ministry, meanwhile, has taken a different approach in response to the petition. Not only do they admit that segregation exists in Tel Aviv\u2019s schools, they argue that this segregation is, in fact, a good thing for the children. In an official opinion submitted ahead of the second court hearing last month, the office of the ministry\u2019s chief scientist argued<\/a> that integrating the children of asylum seekers into schools with Israeli children \u201cwill harm their cultural and family roots.\u201d Ending segregation, it continued, would create \u201ccultural unification in a sense that eliminates and blurs the identity and community they come from.\u201d<\/p>\n Yekealo says this is nonsense. \u201cWe can keep our culture, they can keep their culture, but through learning together the children can share good things. We can teach them our norms and cultures at home. But in school, it\u2019s something else. The children should learn what the teachers give them.\u201d<\/p>\n The municipality recently offered the lawyers a temporary solution, whereby the children signed onto the petition who are currently studying in grades one to three can be integrated into schools in the north and center of the city, but if the Education Ministry foots the bill for the transportation required to carry this out. The lawyers and the parents agreed, but the ministry refused<\/a> to provide the transportation.<\/p>\n Michal Schendar works as a community organizer at the Levinsky Garden Library. After several years, the staff and volunteers started to notice a dramatic deterioration in the reading and writing ability of the children who were coming for support. According to Schendar, it reached a point where some 70 percent of the children, including those nearing the end of elementary school, were severely struggling. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t really understand what the reason for this change was, so we started asking around and worked on a report for which we interviewed teachers, principals, parents, and colleagues from other organizations,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n Their report<\/a>, published in June 2020 in coordination with ASSAF, argues that the problem begins even before the children of asylum seekers enter compulsory education at the age of three. \u201cIt all goes back to what the community call the \u2018babysitters\u2019 \u2014 the illegal preschools that the children attend from the ages of zero to three, where there\u2019s no curriculum, no routine, and the teachers have no training,\u201d says Schendar. \u201cWhen the children reach the municipality-run kindergarten at the age of three and then elementary school at the age of six, the developmental gaps are already very big. Even the most wonderful teacher will not be able to deal with 30 kids with the same difficulties who don\u2019t speak Hebrew and aren\u2019t prepared for elementary school.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to understand something about this community of asylum seekers,\u201d says Hassin. \u201cTheir parents are people who escaped atrocities in their countries of origin, travelled through Sinai, had their limbs cut off, were raped, were kidnapped \u2014 these people are arriving with post-trauma that is not being treated because they\u2019re not citizens or residents. They have to work 24 hours a day from the moment they arrive in order to finance their families. They don\u2019t have time to do puzzles with their kids. They don\u2019t have time to tell stories. So their children reach the education system with terribly big gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n After diagnosing the roots of the problem, the Levinsky Garden Library and ASSAF sought to identify solutions. They spoke to experts from academia, including professors of education and child development, and published their recommendations in a second report<\/a> in December 2020. The conclusion was clear: \u201cAll of the people we spoke to said there are many things to fix, but the most important one is to make sure the kids are integrated with Israeli kids in their educational programs, going back to pre-schools and kindergartens,\u201d says Schendar.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course kids learn from their teachers,\u201d Schendar continues, \u201cbut they learn best from one another, and they learn Hebrew in the breaks and when they communicate with other classmates. When there are 30 kids whose mother tongue is not Hebrew, it will be very hard for them to learn it properly. This affects their academic level, but it also leads to a sense of alienation \u2014 these kids know full well that they don\u2019t go to school with Israeli kids, and this can affect their self-worth. The very basic message is: you\u2019re not integrated into Israeli society, and we don\u2019t want you to be integrated into Israeli society.\u201d<\/p>\n The testimony of one of the petitioners, an asylum seeker called Lila Abdullah Ibrahim, illustrates the impact that segregated education has had on her eight-year-old son Amir: \u201cWhen we walk in the street sometimes\u2026 he points to something and asks me if it is \u2018only for Israelis\u2019 and if he is not allowed because [he\u2019s] from an African family.\u201d<\/p>\n For Dr. Marcelo Menahem Weksler, a pedagogy expert with decades of experience working with at-risk children across all sectors of society, the reluctance of the Tel Aviv Municipality and the Education Ministry to integrate the children of African asylum seekers is a symptom of Israel\u2019s overall policy toward the community. \u201cThey don\u2019t say it directly, but it\u2019s because their mindset is that \u2018the refugees are only here temporarily, so in the meantime we\u2019ll just give them the minimum required by law.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n An Israeli government plan to forcibly deport tens of thousands of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers to Rwanda and Uganda was halted in 2018 in the face of local<\/a> and international<\/a> pressure. But to this day, Israel\u2019s approach toward the community has invariably been to coerce them into leaving. In 2017, for example, Israel enacted a law deducting 20 percent<\/a> from the salaries of asylum seekers to be placed into a fund that they can only access upon departing the country. The strategy has been successful: more than 30,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers have left Israel since 2015 to search for safe haven elsewhere, sometimes with perilous consequences<\/a>. Today, only 28,000 remain.<\/p>\n This coercion policy is not the only factor explaining the endurance of segregation in Tel Aviv\u2019s schools; there is also strong resistance from some Israeli parents. \u201cWhat motivates [Mayor Ron] Huldai, in my opinion \u2014 it\u2019s reasonable to assume \u2014 is pressure from the parents who don\u2019t want to see refugees in their children\u2019s schools. I think in a lot of schools the parents are opposed to integration,\u201d says Weksler.<\/p>\n At the start of this school year, for example, a group of Israeli parents and right-wing activists held a protest<\/a> in response to a small number of asylum seekers\u2019 children being enrolled at schools in their neighborhoods. One of the activists present, Sheffi Paz, who has been known to harass asylum seekers and their children in public spaces in south Tel Aviv, was arrested<\/a> in December 2020 for breaking into a kindergarten for asylum seekers\u2019 children. In August 2021, she was banned<\/a> from entering the Knesset after calling for Meretz MK Gaby Lasky to be executed for suggesting Israel should accept Afghan refugees.<\/p>\n Weksler\u2019s proposal, which is attached to the petition, is to implement a more measured approach that would address the needs of all the stakeholders. \u201cI suggested to place small groups of students slowly into schools in the north and the center that are willing to accept them, and to prepare the teachers in advance with regard to how to accept refugee children, what changes need to be made in the method of teaching, and how to strengthen the process of social integration. That\u2019s the only way to break the ghetto: to take them out and offer them a gateway to integrating into Israeli society,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not talking about [a ratio of] 50:50 or something like that, but taking small groups of five to seven students and putting them in classes,\u201d Weksler continues. \u201cI always compare it to the integration law for children with special needs, which says that parents who want to integrate their children into regular schools are able to do so. They\u2019re always in a minority, and the school is prepared with someone there who helps them. If there\u2019s an integration law for children with special needs, why isn\u2019t there an integration law for refugee children?\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking ahead of the third hearing last week, ACRI\u2019s Hassin was not convinced that the court would reach a definitive verdict anytime soon, especially given that it has the ability to pass the case on to the Supreme Court. \u201cIt can also reject the petition, but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a judge who would want to sign their name onto a decision that authorizes separate educational institutions for African children. I don\u2019t know how it will develop, but there\u2019s no doubt it won\u2019t end here and now.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the meantime,\u201d she continues, \u201cwe\u2019ll try to move as many children as possible. But the fundamental question on the agenda is if separate educational institutions can exist, and the answer in our opinion is no.\u201d<\/p>\n For his part, Yekealo is looking forward to a future in which his three children can feel part of Israeli society, but fears for their prospects if they are unable to be integrated at school. \u201cEducation is the main route, but nothing has changed over the three years that we\u2019ve been struggling. If they are not educated well, I don\u2019t see a bright future for my kids in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sirak Yekealo is a nine-year-old fourth grader at the Gvanim school in south Tel Aviv. He was born in Israel and has lived here his whole life, but despite being only two years away from middle school, Sirak still struggles with basic Hebrew reading and writing exercises. The reason is the source of an ongoing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,30,28,24,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asylum-seeker-community","category-education","category-legal-proceedings","category-mon-en","category-racism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA cacophony of excuses<\/h3>\n
The impact of segregation<\/h3>\n
A holistic solution<\/h3>\n