On the evening of November 4th, 1995, a coalition of left-wing organizations led a rally in Tel Aviv, in support of the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, attended the rally, which attracted a crowd of more than 100,000 people. The above quote is taken from his remarks at this event. When the rally ended, Rabin walked down the Tel Aviv city hall steps toward the open door of his car, at which point a Jewish Israeli man fired three shots at his back with a semi-automatic pistol. The prime minister died on the operating table of a nearby hospital.

Since 1997, a day of remembrance has been observed annually to commemorate the life and the assassination of Rabin. By law, schools shall observe this day through activities highlighting the importance of democracy and tolerance in Israel, and the danger that violence poses to society.

Two years ago, during one of the COVID-19 quarantines, I dedicated a Zoom class with my 12-graders to Rabin and his legacy, on the national Rabin Memorial Day. At the end of the lesson, the students were to join a national broadcast of a virtual tour of the Rabin Center, a museum and research center in Tel Aviv. I sent the link and we said goodbye.

A student named Yevgeny (pseudonym) stayed after some others had already left the Zoom room and said he was not intending to convene. I asked why. “Because I’m not interested in Rabin.” Having known this student for a couple of years, I assumed that this was not a political-ideological statement concerning the Israel-Palestine Oslo Accords or the Peace Treaty with Jordan, and yet I said, “But do you understand, Yevgeny, that this murder is an event that has had an enormous impact on Israeli society to this day, and if we do not want it to happen again, we should understand and know and learn about it?”

“OK, Etai,” he said, “but I just don’t care.” This was one of those very many moments as an educator, in which I felt such dissonance. I had an urge to assertively say: “Just click the link and stop being rude!” and at the same time I thought: “What is on your mind, you complex and wondrous human?” Fortunately, the sentence that came out of my mouth was more similar to the latter. I am happy that I could stick to the values that we hope to see as an essential part of our school culture, and let the student speak his mind.

“Are you part of Israeli society?” I asked. “I’m Israeli because I live here. But I do not care,” Yevgeny said. “Yes, Etai, I don’t care either,” Ilya suddenly joined in. I thought he just kept Zoom on and left, as he often did, not noticing that the class was over. Ilya continued: “Etai, I’m not Israeli. I’m Ukrainian. All my friends are Russian or Ukrainian. I’m in Israel, but I’m in Ukraine. Everyone feels that way, ask Dima too.” It may be worth noting that they were both 17-year-olds who were born in Israel. I felt as if I was inside an article of an introductory course to Educational Sociology. I always thought that the quotes from the articles of those classes were not credible, but here they were, erupting from my computer’s speakers.

I did everything within my power to just listen. Not to collide. Not to confront. We went into a long conversation about what the State of Israel has given and is giving them or is not giving them (“…it gave me nothing”). I told them what the State of Israel had given me. We talked about the possibility of not choosing between different ethnic and national identities (“…it does not have to be either-or”) and about our ability to integrate them into a more hybrid identity (“…you can be both!”). They brought up the issue of serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (“…I’m not interested in defending the country”), and also testified quite directly that this is the message from their parents (“…my father says that too”). I thought about this conversation for a long time. Yevgeny and Ilya had brought up so much that I found it difficult to identify the underlying “problems,” although I strongly felt that there were some big ones.

My school, ORT Ramat Yosef High School, was built at the beginning of the 1980s. It is located in Bat-Yam, the second poorest city in the Tel Aviv District, in which around a third of the population is composed of post-Soviet immigrants, most of them immigrated to Israel in the 1990s, and most of the others are descendants of Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa during the 1950s. Most of our students come from working and low classes. We have approximately 360 students in our high school (tenth-twelfth grade) and around 60 teachers.

A democratic school, I believe, is one that prepares students to live in a democracy—a community of equal citizens who have rights and an impact on the public sphere. I see the conversation I presented as one that demonstrates the challenges that impede our efforts to fulfill this goal—lack of motivation to learn or eagerness to know; alienation from society and segregation between communities; and the absence of a sense of ownership and responsibility over the country.

Motivation

Expectancy-value theory has been one of the most important views on the nature of achievement motivation. According to this theory, individuals’ expectancies for success and the value they have for succeeding are important determinants of their motivation to perform different achievement tasks (Wigfield, 1994). It can be useful to examine Yevgeny’s lack of motivation to participate in the activity through the lens of the expectancy-value theory. Based on my experience with Yevgeny, I could tell that low levels of both elements—expectancy and value—influence his unwillingness to engage. “Expectancy” can be measured by the level of confidence that Yevgeny had in his ability to succeed in the task, or in this case, be engaged and understand the virtual tour. “Value” can be measured by how important, useful, or enjoyable he perceives this task. Yevgeny did not expect to understand the virtual tour, nor did he find it important to engage with its content. We could not expect him to attribute a higher value to an activity that does not meet any of his urgent everyday needs or suggest any solution to his problems, chief among which is the terrible financial situation of his family.

As of 2022, Israel is one of the most unequal high-income countries. The top 10% of the population earn 19 times more than the bottom 50% earn on average, which means that inequality levels are similar to those in the US (Chancel et al., 2021). For budgeting purposes, the Israeli Ministry of Education rates schools according to the socio-economic status of their families. In the context of extreme economic inequality, our school is rated 8 on a scale of 1–10, where 1 is the most affluent. Therefore, understandably, many of our families and students value activities based on their immediate economic potential.

Many of our students experience a helpless situation, in which on the one hand, they are obligated by law to attend school, and on the other hand, this institution prevents them from working and hel** their families. This situation fosters passivity and lack of agency when many students feel that they come to school because they are forced to, and not because they choose to.

This mindset of many of our students can be compared to what Almond and Verba (2015) defined as a “subject political culture” in the national political context. In this type of political culture, citizens’ orientation toward the political system is relatively detached and passive, although they acknowledge its influence on their lives. For the subject, “the law is something he obeys, not something he helps shape” (Almond & Verba, 2015). Subject cultures are compatible with centralized, authoritarian political structures, and unfortunately, this is the kind of mindset that many of our students adopt in school.

If we want students to develop a sense of agency and a more participatory approach toward school as a model for their future relationship with the democratic political system, they must attribute a higher value to engagement in school life and academic tasks. In order for them to do it, I believe that we need to do two main things: First, we need to be more effective at explaining school’s relevance to future earnings, and second, we must find ways to make school more relevant to their current economic needs. While in recent years we made some progress in the first task, the second is far from being achieved. It is much easier for us to justify the existing system. We can easily explain how good grades can get you into college, and how college degrees can get you greater income. We encourage our students to dream of higher education by visiting colleges and by exploring different admission requirements, but we consistently ask them to overlook the present.

Segregation

In an address in 2015, former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin delivered what has become known as the “four tribes speech.” He maintained that “secular” (non-observant) Jewish-Israelis, once a clear majority in the country, would soon become of similar size as the other three “tribes”: Ultra-Orthodox (“Haredi”) Jews, Modern-Orthodox Jews (“national-religious”), and the Arab citizens of Israel. The country is rapidly becoming a society comprised of four groups, equal in size (Sachs & Reeves, 2017).

These categories were chosen not for sociological accuracy but because they correspond to the four official educational “streams,” or separate school systems, in Israel. Although parents can choose the stream in which their kids study, very few don’t follow their communal affiliations. The students in these four streams not only differ in the curricula they study or even the language they speak, but they may also, in fact, never meet each other during their education, and most likely not even later in life. By law, Arab and Haredi high-school graduates are not obliged to serve in the army. Therefore, the majority of Arab and Haredi students do not serve, and hence they are less likely to meet secular and national-religious Jews. In addition, only few Haredi students enter universities, so another potential space for integration is neglected (Ibid.).

Yevgeny’s alienation from Israeli society can be explained by the segregation he experiences from other groups, as most students in the Israeli education system. Within walking distance from our school in Bat-Yam, there are Arabic public schools, national-religious public schools, and Ultra-Orthodox schools, but most of our students don’t know anyone who studies there. Even within this already factious system, our secular community is further split, mainly into Russian-speaking students and students of Jewish-Middle Eastern backgrounds. Students’ friendships are often created within the borders of these two groups.

May 2021 was a devastating illustration of the harmful consequences of the mutual ignoring—and ignorance—of others in our democracy. A major outbreak of violence started with protests in Jerusalem and ended with Hamas launching rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli towns and the Israeli Air Force launching airstrikes in Gaza. In a chaotic couple of days, unprecedented widespread violent protests and riots intensified across Israel, particularly in cities with mixed Jewish and Arab populations. In Jaffa, a suburb of Tel Aviv with a significant Arab population, Arab protesters attacked police officers and journalists, just a couple of miles from our school. The flame of violence rapidly spread into Bat-Yam, where Jewish extremists attacked Arab-owned stores. An Arab motorist was pulled from his car and severely beaten on one of the main streets of the city. Some of our students were there, among the inflamed rabble.

In a moment of anger and deep frustration, using very unapologetic—some would say “callous”—language, I sent messages to my students through our WhatsApp groups. I urged them to move away from these groups of violent extremist Jews on the streets of Bat-Yam and stay at home. One student’s mother then sent me a couple of paragraphs with as many synonyms as she could find for a “traitor,” embellished with most other curse words the Hebrew language could offer.

Two of the main characteristics of liberal democracies are tolerance and pluralism, and therefore, they both should be reflected in school life. I believe that these two values could not be fostered unless we encourage our students to meet and get to know each other, despite a general atmosphere of mutual suspicion. Remote learning made it easier than ever for us to create opportunities for students to meet individuals from other “tribes.” Thanks to Zoom, my students met a Haredi man from the other side of the country, and a Palestinian activist from Nablus, with whom an in-person meeting is nearly impossible, since they can’t go to Nablus, and she can’t come to Bat-Yam, without special permissions.

The memories from May 2021 push us to explore new ways of connecting to our nearby communities. Last year, we started a new in-person program of intergroup meetings with students from a nearby Arab school. Today, the importance of these initiatives becomes bigger, and their implementation becomes much harder, in light of the aggravating polarization in Israeli society. The efforts of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox and ultranationalist allies to advance a divisive package of legislation for a far-reaching overhaul of the judicial system resulted in a battle over the future of Israel’s democracy (Kershner, 2023). Nine months of unprecedented large-scale protests against the government and counter protests by its supporters had almost pushed Jewish Israeli communities into a civil war. Then came 7 October 2023 and marked the start of the heaviest escalation in the region since the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Pain, grief and a scary wave of fury have spread across Israel and among our students since Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240. Current levels of mistrust and insecurity, intensified by gruesome videos on social media, make any attempt to create connections between our students and their Arab neighbors seem more impossible than ever. However, our mission as educators who wish to build a more humanistic and democratic future is to work with our students to expand the boundaries of their empathy. We cannot let the values that we try to foster stop at the border. Our future depends on our students’ ability to see the people in the other side of the border as fellow humans, to acknowledge their narrative, and to grieve their loss too.

Responsibility

I was beginning my last year of high school when my father and I entered a crowded hall and saw an illuminating slide on the screen: “Welcome to Intelligence Unit 8200.” We knew much less about the unit than we did about some of the parents around us. A Member of the Israeli parliament, a famous poet, the General Commissioner of the Police and the CEO of Israel’s largest media corporation—were only a few of the familiar faces in the hall. My father, a metal worker, whispered in my ear, “I think it is a good program, son. You are lucky.” I realized that I had come from a different background than many of the other kids, and were it not for the army, I most probably wouldn’t have found myself in the same place or status as them. It was the beginning of an experience that changed my life. In our context, the army serves as a social mobility accelerator that can determine one’s career path, social networks, and future income. It would not be baseless to maintain that by redefining my peer-group and resha** my self-image, the army is what ultimately brought me into Harvard.

Any attempt to create a democratic learning environment in Israeli high schools faces tension between two educational ideals. We wish to build our graduates’ capacity to participate fully in the civil sphere as equal members of society, and at the same time, we want to develop an unyielding commitment to human rights and nonviolence. Mandatory military service brings about a contradiction between these two goals. We want our students to fulfill their obligations as citizens, and we want them to do it to the best of their ability. But encouraging and preparing them for joining an organization whose declared purpose incorporates the use of violence apparently belie the very democratic values which we aim to foster.

Yevgeny’s unapologetic declaration that he does not want to serve in the army is not a common scene in a secular Jewish high school in Israel. The ethos of protecting the only state of the Jewish people is one of foundational significance. I personally volunteered to serve in the army for five years, longer than the three-year mandatory period, as a result of a very strong sense of responsibility over the future of the State of Israel and the fate of the Jewish people, which I absorbed through my mainstream secular Israeli upbringing. I maintain that the same sense of responsibility and ownership that made me feel obliged to serve my country also developed a strong commitment to protect and advance its democratic character. I, like many other Israelis, was raised to believe that the country is “mine,” and therefore if something is broken, I am the one to fix it.

In our unique context, our students’ readiness to serve in the army is, therefore, a good litmus test of their responsibility and commitment to society. Military service is the immediate stage after graduation from high school in Israel, and therefore the focus on preparation efforts is parallel to college preparation in American high schools: schools want their students to realize their potential by getting the best grades in the army’s exams and being accepted to the best units. However, the educational dilemma that arises from dealing with military service at school is another major challenge that we have to face when we envision our desired democratic society. On the one hand, military service is mandatory for our students, and we better prepare them for this psychological, social, and physical challenge. On the other hand, our role as educators is to mitigate militaristic tendencies, all the more so in a society that is often inclined to view security considerations as predominant and superior to democratic ones.

In addition to this complexity, the army effectively trains soldiers to serve in advanced tech roles, and hence it is a powerful mechanism for socio-economic mobility and social integration, both of which are crucial for the future success of our students. Some units in the Israeli Defense Forces have turned out thousands of tech entrepreneurs who went on to found tech companies or occupy leading positions in established ones. These units are credited with playing a key role in develo** Israel’s tech industry, and their positive impact on the careers of the individuals who serve there is obvious (Valach, 2020). The army is also an effective integrator, providing a “meeting point” for Israelis of very different ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds. And as if these considerations were not complicated enough, some studies suggest that discharged soldiers tend to be more tolerant than high-school students about other cultures and ethnic origins (Itsik, 2020).

Our students do poorly on the army exams and are therefore less likely to serve in elite units, acquire professional skills that would advance their social mobility potential, and integrate themselves into higher echelons of Israeli society. While we must make sure that our underserved students start the next phase of their lives from a fair starting point, we need to find ways to balance our preparation efforts with adequate discourse about the moral challenges and prices of serving in an army and mind the risk of turning our school into a pre-military preparatory program.

The effort to find this sneaky balance is inherent in our everyday educational decisions. On the one hand, the army is a “regular guest” in our school. We have a senior teacher whose additional role is called “IDF preparation coordinator.” She leads all sorts of programs and events, with two soldiers who visit our school a couple of times a week. One of the climaxes of the preparation efforts is a one-week basic military training program in an army base. This program, most commonly focused on 11th graders, is called Gadna (גדנ”ע) and is popular in many of the secular and Modern-Orthodox Jewish schools in Israel. On the other hand, we try to promote critical thinking about the army and its role in the complex geopolitical situation. For example, one of the questions in a recent 12th-grade civics exam asked students to analyze a newspaper article about a soldier who had hit a left-wing activist in Hebron, and an earlier exam used an article about psychological damages caused to Palestinian kids by military night invasions. Students were asked to explain these cases using the vocabulary they acquired about human rights. These attempts are much less explicit than the military preparation programs, mainly because of the right-wing political atmosphere in our school’s community, and our fear of experiencing a strong pushback from parents.

Counterintuitively, if we want a more pluralistic, equitable, and tolerant society, we must find a way to help our students do better as soldiers. This case highlights the challenge of educating about democratic ideals in a non-ideal democratic environment. Despite the unique context, I believe that other educators from around the world can take it as one example of trade-offs and compromises of democratic ideals which are necessary steps in our way in building more democratic societies.