Imagine an Israel where Jews befriend Arabs, where the words secular and religious, right wing and left wing, Ashkenazi and Sephardi are mere descriptions, not tools of prejudice.
That’s the goal of the “Tolerance Project,” an ambitious educational program recently launched by the Ministry of Education and the Anti-Defamation League.
This project, which supplements more than 10 years of Education Ministry activity in promoting tolerance, is based on the ADL’s highly successful “A World of Difference” program, created a decade ago to teach tolerance to American children.
The two-year Israeli project was introduced this spring with a series of televised public service announcements aimed at children of all ages.
Featuring celebrities well known to Israeli children, the television spots examine stereotypes in Israeli society. Some deal with Arabs and Jews, while other focus on new immigrants, conflicts between the religious and the secular, and sexism. In one segment, a popular singer describes how people relate to him as an albino.
The project also has produced a full-length film set in Afula, the site of last year’s terrorist attack that left eight youths dead. The community’s response to the attack and the perspectives of the young survivors toward their Arab neighbors are examined in the film.
To sensitize teachers to the roots of intolerance, and to prepare them for using the materials, including the film and the television spots, the ADL and the Education Ministry plan to conduct training seminars on the subject.
According to television producer David Machaelis, the idea for the tolerance project came after the Hebron massacre in February 1994. Baruch Goldstein, of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, killed 29 Palestinians as they prayed in the mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
“The massacre was a real turning point,” said Machaelis. “Following the massacre, Jewish teen-agers got up on television and spewed hatred toward Arabs. Prime Minister Rabin saw this and became determined to do something to defuse the situation.”
Although Israel has its fair share of intolerance, “prejudice is not institutionalized here the way it is in Europe, and even the U.S.,” Machaelis said. “Germany, France, England were all once relatively homogeneous societies, and they have little tolerance for people who are different.”
Israel “began as a society of diverse nationalities,” he said. “We do have a problem with prejudice, but not racism. Since it’s not institutionalized, we have a good chance of fighting it.”
To prove his point, Machaelis and his crew filmed one of the television spots before a mixed group of Arab and Jewish elementary school students in Jaffa.
The Jewish and Arab students, from the Hashmonim School and the Tavita International School, respectively, had already met several times as part of another coexistence program. Indistinguishable from each other, they eagerly watched some of the spots on videotape.
Rather than focus on Jewish-Arab relations, the spots shown to the students were much more subtle. In one, a young man is watching a cricket match and his girlfriend is angry.
“I don’t believe you’re watching another cricket match. All you ever do is watch sports,” she bellows. “You men are all alike.”
“So, we’re all alike?” he retorts. “We men shouldn’t let you women drive a car.”
“You don’t have an ounce of tolerance in you,” she thunders.
“If I didn’t have tolerance, I couldn’t live with you,” he answers. The children burst out laughing.
In another spot a teen idol recalls how he never “fit in” with the other students. “I was the smallest one in my school. No one ever came up and said, `Wow, you’re such a cool guy, you know so much about computers.’ They didn’t see who I really am. But, ultimately, they were the ones who lost out.”
Eyes beaming, he asks, “So, who have you lost out on lately?”
In the discussion after the video, the audience was brimming with ideas.
The students were asked, “What does intolerance mean to you?”
One of them answered, “It means we’re all the same, that every person has different qualities.”
Another said, “First, we need to look at a person’s character, to listen to what the other are saying.”
After the session, as the students shared cold drinks and cookies, John Haddad, a 12-year-old Amir Amar, a Jewish student from Hashmonim.
“I’m Christian, he’s Jewish, and we’re friends,” said John, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
Our kids are very unusual,” said Sohair Basel, an assistant teacher at the Tavita School. “As an international school, our kids live tolerance on a day- to-day basis. It’s just sad that meetings like this tend to be the exception, not the rule.”
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