Education Minister Yitzhak Navon today directed the Ministry’s religious education division not to distribute instructions forbidding Israeli religious schools from holding social meetings between Jews and Arabs.
“We shall not allow any ban on meetings with Arabs,” Navon declared. The order was issued a day after the director of the division, Yaacov Hadani, announced the ban and told reporters that the directive had the full backing of Navon.
The ban on meetings between Jewish and Arab youths was intended, according to Ha###ni, to fight growing trends toward assimilation and mixed marriages. He also rejected charges that the ban would conflict with the Education Ministry’s recent directive to stress studies in democratic values and Jewish-Arab understanding.
NAVON WILL NOT TOLERATE INTERVENTION
Navon said that he was responsible for the actions taken by the Education Ministry and that he would not tolerate the intervention in the Ministry by the Chief Rabbis of Israel, an apparent reference to a recent statement from the chief rabbinical council objecting to meetings between Jewish and Arab youths.
Interior Minister Yitzhak Peretz of the Shas Party said today he supported Hadani. “If we look at Jewish history, the greatest danger to the Jewish people in all generations has been assimilation,” Peretz declared.
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