Israeli Schoolchildren Plan Field Trip to Hebron: Seething Ensues
JERUSALEM – At a time when peace talks with the Palestinians are stalled over Jewish settlements, the Israeli government plans to send schoolchildren on field trips to a disputed holy site in one of the West Bank’s most volatile flash points.
Education Minister Gideon Saar says the visits to Hebron, burial site of the biblical patriarch Abraham and home to some of Israel’s most radical settlers, are part of a plan to acquaint Israeli youngsters with their heritage.
“It is a place of emotional, religious and historical power,” Saar, a leading member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, told Israel Radio on Wednesday. “It is the place where our ancestors are buried and it is part of our history. Whoever objects to this, in my view, is trying to disconnect us from our roots.”
Palestinian and Israeli critics both call it an exercise in indoctrination that will ignore the thousands of dispossessed Palestinians living nearby.
[Thousands of “dispossed” Palestinians? WTF? They are living there, while the Jews were driven out.]