Education Ministry Admits Failure After Masses Misuse The Word ‘Ban’

“Their failure is our failure, and it must be addressed.”

Jerusalem, January 6 – Minister of Education Naftali Bennett acknowledged his office’s part in a large segment of the Israeli public not knowing the difference between banning a book and removing it from a list teachers use to choose reading assignments for their high school classes. Bennett promised a thorough review of educational policies that may have contributed to the widespread ignorance of such a seemingly simple difference in meaning.

Last week the ministry removed a book from its list of reading material for advanced students, a book that it claimed legitimized assimilation by depicting a love affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian. Bennett later added to the justification by accusing the book, “Borderlife” by Dorit Rabanian, of defaming IDF soldiers. The book was not banned; in fact the Ministry of Education has no say in what may or may not be published or sold in the country. However, various media outlets and opponents of the move were quick to accuse the ministry of censorship and thought control, saying that the book ban was undemocratic and counterproductive. Bennett immediately convened an emergency meeting of ministry staff to diagnose what went wrong that ended up exposing the basic ignorance of people who had been raised in the Israeli education system and were otherwise considered intelligent, yet who seemed unable to distinguish between an act of actual censorship and the formulation of a list of works that best fit with a given educational approach.

Radio, print, and online pundits railed against the ministry and Bennett, accusing him of imposing his religious views on children. International reporters picked up the story in translation and related it as involving a ban, causing the minister and his staff to wonder where they and their predecessors had failed in conveying the subtle difference between “removing a certain book from a list given to teachers, from which to select assigned reading” and “prohibiting people from reading a certain book.”

“We recognize that this ministry could have performed better,” Bennett told reporters. “Many questions remain unanswered, chief among them, ‘How did it transpire that dozens, if not hundreds, of otherwise educated, informed journalists, commentators, and politicians, all of whom went through our educational system, have failed to understand basic vocabulary?’ Their failure is our failure, and it must be addressed.”

Director-General of the ministry Michal Cohen has ordered a thorough review of materials and teaching methods to determine where the shortcomings lie, and what must be done to fix them. “We are looking at civics, reading comprehension, and logic, to begin with,” she explained. “The answers have to be there somewhere. The ministry is led by somebody on the political right, which means the fault has to lie with us. We’ll find it eventually.”