To begin with, Education Minister Limor Livnat acted swiftly to remove a nonsensical 9th-grade textbook from the history curriculum of the nation’s schools. This book, supposedly a tool for educating teens about history, omitted most references to the Holocaust or to the founding of the State of Israel, concentrating instead on the war side of World War Two, and on the refugee issue of 1948. The book, according to researcher Yoram Hazony, was the lead element of the latest post-Zionist campaign to rid Israel of Zionist pride and put in its place Jewish self-guilt. For the students that have already used this book in the two years that it has been on the booklist, Livnat ordered mandatory remedial studies to fill in the missing elements of the history curriculum.
In response to Livnat’s decision, Meretz leader Yossi Sarid, who was education minister when the book entered the curriculum, stated that she had acted too harshly, and that the book should have been edited, rather than scrapped. Of course, it is well within Sarid’s post-Zionist interests that the book should stay on the curriculum. But Livnat has won a decisive victory for Zionism and for Jewish values with this decision.
A more ludicrous example of the sanity of the new government and the insanity of the leftist opposition occurred in the Knesset yesterday. Health Minister Nissim Dahan announced that a new, stricter ban on smoking would be implemented in most public gathering places, including hospitals and medical clinics, shopping malls, public corridors and waiting rooms, lecture, meeting, and celebration halls, theaters, concert halls, movie houses, opera or dance venues, and corridors and lobbies leading to them.
This decision is long overdue and will serve to improve the health of Israelis across the country. But never fear, for there is always to be one response to reassure those who crave the idiocy that often must pass for Israeli political discourse.
Knesset Member Ilan Gilon of Meretz is, according to newspaper reports, a three-pack-a-day smoker. He attacked Dahan for “launching a stupid campaign against smokers”. He suggested that instead of banning smoking, the Health Minister should be working to expand the basket of health services covered by the health funds.
It is a true shame that Gilon cannot understand that it is the direct responsibility of the Health Minister to work toward improving public health. While that work does include providing the health services necessary for those in need of treatment, it also includes efforts to increase the health of individuals so that the strain on the health budget is decreased. There is nothing “stupid” about Dahan’s decision, and the only problem with it is that it doesn’t go far enough.
Instead, Ilan Gilon would rather have the Health Minister prove as incompetent as his predecessors in combatting smoking in society. Gilon would rather waste the taxpayers’ money on expanding the health basket than trying to solve the problem at its source and perhaps freeing up some money for other worthwhile efforts, such as redefining the country’s educational priorities.
Perhaps I am dreaming too much, but it seems to me that a liberal, social-oriented party such as Meretz should have such issues as quality education and quality health programs at heart. Instead they continue to advocate destructive efforts aimed at eroding Jewish values and continuing to strain a health system that is already experiencing financial difficulties.
At least we now have a government that is ignoring such nonsense and actually working to make competent decisions that will provide real help where society needs it most.
Copyright 2001. Yehuda Poch is a writer living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
