“How do you keep a vision of peace without sounding naïve?”

Avital Benshalom
Photo: Ali Ghandtschi
Mrs. Benshalom, you are the principal of Hajjar school in Beersheva in the Negev region. Your school deliberately enrolls Jewish and Arab children to educate them together. How is your school different from others in Israel?
Hajjar is one of only eight mixed schools in all of Israel – out of a total of 5,000 elementary schools. Israeli society is very segregated, especially so for children. Children from Jewish and Arab communities have very little opportunity to meet and play together, or to learn about the other culture. In most other schools, the communities are not mixed and lessons are taught in only one language.
Our students are 60 percent Arab and 40 percent Jewish. Our staff of teachers is also mixed, and we teach in both Hebrew and Arabic. But the language education is just a foundation. We want students to experience the various cultures we have in Israel and to give them an opportunity to express their own background.
How do you create such situations?
Our first goal is to break the ice, to have them spend time together. For very young children, we have things like the “friendship bench” where they can sit together and chat about the things they like, what they eat, their favourite animals. It helps them to build trust.
With older children, we have some more complex projects that relate to our city Beersheva. For instance, we go and look at the street signs. The students begin to research: who are the people who are commemorated in the street signs, and what are their achievements? That is when students begin to realize that there are very few Arab people commemorated in the street names, that the Arab community is underrepresented in that sense.
And the next steps is to come up with suggestions – the students suggest people from an Arab background who might be a good person to have a street named after him or her. The students will write letters to the municipality to suggest changes.
“I want my students to know they have a lot of power in their hand to change their environment”
What do children take home from that kind of projects?
It’s not about those specific examples. The “friendship bench” and the “street sign project” are just examples. Ultimately, it’s about educational goals. Our first goal is to allow students to express their culture, their religion, their national identity, and to get to know each other.
But the second step is to do something with the knowledge that there are two different nationalities and religions in Israel. What do I do with that fact? How do I affect the larger society?
For example, the students send letters to cinemas around the city saying, we want to have movies in different languages, not only in Hebrew. We want movies in Arabic, in Amharic, an Ethiopian semitic language, or in Russian – there are many immigrants in Beersheva. Students have also offered restaurants across the city to translate their menus for both languages.
Those are activities that serve those goals: Activism and education for multiculturalism. I want my students to know they have a lot of power in their hand to change their environment. Of course we won’t solve the Israeli-Palestine conflict, but we will make the Israeli society a better place for both Jewish and Arabs, step by step.
“For kids, sometimes the maths lessons, Hebrew lessons, Arabic lessons are the best way to keep them away from the news”
How was the immediate aftermath of October 7? Were you even able to continue this curriculum?
The first thing was to map our community, to see if someone in the school was hurt. Our teachers called each of their students (both Jewish and Arabic) to see how they were. There were eight families in our community who had relatives who were affected by the events of October 7th. The first thing was to learn who was affected personally, and to help them.
The school stayed closed for a month, mostly because Beersheva received a lot of rocket fire. After a week we started to study through video calls. Many people were saying, you shouldn’t study in a situation like this. You should talk about how you feel. I said: No, we should study. We need the stability. Zoom conversations are not the right method to share feelings. And for kids, sometimes the maths lessons, Hebrew lessons, Arabic lessons are the best way to keep them away from the news. It was such hard work for families to keep their children safe, protect them from the horrors.
How was it to get back together in real life?
We re-opened the school on November 5. At first, we didn't know if the Jewish families will send their children back to school or if the Arab families will feel comfortable to return. On the first day, some 82 percent of our students showed up. It was the highest percentage of returning students across Beersheva, in some other schools only 10% of the students returned because the parents were worried. This was good feedback for us. I think because we are a Jewish-Arab school they felt a commitment to come back.
During the first weeks back in school, I was very concerned about the rocket fire, but we had only two or three situations where we had to run to the shelters with the children. During the early weeks of the war, shelling happened every day, now it’s around once a week. Evacuating 350 children to the shelter within a minute is a challenge, so we kept practicing.
Even though the families in your school seem to be dedicated to the idea of good relations, you must have had many difficult conversations.
You need to be more curious than critical. You need to be open. Then you can communicate with the families. I'm happy that most families find a place to speak even in such a complicated reality. Since October 7, they still find an open door in my office, and they often share their thoughts and concerns.
It's my job to be there for the families. I admire that they send the children to study together in such a complicated time. Of course, there is always a lot of tension among the adults, but then the kids are coming together, and we see that everything is okay. But yes, you must keep an open channel of communication with the parents and with the teachers – 24 hours, 7 days a week.
“We start each day with a program dedicated for personal strength, things like practicing breathing slowly”
Did you have specific ways to discuss the events with the children?
We now start each day with a program dedicated for personal strength, things like practicing breathing slowly. This is not about discussing the conflict. It is about managing anxiety and tension, what can you do when you feel afraid or tense? Some of the children, it will be when they hear the awful news from Gaza. For some of the students, it will be when they hear the awful news from the kibbutzim in the region. First of all, they need to feel safe. For some children it helps them to blow bubbles. Others need to practice positive thinking.
The second thing is – we saw that the children avoid talking about the war. The teachers were confused to see that. So we installed the “compassion corner”, a mailbox for them to drop letters or drawings expressing their compassion towards people who were hurt during the war – for the children in Gaza or for the Israeli soldiers that were killed. We received very touching letters. The box is still standing in the school. It represents our respect and compassion for both sides.
What is the biggest challenge right now in your daily life at school?
Keeping the vision of peace without sounding naive or unrealistic. To keep the hope that life can, should and will be different in Israel and Palestine.
I assume that is an ongoing conversation you have with everybody at the school.
Yes, it is. We also continue thinking about how to create a curriculum that represents both groups, and how you can achieve a better language proficiency in Hebrew and Arabic. Those are the normal challenges of every school principal – how to achieve good results etc. Specific for us, is how we can keep the school a safe place for both groups.
The Jewish-Arab education is not something you need to fight for”
“Is hostility towards the school on the rise”
Most of the time, we operate as normal. The neighbourhood accepts us. The Ministry of Education accepts us. The municipality of Bersheva accept us. But yes, there have been small incidents of hostility over the last months. Our fifth graders participated in swimming lessons recently, together with children from other schools.
One of my students had a conversation with another child, and this boy asked him: “Wow, how do you study with those Arabs?” Our student was very surprised and said: “I'm an Arab”. And this boy reacted with open contempt. It was very humiliating and racist. But there were people there who addressed the situation, so we don't feel unsafe.
The Jewish-Arab education is not something you need to fight for. We are here to stay. We want to participate in local activities as much as possible, to show that we are here, and that this is normal.