A civics teacher in Kiryat Tivon, near Haifa, is on the search for a new job, after a student complained about his slipping leftist ideology into classroom lessons. The teacher, according to the student, tried to convince students to dodge the IDF draft. As a result, the Education Ministry is seeking to fire him.
The student wrote a letter on the matter to Education Minister Shai Piron. Piron called the teacher in for a meeting in the wake of the student's complaint.
The student wrote that she was very confused because of the teacher. “I am supposed to join the army in less than a year, and my teacher is telling me that the army is immoral, and that anyone who joins it is forced to do cruel things,” the letter said, Channel Two reported.
Speaking to Channel Two, the student said that the teacher's comments “made me very angry. I see this as anti-army incitement.”
In addition to railing against the army, the teacher, according to the student, told students that he was a radical leftist, “and according to him the state did not belong to the Jews at all but to the Arabs, and as far as he was concerned, the Jews had no business being in Israel at all.”
The teacher, said the student, said that he had voted for Hadash, the Israel Communist Party. “According to Education Ministry rules, politics are to be kept outside the classroom,” the student said. “This whole incident is very saddening.”