Political Pedagogy Vs Coexistance Education: The Case of Israel\Palestine

It seems that there is a well-high harmony of opinion within the critical portion of the Israeli scholars, according to which peaceful coexistence is, indeed, the only enlightened educational solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, one cannot be sure that this harmony is not somewhat the harmony of spheres to the ears of mainstream Israelis. My claim is that a coexistent education is impuissance at best, or perpetuation of the Israeli situation at worst, as, in the end, it rather accepts, consciously or unconsciously, the fundamentals behind the hegemonic Zionist ideology. That is, the exclusivist unmediated Jewish patriotism, which taking apart the mainstream Israelis from the Palestinians, and subsequently put them at a distance / A distance which is the real driving force and the quintessence of the conflict. On the contrary, political pedagogy really declares a war to the knife against the conventional Jewish patriotism. Hence, as things stand, it is not to bemuse anyone of sound mind that very little attention has been paid to the radical political perspective and to the political pedagogy in particular, within Israeli educational systems. This paper presents the Israeli education system as a case study for examining and suggesting political perspectives of education in what Erik Hobsbawm called “the age of the extreme”. I will consider the general implications of the radical political approach vs. the critical and coexistence education, discussing how and to what extent they both trying to challenge the Zionist ideological message of the educational system. By that, I hope to elaborate on the advantage of the political idea of republicanism regarding education in general and the Israeli education system in particular