Abstract
Arabic and Security in Israel: 1967-1973
The paper will deal with the connection between the teaching of Arabic language in Israeli-Jewish schools and the Israeli security system. This relationship, which existed rather covertly during the British Mandate in Palestine and during the first two decades of the state of Israel, strengthened dramatically following the crucial period of 1967-1973. This period, which is usually analysed in geo-political or sociological parameters, also brought some critical and meaningful transformations within the field of Arabic language in Israel generally, and particularly within the field of Arabic teaching in Jewish schools in Israel.
In my paper I will demonstrate the way the 1967 War and 1973 War fundamentally bolstered the connection between Arabic language, which was and is an official language in Israel, and Israeli national security. The military occupation which followed the 1967 War increased the Israeli establishment's need for Arabic-speaking personnel. Also the Israeli military intelligence's failure (proven in the 1973 War) signalled the urgency to improve intelligence capabilities. Both wars brought about a decisive request from the security establishment to increase and improve the teaching of Arabic in Israeli schools, which they hoped would result in better recruitment for the Israeli military intelligence and the military administration. Lastly, a sociological element also needs to be taken into consideration: the above mentioned increased need for Arabic-learners coincided with a decline in the Jewish Arabic-speaking reservoir. The fact that the second generation of Arab-Jews, who immigrated to Israel in the 1950's, did not study Arabic and actually distanced itself from the language, decreased the "natural" reservoir used by the security establishment. This increased the need for an artificial, ad hoc, solution.
The paper will stress the effects that these three processes had on the field of Arabic teaching in the Israeli Jewish school system, and the mechanisms and formulas that were created in order to find a solution for this lack of Arabic-speaking-Jews. I will argue that this six-year period rendered Arabic language in Israel to be anything but a normal or official language, with most of the communicative, cultural, spiritual and daily-life associations being erased from it, and with the security elements becoming by far the most dominant. By doing so I believe the paper would shed new light onto one of the unexplored yet most important issues of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
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