Israel, Tel Aviv, The struggle continue at schools too by Kerem 29/12/04

Two male and one female students of the municipal Alef high-school tied themselves to the gate of the auditorium in protest of the invitation of an air force general to lecture to the 12th grade students.
The three chained are part of about 10 members group of "students against militarism", protested the entrance of military agencies into the school for "education in military values" - a project of the Education ministry and Tel Aviv municipality enhanced lately. The lecture of the air force general "on the [ethical] conflicts the IDF encounter" is only part of the project of "preparing" the students to the compulsory military service, done by teachers, by military youth trainers who deliver classes on the moral of IDF, by organized visits of the 12th graders at the military recruiting centering.

Regardless the joining the army or evading/refusing it, [which this school of arts is pain in the authority ass as it is around 20%], the students have the right to graduate without being given pre military training.

The action continued for about two hours during which pro military ones throw few stones on the chained and destroyed their placard "non entrance to the army". Already at morning there were presence of five policeman and an officer, who stayed till the end of the action. It was revealed later they knew it in advance and came to warn the principal that students intend to harm the general. They even demanded to do a search in the students bags to search for eggs and spray cans... but the principal refused the search and even refused to give information about the students.

The action got lot of media cover and initiated hot polemics among the school students. The three unchained themselves after two hours and after a disciplinary talk with the principal were suspended till they deliver a paper on "why the agreement with the Palestinian failed, according to the book "touch distance" by the former general and prime minister Ehud Barak....

See also appended below the text of:
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/520249.html and the Hebrew text on-line:
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3024826,00.html

Media report on the above action:

Students protest plan to appoint IDF officers to high schools

Three twelfth-grade students from Tel Aviv's municipal high school "A" protested on Tuesday the plan to appoint Israel Defense Forces officers to high schools around the country. The three students chained themselves to the entrance to an auditorium in which Brigadier General Yonatan Loker, commander of the air force's Hatzerim base, was due to give a lecture.

The students said they were protesting "the military takeover of the education system and [the plan to] turn high schools into military preparatory academies."

"We are declaring our opposition to the placing of military figures inside schools, a factor which would contribute to the dissolution of civil society and its total militarization," the students said.

Police officers were called to the school following the incident.

The invitation to Loker was made in the framework of widening cooperation between the Education Ministry and the IDF's Education Corps according to which officers will escort high school students through their final years of studies and will encourage their draft into the army.

In the first phase of the plan, officers will be assigned to 74 high schools around the country. The following year, the project will be expanded to include 250 high schools.

Activist organizations, including Courage to Refuse, have expressed their opposition to the involvement of the military in the country's education system.