Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar in Hebron
Photo: Gershon Elinson
Education minister: All school students should visit Hebron
Gideon Sa'ar announces plan to expand pilot program that will have school children visit Hebron, Cave of Patriarchs
Speaking at the Knesset plenum on Wednesday, Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar announced that in light of the success of a pilot program
taking students on school trips to the city of Hebron
and the Cave of Patriarchs,
it was his intention to expand the project to schools across the country.
"There has been Jewish presence in Hebron throughout the years, even when the Jewish nation was in exile. Jews, according to our faith, will always live in Hebron. We cannot allow a delusion that Jews can be uprooted from Hebron to fester among the Arabs," Sa'ar explained. The minister added that so far, the tours have garnered a positive response.
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Nevertheless, sources within the education system criticized Sa'ar and said he was taking advantage of the system to promote political agendas. "Sa'ar is a smart man and he realizes that in order to succeed in the Likud primaries he needs Feiglin's people to like him," said one teacher just a day after the elections in which Moshe Feiglin received 25% of the vote.
The "Tours in the ancestral homeland" plan was launched in March 2011 as a pilot program in Jerusalem. Within its framework, some 1,000 school children take part in tours of Hebron and the Cave of Patriarchs. The trips, for junior high and high school students, are not mandatory and subject to the school's discretion, in coordination with the parents.
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