Source: Haaretz, Sep 08, 2015

The teaching of the language has been coopted by the army's intelligence corps, leading to teachers who don't speak Arabic and students who study it only in the hope of foiling terrorists.

“Students studying Arabic ... We need your help in foiling a terror attack about which we have received numerous alerts.” This is how a lesson taught by soldiers to junior high school students begins. The goal of the activity — which is part of larger joint program of the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps and Israel's Education Ministry — is motivate students to “learn and understand the importance of the Arabic language.”

The method chosen to convince students to study Arabic is a series of threats and fear mongering. The imaginary terror attack is meant to take place in the students' own school, apparently in order to make the experience even more powerful.

“For years the educational system has focused on training ‘intelligence fodder’ for the IDF,” says Prof. Reuven Snir, Dean of Humanities at the University of Haifa and a professor of Arabic language and literature.

This lesson plan, from August 2012, was written by instructors a unit called TELEM — a Hebrew acronym for “fostering Arabic and Middle Eastern studies,” — which is part of the IDF’s elite 8200 intelligence unit, and operates in schools. The lesson plans say it is intended for eighth and ninth grade students, but elsewhere it states it may also be used for seventh grade. During the lesson the students must complete four tasks: The first is discovering the location of the terror attack through a crossword puzzle. The second is obtaining information on the terrorist ("who has a mustache, black hair and is serious looking&quot . Their third task is to decipher a conversation in Arabic about the transfer of weapons; and finally the fourth is uncovering the timing of the attack.

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.674964

Note: Premium article – use Google...

Apparently, this right-wing government is promoting Arabic studies for more reasons than just their deep compassion for Israel’s Arabic speaking minorities...

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/0626/In-Israel-a-push-to-learn-Arabic

"Recognizing and accepting the other is part of the program,'' says Dadi Komem, director of education for the fund. ''Beyond being just a regular second language, Arabic has had a connotation of being an enemy language. We are going from a 'Know your enemy' approach to Arabic study to one of, 'Get to know your neighbor who has shared citizenship'.''
--
''In the beginning, psychologically, it was not easy for a portion of the students to learn. But Essam is a good teacher and gradually the students connected and the barriers fell and they started to love what he expressed.''

In the class, one fifth-grader says learning Arabic was making him less fearful of Arabs. ''If you understand what they are saying then you know they are not talking about you,'' he says.

--

Overall, Israel wants all children to learn Arabic for the purposes of a better democracy, and teaching starting in 1st grade will really serve that purpose. It will be a better country the more Jews and Arabs understand each other. That is the point of starting it early and broadly.

It is simultaneously true that the IDF wants to have a certain number of 18 year olds with strong Arabic skills to serve in its intelligence branch, translating Arabic communications, and they start casting the net for teenagers who might be good at it. That's hardly surprising, and those using Arabic represent probably 1/10th of 1% of HS grads. So, yes, unfortunately (?) better understanding of Arabic by Jews will also mean that the military has a better understanding of enemy activity.

There seems to be a uniformity among those who "care about Palestinians" to oppose anything that could promote co-existence, individual connections, cultural understanding, trust etc. and to try to spin it all as some evil plot. I disagree. I think that the only way this gets better is if people start seeing each other as people, minimize provocation, and get the tension down to a manageable level. Hooray for the new program to start teaching Arabic to Jews in 1st grade!!

Islamist Hamas authorities plan to expand Hebrew-language classes in the Gaza Strip's high schools to help Palestinians know their enemy in times of conflict with Israel.

Far from a sign that peace will soon break out, Hamas's promotion of Hebrew learning in the Israeli-blockaded Mediterranean enclave aims to make linguistic skill a useful new front in the struggle against the Jewish state.

Hamas rejects Israel's existence and seeks to supplant it with a Palestinian state, but says Gazans stand to gain from being able to monitor the discourse of a militarily vastly superior adversary in its own language.

Hamas aired threatening video and radio messages to Israelis in Hebrew during eight days of clashes in November in which militants peppered the Jewish state with rocket salvoes before Egypt brokered a ceasefire. Hamas's Hebrew broadcasts underlined a desire to use Hebrew as a propaganda tool in the conflict.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/31/us-palestinians-israel-hebrew-idUSBRE90U02C20130131

Know of any such skits?