During a period when Israel is once again speaking about the concept of national resilience, it seems that the actual pillar of resilience, education, has been forgotten. Teachers, from preschool up, are not just public servants: they’re the builders of the nation. They’re not a service but a public good. Today, as the Finance Ministry insists on imposing a salary cut on teachers of hundreds of shekels per month, who haven’t been provided the compensation that was provided to other civil servants affected by pay cuts, it’s not just an insult to the profession. It’s a distributing statement that we should all take seriously.
As teachers are facing demands to “enlist for the sake of the national effort,” ministers and lawmakers aren’t just not facing pay cuts—they’re continuing to raise their own salaries.
As the head of a regional council, I will soon receive a pay raise, as will all the other council heads throughout Israel, despite this raise not even having been requested. While teachers are considering leaving their profession because of the inability to make ends meet each month, politicians are adding more assistants, more workers, more cars. Coalition funds are being used for who knows what as our soldiers fight on for yet another day.
This isn’t a question of budgets. It’s a question of priorities. And that’s what’s so outrageous.
The young generation, which survived a global pandemic, is now living in a reality of war, loss, and trauma. Soon, they will be asked to enlist in the military and to protect the state. They deserve more than teachers who have been worked to the bone for a pittance. They deserve an education system that’s strong, stable, and growing—one that will be an anchor for them amid everything this current reality brings.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, emphasized the importance of education in shaping a nation. Speaking about national education in 1953, he said that education “determines to a large extent, and perhaps decisively, the spiritual countenance of the youth, and thus the entire nation.”
Speaking at the opening of the 13th Knesset, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, “Security isn’t just tanks, planes, and missile boats. Security is also, and perhaps foremost, the individual—the Israeli citizen. Security is also education. It’s our homes, our schools, our streets and neighborhoods, it’s the society we flourish in.”
Have we forgotten what happens under a policy that denigrates education?
It doesn’t hurt to look to the past and check. In Venezuela, after the government seriously weakened the education system, the society witnessed a crisis of higher education, a rise in unemployment, and a steep decline in social mobility. After the fall of the Soviet Union, reforms in Russia that neglected the education system resulted in a dramatic fall in the status of teachers and a serious hit to the young generation.
On the other hand, Finland and Estonia, two countries that consistently invested in teachers’ status and salary, enjoy the educational achievements and social power that go along with long-term investment in people.
The teachers’ struggle isn’t about a couple of shekels here or there. It’s about basic respect for those in whose hands we’ve placed what’s more dear to us—our children.
“A good teacher is a teacher for life” isn’t just a cliche. It’s a call for leadership. So I’m saying loud and clear: I support this struggle without disclaimer. It’s not against the state, it’s for the future of the state. It’s not against the public, it’s for the public. A brief strike could be worth decades.
Against the cynical voices, we need to say one thing clearly: the choice to denigrate education today will result tomorrow in more violence, more troubled youth, more wasted futures. On the other hand, investing in education is the best investment you can make. It’s not just economic but moral.
Let’s say it loud: the time has come for education to be a preferred profession. The time has come to say that we stand alongside teachers when it comes to the salaries, too. Because education is national security, and there’s nothing more urgent than that.
Moshe Davidovich is the head of the Mateh Asher regional council and the chair of the Confrontation Line Forum.
