May 2024
Dear Friends,
The spring holiday season has passed, and we are approaching the end of the school year, a year unlike anything we could have imagined. We didn’t believe this school year could possibly end with the hostages still not returned, the terrible war in Gaza still ongoing, and tens of thousands of evacuees still living without a home and with no certainty of the future.
Amidst this hard reality, we celebrated the end of the school year at the Givat Haviva International School. Dozens of Israeli students - Arab and Jewish - and international students from all over the world chose to continue studying in Israel in the shadow of the war and successfully completed their studies. This exciting event reminded us again that the privilege of those working in education, who are in the field daily, is hope. We have the opportunity to see new, better generations receive an education in pursuit of equality and justice, who are able to handle complexity and live together even at times that make the adults around them want to give up. Givat Haviva International School, which reopened about a week after October 7, was perhaps the only shared educational framework operating for Jewish and Arab youth in Israel at the time. Our students, some of whom lost family members in Israel and Gaza, returned to campus and the school community, seeing it as the only place to deal with fear and loss.
As you will see in this report, this month, we have continued our activity to strengthen shared society with universities and colleges nationwide. We held a conference in cooperation with the University of Haifa on the subject of the Hebrew language for Arab society, which was the first of its kind in the field. We dealt with one of the main challenges for integrating Arabs in Israel - the knowledge of Hebrew. A lack of a high level of fluency in spoken Hebrew is a major barrier facing young Arab men and women in Israel at every step - in academia, employment, and routine daily life. Without language skills, talented young Arabs will not have the opportunity to realize their potential and contribute to themselves, the economy, and society. This is one of the only issues on which all government, academia, and industry professionals agree. So, this is an excellent place to begin when we can start rebuilding Israeli society from the current devastation.
Finally, we are proud to have held a unique conference this month for the first time, dealing with the field of art and culture and the impact of the current crisis on it. Unfortunately, we learned that the deep pain cuts across communities, silencing Arab artists and forcing Jewish artists to self-censor themselves
I wish us all some routine after the holidays and before the summer, that the hostages will return and the fighting will end, and that everyone will be able to return to their homes and start the work of much-needed rehabilitation.
Michal Sella, CEO, Givat Haviva
מיכל סלע, מנכ”לית גבעת חביבה
ميخال سيلع، المديرة العامة لچڤعات حبيبة
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