Civil Service Commission is taking disciplinary action against 21 professors of education for having called on the previous prime minister, Ehud Barak, just after his election, not to appoint a member of the religious parties as education minister.
Two of the 21 teachers, Dr. Dorit Hop of Seminar Hakibbutzim, and Raul Weiss, who teaches at Seminar Hakibbutzim and at the Oranim Seminar, will come before the Civil Service Commission's court in Haifa tomorrow.
The teachers are charged with behaving in a manner that is inappropriate for civil servants and with conduct that is liable to injure the reputation of the civil service.
At the end of May 1999, an ad signed by 100 education professors from Israeli universities and colleges was published in the press. "We are very concerned by the possibility that a member of a religious party will once again (after Yitzhak Levy of the National Religious Party) be appointed education minister in the new government. The religious parties have developed autonomous education systems that draw on many resources, while standards in the regular school system, which most students in Israel attend, are seriously declining," the ad read.
"The Education Ministry should reflect the values of the public at large, and the person heading this ministry must be representative of this public," the authors of the ad stated.
Most of the professors who signed the ad are renowned faculty members of the various universities. However, only teachers from the colleges are being prosecuted, since they get paid by the Education Ministry.
Responding to a question from the director general of the teachers' union, Avraham Ben Shabat, Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander said that it was not he who initiated the charges, but Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein.
Dr. Nimrod Aloni of Seminar Hakibbutzim, who is also being indicted, said yesterday: "It is absurd that teachers in Shas' schools and in the settlements could put their schools on strike and lead children to demonstrations but were never charged."
Dr. Dorit Hop said yesterday: "People such as the Attorney General who are in charge of fighting for democracy, are indicting others for voicing their opinion. Freedom of expression is the heart and soul of democracy, so those who are indicting us should take a long hard look in the mirror."
Attorney Moti Arad of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, who represents the teachers, said that "No clause in the Civil Service Code prohibits civil servants from putting an ad in the press or giving interviews. Indictment under the clause of injuring the reputation of the Civil Service is a far-reaching interpretation ... This indictment is disgraceful to a democracy. There are thousands of employees in the Civil Service. It is unthinkable that none may criticize the government.