The 'Iran' Program is Being Taught in a High School in Israel

One of the cities in central Israel, close to Tel Aviv, will teach a program named 'Iran' in one of its high schools in the new academic year. Holon, which previously had a large population of Iranian descent, has announced that it has proposed the subject of Iran as one of the main educational programs to the students of Navon High School and has currently accepted '15 outstanding students' for it. According to Israeli media, the curriculum will cover topics such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, 'Black Friday' (one of the days of protests against the Shah during the anti-Pahlavi government demonstrations in Tehran), the policies of the current leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, demographic issues like Shiites and Sunnis in Iran, and the Persian language. The planners of this program hope that by the end of the academic year, students will also gain a deep understanding of security and intelligence issues related to Israel and Iran, so they can assist Israeli security agencies in gathering information about Iran, identifying threats, combating terrorism, and evaluating intelligence sources in their future lives. The principal of Navon High School stated that these students are likely to serve in Unit 8200 during their military service. This unit is the intelligence and surveillance unit in Aman, the military intelligence organization of the Israeli army. The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, which published a photo of the Navon High School officials with 9 of the 15 accepted students alongside their laptops, added that another term for this program is 'security and research,' which is significant given the current situation in Israel where the name Iran is associated with threats against Israel's existence. The report indicates that the instructors for this program are mainly former members of the Mossad, the internal security service, and Unit 8200. No further details about the instructors were provided, but the teaching of security topics in Israeli schools by former intelligence personnel has a history. These personnel have participated in teaching matters related to Palestinians over several decades, and some students who learned Arabic and Palestinian issues later served in the army's intelligence unit during their military service. Israeli media previously emphasized that the interest and enthusiasm of Israeli students in learning Arabic and issues related to the Arab world have significantly decreased, as Israeli youth have shown more interest in issues like economics and technology and are more inclined to familiarize themselves with the Western world rather than the Arab world and the Middle East. This situation has forced the army to teach language and related matters to soldiers before their acceptance into intelligence agencies. Over the past years, Israeli media and some international media have published numerous reports on how Persian language and topics related to Iran are taught to soldiers upon their entry into the army. These reports indicated that soldiers accepted for surveillance and intelligence work in Unit 8200 continuously receive training in classes related to Iran during their service; classes where even street language and singing in Persian are taught. Many of these soldiers came from families that did not have Iranian roots, especially since immigration from Iran to Israel has almost stopped in the last two decades. Persian has been taught in several Israeli universities over the past decades. Universities like Tel Aviv have an Iran department, and the University of Haifa has been teaching Persian and Iranian affairs for years in the 'Gulf Center' named after 'Ezri,' one of the ambassadors of Israel in Iran during the Pahlavi reign. The course 'Iran, Security, and Intelligence' has also been one of the proposed subjects for students at Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel alongside the Persian language for years. However, it seems that this is the first time a program named Iran is being taught at the high school level in Israel. The reason for choosing Navon High School in Holon for this program has not been disclosed. The enmity between Iran and Israel, which replaced decades of friendship and cooperation during the Pahlavi regime since the Islamic Republic came to power, has intensified in the past year as Israel has been engaged in a war with the extremist group Hamas. Hamas, which is recognized as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, has close ties with Iran and is one of the groups supported by Tehran, which initiated the war in this Palestinian enclave by attacking Israel on October 7 last year, killing about 1,200 Israelis and abducting 251 Israelis to Gaza. In April of this year, Iran launched a military attack on Israel from its territory and airspace for the first time to respond to the killing of one of its senior military commanders in Syria in an action attributed to Israel. In the past month, after the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas's political bureau, in northern Tehran, which Iran has attributed to Israel, the possibility of Iran repeating a military attack on this country, the region, and the world has raised concerns about the escalation of the Gaza war into a regional war, especially since Israel has stated that any potential Iranian movement, regardless of the extent of damage, will be met with an attack on Iranian soil.