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HOW ISRAEL TURNED A TEACHER INTO A TRAITOR  
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Oren Ziv
February 9, 2024
972 Magazine
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_ Social media posts about Oct. 7 got him fired, arrested, and thrown
in jail. Now, Meir Baruchin faces a fight to return to a school that
wants him gone. _

Meir Baruchin outside his home in Jerusalem, Oren Ziv

 

Picture the scene: a 62-year-old high school teacher walks into the
school grounds one day and is met by a pre-meditated protest from
students who are refusing to attend his class. “Son of a bitch!”
one student screams at him. “Cancer!” cries another. “Whore!”
shouts a third, while more students spit on the ground in front of
him. 

This was the greeting
[[link removed]] Meir
Baruchin received on Jan. 19 — the day he was reinstated
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the Yitzhak Shamir High School in the central Israeli city of Petah
Tivkah after having been fired, arrested, and jailed for four days in
solitary confinement at a high security prison. His offense? Two
Facebook posts on Oct. 8 — the day after Hamas-led militants
massacred over 1,100 people in southern Israel, and Israel began its
bombardment of the Gaza Strip — in which he shared a photo of
Palestinian children who were killed in an Israeli airstrike and
pleaded to “stop this madness,” and warned about rising bloodshed
in the West Bank.

In a hearing 10 days later at the Petah Tikvah Municipality, which
employs all of the city’s public school teachers, Baruchin was
accused of “condemning IDF soldiers, denouncing the State of Israel,
and supporting terrorist acts,” and dismissed from his position.
Seeking further punishment, the Municipality also filed a complaint
with police about Baruchin’s conduct, and he was arrested
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than a month later on suspicion of “revealing intent to betray the
country.” 

Baruchin was eventually released on bail, and the Tel Aviv Regional
Labor Court ruled
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Jan. 15 that he had been unfairly dismissed. The Municipality appealed
the court ruling, and the legal process lingers on despite his
reinstatement last month. And although the school’s principal,
Rachel Barel, called for
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“legally feasible effort to prevent his return,” in the meantime
the school agreed that Baruchin will receive his salary while teaching
remotely, recording civics lessons for 12th grade students who are
preparing for this year’s matriculation exams.

"בן זונה", "סרטן", "שרמוטה", כך ילדי בית
ספר בפתח תקווה קיבלו הבוקר את המורה,
ד"ר, היסטוריון, בן 62.

מאיר ברוכין הוא יהודי יקר, לאורך שנים
מביע הזדהות עם כאבם של הפלסטינים.
בתחילת המלחמה שוטרים פרצו לביתו, הוא
נכלא, התקשורת השמיצה אותו, ניסו לפטרו,
הנה התוצאות.

הכיבוש השחית. pic.twitter.com/wHBhELxuwN
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— ישראל פריי (@freyisrael1) January 19, 2024
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While Palestinian citizens of Israel have
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the start of the war, Baruchin’s case demonstrates how, albeit in
far smaller numbers, left-wing Jewish Israelis are also falling victim
to the state’s crackdown on freedom of expression. Following the
furore over his brief return to school, +972 caught up with the
history and civics teacher at his home in Jerusalem to hear about his
experience these past few months. The interview has been edited for
length and clarity. 

WERE YOU SURPRISED TO FIND YOURSELF IN THIS SITUATION, BEING FIRED AND
EVEN ARRESTED FOR POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

I teach civics and history, two very political subjects. The political
dimensions are inescapable, so I wasn’t surprised by this
repression. I am not the first to be baselessly arrested — and if I
were Palestinian, it all would have been worse — and unfortunately,
I do not think I will be the last. 

I know of hundreds of teachers who are afraid to speak out, afraid of
losing their livelihood. My firing was clearly deliberate messaging.
The goal is to silence any critical voices, harm their livelihoods,
denounce them publicly, shame them in the mainstream media, and take
them into custody.

Israeli activists protest against the arrest of members of the Arab
High Follow-Up Committee earlier in the day, Tel Aviv District Police
Station, November 9, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

A government minister suggested dropping an atomic bomb
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Gaza. Another called for [the West Bank Palestinian town of] Huwara to
be erased
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During the investigation, I asked my investigators whether they
summoned all the people who ever chanted or graffitied “Death to
Arabs
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or who called for Palestinian villages to be burned. What about Itzik
Zarka [a prominent Likud activist] who said he was proud
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6 million Ashkenazi Jews were incinerated [in the Holocaust]? Have you
arrested him yet? Interrogated him? It is quite clear that there is
selective enforcement here. 

It’s not simply a matter of constructing a reality. It’s also a
deliberate manipulation of consciousness. When you control the
education system, the army, and the media, you hold tremendous power
in your hands and can manipulate the population in any way you want.
Whoever doesn’t fall in line is a traitor, anti-Israel, an enemy who
must be treated as one treats an enemy.

The feeling is that as a society, we are constantly on the spectrum
between neurosis and psychosis. We are in a state of disintegration,
unable to accommodate those who are different from us. They are seen
as enemies, creating a sense of threat. And when you are threatened,
you react with violence.

THE BASIS OF THE INVESTIGATION WAS TWO FACEBOOK POSTS WRITTEN ON
OCTOBER 8. WHAT DID YOU SAY IN THOSE POSTS?

In one of them, I shared an image of the bodies of five dead
Palestinian children wrapped in white blankets — children from
the Abu Daqqah family
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I don’t usually upload such pictures, but I was so shocked that I
wanted Israelis to see what was being done in their names. It
doesn’t interest the majority of Israelis. I saw that this photo was
also published on right-wing websites with laughing emojis and
applause emojis and comments saying things like “More of this.”

In the second post, I wrote that a bloodbath was also taking place in
the West Bank. On that day, around five Palestinians were killed
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some of them children.

Palestinian youth clash with Israeli security forces in the West Bank
city of Hebron, October 8, 2023. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

ANOTHER THING PRESENTED AS EVIDENCE AGAINST YOU WAS A SCREENSHOT FROM
A TEACHERS’ WHATSAPP, SHOWING A MESSAGE IN WHICH YOU WROTE:
“DIDN’T ISRAELI SOLDIERS RAPE PALESTINIAN WOMEN? THEY HAVE BEEN
DOING IT SINCE 1948. THIS IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE [HISTORY]
TEXTBOOKS.” TELL ME ABOUT THIS CONVERSATION.

On October 7, there was a very emotional conversation in the group,
and rightly so. People were shocked, and so was I. Many teachers wrote
things expressing shock and pain, and a discussion developed about the
goals of the Israeli response. They wrote that Gaza should be
flattened, that Hamas should be eradicated. So I asked, “What is the
goal? What do we want?”

I wrote that we are harming innocent people, killing huge numbers of
women and children, and it is impossible to accept this. Then someone
responded that [the Palestinians] deserve it after what they did to us
and claimed that our soldiers have never raped Palestinian women. So I
corrected that assertion. On my phone I have screenshots from the
diaries of David Ben Gurion and Yisraeli Galili [the Chief of Staff of
the pre-state Zionist paramilitary group the Haganah] describing cases
in which our soldiers raped Palestinian women in 1948. Since I was
released from detention, I have collected more evidence of this.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR ARREST AND INTERROGATION IN NOVEMBER.

On Thursday, Nov. 9, at around 2:30 p.m., I received a call from the
police that I was being summoned for interrogation on suspicion of
incitement. As I arrived at the station, a detective approached me. He
confiscated my phone and led me to a room where my hands and feet were
immediately bound, and my wristwatch was taken. [Baruchin’s watch,
phone, laptop, and USB flash drives were only returned to him three
weeks after his release from detention.]

They started searching my phone and then showed me an arrest warrant
and a search warrant, telling me they were going to search my house.
Five detectives took me to my house, and in the presence of two
witnesses, whose presence I demanded, they turned my home upside down.

Meir Baruchin examines the aftermath of a police search of his home in
Jerusalem. (Oren Ziv)

That evening, I was brought back to the police station to be
interrogated. The questioning lasted around four hours. The
investigator showed me about a dozen posts on my Facebook page, but
only one of them was from after October 7. There were posts from four
years ago, some from a year and a half ago. 

Her technique was very manipulative. She didn’t really ask me
questions. She planted the answers in the body of the questions. For
example, she would ask something like, “As someone who justifies the
rape of women by members of Hamas, what do you think about…” —
as if she had already decided that I justified rape.

AND THEN YOU WERE PUT IN A CELL?

Yes, around 11:00 p.m. Other detainees were told not to approach or
talk to me [Baruchin was the only Jewish Israeli among the “security
prisoners” at the Russian Compound — the high-security detention
center in Jerusalem at which he was held]. I was given two blankets
that smelled of cigarettes. I covered myself with one and used the
other as a pillow. I hadn’t brought anything with me. I wore the
same clothes for four days. They took my shoelaces and my belt. They
didn’t even allow me to bring in a book to read, and of course I
couldn’t watch television. 

In the cell, I mostly lay in bed and stared at the walls. In order not
to go crazy, I did physical exercise every hour and a half to two
hours, but there was barely any room to move around. Once a day, they
let me leave my cell to go to the yard, which is a concrete square
fenced off on all sides. For the first two days I was unable to eat at
all [due to stress]. Only on the third day did I manage to eat a piece
of bread with cheese and cucumber. My showers were in cold water.

I was uprooted from everything in my life — my family, friends,
activities, hobbies. I was supposed to start teaching children who
were evacuated from the kibbutzim surrounding Gaza. Their principal
wanted me to teach five days a week; of course, that didn’t happen,
and I didn’t even have a way to tell them I wouldn’t be able to.

On the second day of my arrest, there was a hearing [to extend the
detention]. I was not physically present in the courtroom; I was
placed in the detention center’s video conference room, to which I
had been taken in handcuffs. I could barely hear what they were saying
over video. 

The police representative told a series of lies, including that I had
justified all the atrocities committed by Hamas. Not only have I never
justified such a thing, I wrote a post in which I explicitly condemned
Hamas’ actions and said that I was shocked and deeply hurt by the
atrocities Hamas committed. They totally ignored that post. 

Pictures of the people killed and kidnapped at the Nova music festival
on October 7 are displayed at the site of the massacre near the Gaza
fence, November 29, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The judge hurried through the hearing in order to get home before
Shabbat and did not allow me to speak. He extended my detention until
noon on Monday, and that was the end of the matter. 

YOU WERE INTERROGATED AGAIN AFTER THIS — WHAT HAPPENED THERE?

On Sunday evening [the fourth day of detention], I was taken for
another interrogation. This one also lasted about four hours. The
interrogator asked me about Hamas, what I think about them and about
terrorist organizations in general. I did not fall into her trap. At
some point, she said that my posts were like the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion [an infamous forgery depicting a Jewish conspiracy to
take over the world]. Those were her words. 

I am a history teacher. I have read the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion dozens of times. I have taught it. I asked her if she had ever
read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. She was silent. 

After a few hours, she saw that she wasn’t getting what she wanted
out of me, so she called in her senior commander, who also presented
me with a series of questions using exactly the same technique. They
knew very well that they had nothing against me.

YOU WERE FINALLY ALLOWED TO RETURN TO YOUR TEACHING POSITION LAST
MONTH — BUT THAT SOON BECAME UNTENABLE. WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU WENT
BACK?

My first day back was a Friday, and on Fridays I usually teach two
12th grade classes. That morning, the principal sent me an email
saying that there would be a big demonstration, and that there would
be police present. In the morning, she accompanied me to the
classroom. All the students refused to stay in class, except for one
who hadn’t brought a notebook with him, so he also left. I was left
alone in the classroom. Two girls from another class were curious and
came in, and we had a pleasant conversation. 

Then I went to the staff room, and during the break dozens of students
were banging on the door and the windows. They shouted, “Son of a
bitch! Your mom is a whore! We wish you had cancer! We’ll rape your
daughter!” No one tried to stop them — not the principal, not the
security inside the school, not the security guard at the gate. No
police officers were called. There were two parents outside the gate
who only stirred things up even more.

Meir Baruchin during a hearing at the Jerusalem National Labor Court,
January 30, 2024. (Orly Noy)

During the next period, I was under siege in the staff room. Dozens of
students didn’t attend their classes, and they actually got the
green light to do this. There were something like 12-15 teachers in
the staff room, and two or three came up to me to shake my hand and
express empathy. One stayed close to me throughout the day. 

Then, at the end of the day, dozens of students came to the door of
the building that leads to the staff room. I wanted to go home, and
the principal and the security guard escorted me to the door. There
were dozens of students cursing and spitting at me, 30 meters from the
school gate. When I left the school gate, parents and students chased
me, also cursing and spitting. The following week the same thing
happened. 

HOW DID THE SCHOOL RESPOND?

On Monday evening [Jan. 22], the principal sent a message in the
parents’ WhatsApp group saying that we do not accept any verbal
abuse and that we teach tolerance. But the reality is the absolute
opposite. 

When I first returned, the principal had suggested that I enter the
school using the back gate, but I refused. I will only enter through
the main gate. They can curse, spit, hit me — I won’t respond. If
a 15-year-old thinks it’s okay to spit at a 62-year-old man, I have
nothing to say about that. 

After they lost in court, they wanted to make my life miserable and
make my time at the school unbearable. They think it will break me.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU TO POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA ABOUT WHAT’S
HAPPENING IN GAZA AND THE WEST BANK?

The Israeli public does not know what is being done in its name,
neither in the West Bank nor in Gaza, because of the way the state
engineers our consciousness. It does not appear in the media,
certainly not in the mainstream media. And those who do know don’t
care. In my posts, I try to bring it to their attention. And I want to
show names and faces — “Look at them! Look at them! Some of them
are children! Look what is being done in your name! Can you live with
this?” If the media would do its job, I wouldn’t have to do it.

Palestinians rush to assist the wounded after an Israeli airstrike hit
the Zeitoun district of Gaza City, October 17, 2023. (Mohammed
Zaanoun/Activestills)

Many times people have accused me of not writing about what
Palestinians are doing to us. And I always answer that you don’t
need me to do that: you have all the media, TV channels, press, radio,
Internet. I use my Facebook page to write about what you don’t know,
not what you already know. And something is wrong with you if you
don’t understand that what happened on October 7 deeply shocked and
hurt me.

WHAT IS YOUR PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH, AS A HISTORY AND CIVICS TEACHER
WORKING IN SUCH A SOCIETY? 

To me, “values education” and indoctrination go hand in hand. I
don’t try to instill my values in my students — I present a range
of values and let my students, who are 16 or 17, figure out for
themselves which will be the ones they stick to. The point isn’t for
me to be satisfied but to let them feel content with themselves. 

I’ve been a teacher for 35 years, and not a single student has
changed what they thought because of something I said in class. If you
think I have the power to change their minds, you’re not giving the
students enough credit. They are not puppets, and I don’t hold the
strings. They often disagree with me, and a respectful conversation
can develop. That’s the philosophy of my profession, and it keeps
classes interesting. Years after graduating, many of them keep in
touch and send me messages like: “You know, only now am I
understanding what we spoke about in class.”

_A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local
Call. Read it __here_
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_OREN ZIV is a photojournalist, reporter for Local Call, and a
founding member of the Activestills photography collective._

_Our team at +972 MAGAZINE has been devastated by the horrific events
of this latest war – the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel and
the massive retaliatory Israeli attacks on Gaza. Our hearts are with
all the people and communities facing violence._

_We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
bloodshed unleashed by these events has reached extreme levels of
brutality and threatens to engulf the entire region. Hamas’
murderous assault in southern Israel has devastated and shocked the
country to its core. Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza is
wreaking destruction on the already besieged strip and killing a
ballooning number of civilians. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank,
backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to escalate their
attacks on Palestinians._

_This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the
past 13 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and
militarism, the entrenched occupation, and an increasingly normalized
siege on Gaza._

_We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need
your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity
of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians
and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the
fight of their lives._

_Can we count on your support
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leading media voice of this movement, a desperately needed platform
where Palestinian and Israeli journalists and activists can report on
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