A public hearing is currently taking place around an administrative petition, which is being conducted in the Tel Aviv District Court regarding the possibility for infiltrators' children to study outside their registration areas.
As part of the legal process, the parties agreed that several dozen children would be allowed to attend schools in central Tel Aviv and in the north.
The Ministry of Education was criticized after the background flooded an issue that was not at the heart of the discussion: Would such a move, in which infiltrators' children be enrolled in classrooms where all other children are Israelis, work well with those children?
As part of the examination of this claim, a professional opinion was submitted on behalf of the Ministry of Education, according to which not only is this move not expected to improve but it is also expected to cause great harm to the children of infiltrators.
In a debate held about a week ago in the Knesset before the Foreign Workers' Committee, one position was at the heart of the debaters: foreign children are harmed by the enforcement actions of the Immigration Authority and therefore every measure must be taken to regulate their status.
In my view, the relevant question is not the will of the child or the condition of the parent.
A child of parents who are staying in Israel illegally is entitled to receive an education regardless of his or her parents' status or status, and that is a good thing.
We care for his well-being, because as a child he is certainly not guilty or responsible for the illegal decisions and actions of his parents.
Education is a basic right, but what kind of education will be good for the child?
Some would argue that "integrative education" would facilitate their assimilation into Israeli society.
But in the opinion of many experts including representatives of the Office of the Chief Scientist in the Ministry of Education, given their status and expected to emigrate back to their country of origin or third country, it would be a crime to provide these children with content irrelevant to their future needs.
In the same breath, the foreignness in a class where all the other Israeli children only intensifies the feeling of discomfort of those children, and creates for them over time a false impression as if it would only be a matter of time before they become full-fledged Israelis.
Of course the strategic idea is clear to all.
While these children will "become" Israelis, the way to make a legitimate demand for status for their parents staying in Israel illegally will be extremely short.
But when one considers only the best interests of the child himself, without regard to the narrow interests of his parents or the political interests of private organizations, the right solution is quite different.
The more these children receive an international education, the content of which is compatible with their destination countries, the better for them, and the job of future integration in their parents' country of origin upon their return to it, or when they move to a third country, will be much easier and more fruitful.
In the meantime, the question of whether international or dedicated education in the source language of the parents of those children should be done in a dedicated setting where only foreign children study, is a question that the misleading prism, in which it was presented to the public, creates a confusion of concepts.
Although it has already been determined that "separate but equal" is not a substantive equality, and the image of black children in the United States of the last century is stronger than a thousand words, this is not the case here. Are entitled to protection in the sense of compulsory education. In addition, it is clear to everyone that public primary and secondary education is not the same in the ultra-Orthodox, secular, religious or Arab sectors. The content is different. The language is often different. Which constitute only a formal screen for industrial public silence.
These children, as children of parents staying in Israel illegally, are exposed to the exploitation of their situation and status by many factors who see these children as a tool for advancing their narrow interests.
Whether these are political interests or whether they are economic interests, there is no justification for harming those children and turning them into tools of public and legal stumbling.
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