Map of ignorance

This is how we're used to seeing Europe and North America: Giant and setting the tone, rather than tiny entities dwarfed by "faltering" continents to the south.

The map of Israel has always expressed a dimension of illusion. Our country is similar to a kitchen knife, with the Negev desert being the blade. It's more pleasant to attach a chubby handle to such knife rather than presenting a country that looks like a chunk of cheese visited by mice.

When Education Minister Yuli Tamir ordered to bring back the Green Line to maps in Israeli textbooks, she ignored our need to use the map as a relaxant. Yet the education minister's job is not to calm us down, but rather, to improve education – and education is inadequate if it doesn't include at the very least an attempt to identify some kind of objective truth.

The truth is that the Green Line, although imaginary, exists exactly to the same extent that all other Israel's borders exist. In the Gaza Strip border, a fence stretches along the border. IDF checkpoints across the West Bank's margins clearly delineate the Green Line even today, in the era of the fence and wall, as if it was a game of "connect the dots."

For me and those who wish to become familiar with the country through trips, the Green Line is much more important than other lines that have appeared on the map for ages.

Rightist politicians and educators vehemently protested Tamir's instructions. The reasons are clear, and still, there's no wisdom in the insistence on ignoring significant details associated with Israeli realities. Whether we support the Right or the Left, the Green Line is used as an important tool for understanding our country's history and formulating a political worldview.

How would parents who lean to the Right explain to their children the strategic threat faced by Israel should it return to the 1967 borders, if their children don't know what those 1967 borders are?

Don’t confuse children

The objectors will say: Well, let's keep the 1967 borders on historical war maps, and present the whole Land of Israel on current-day maps. This is yet another illusion.

The territories east of the Green Line that were not annexed to Israel, even if they are defined as Area C, do not function as territories west of the Green Line. It is appropriate for Israeli children, whether they live in Ariel or in Tel Aviv, to understand as much as possible the reality in which they live and why it's that way.

Enforcing ignorance on those children, regardless of where they live, is the opposite of education and would continue to confuse them.

I clearly recall my desperate attempts as a young boy to understand what's the Green Line and where it is. In the 1980s, it was forbidden by law to publish maps that include the Green Line in the State of Israel. All I could do is guess, yet education should not encourage guessing.

Minister Tamir is treating her job very seriously when she asks that we treat the map very seriously. For this reason, the declaration made by Elchanan Glatt, the director general of the Bnei Akiva yeshivas, who said that Tamir's decision constitutes an "uneducational statement" is wrong and deceiving.

Of course, a map that includes the Green Line would still be open to other illusions. The Dead Sea, which we are increasingly drying up, would still appear on it as a relatively healthy lake. The Jordan River, which has turned into a sad sewage ditch, would appear as a blue river. The Galilee will point upwards and the Negev will point downwards, even though the north isn't necessarily "supreme."

There is no way to completely avoid such whims, but we must minimize them as much as is possible. Otherwise, we'll be like those who refrain from writing our country's name in their maps.