In Today’s Israel the school system is divided by nationality and language. Jews study in Jewish only schools and the medium of instruction is Hebrew, while Arabs study in Arab only schools and the medium of instruction is Arabic.
The first initiative of Arab-Jewish bilingual education is from the 70s. Then, the Arab-Jewish village ‘Neve Shalom’ was founded, and a bi-national & bilingual school was established. In 1998 a grass-root movement of educationalists and parents started the “Hand in Hand” organization of Arab-Jewish bilingual education in Israel. This organization consists today of 4 schools throughout the country. In those schools, pupils from the two populations, Jews and Arabs receive their primary schooling in the two languages concurrently.
This unique educational phenomenon has attracted considerable attention in the media and the published press, and both documentary films and TV reports were made about the schools.
In this paper, the way in which the schools are presented in documentary films is illuminated. The paper provides an analysis of how certain views of linguistic and cultural co-existence within an educational setting are brought forward. The paper’s main conclusion is, that such films serve as a basis for a fruitful discussion about hegemony and dominance, and that the picture of reality as shown in the films puts a question mark as to whether a bilingual educational system in Israel, could strive within a Zionist framework.