Aramean Christians, who speak Aramaic and identify as descendants of Jesus’ earliest followers, recently won another legal victory as they continue to advocate for their rights and heritage in Israel.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that Arameans can now choose to send their children to either Jewish or Arab schools and that their municipalities must provide transportation to accommodate their choice. The decision cited their “right to preserve and nurture their identity as members of a unique minority group.”
Arameans, many of them Maronite Catholic or Orthodox, represent a minority within a minority in Israel. Advocacy efforts over the past several years have revived their historic identity as distinct from Arab Christians in the country.
The initial appeal in the case was filed by Shadi Khalloul, director of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association and a prominent activist for Aramean causes. Khalloul along with two dozen other Christian families didn’t want their children attending the local Arab school, but the city refused to bus the students to a Jewish school in a nearby community.
Some Arameans fear Arabic-language schools are Arabized and Islamized, and don’t align with their cultural values.
“This was a big injustice for us because it disconnected us from our roots, from our history,” Khalloul told CT, explaining that if their kids could not be educated in Aramaic, they would at least want them to learn in Hebrew. “People were not able to learn the basic things about their identity, our language, the language of Jesus.”
A former officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Khalloul also opposes sending his children to an Arab school because he says they don’t encourage IDF service, which is generally highly valued in the Aramean community.
It took more than two years before the Arameans landed a ruling in their favor.
The municipality initially rejected requests for transportation to the Jewish school, even though Jewish children in Israel already get free transportation to their schools. Aramean parents were compelled to take off work to transport their children to and from school.
Khalloul called the obstacles a form of “oppression,” and compared the situation to the “separate but equal” logic that buoyed segregation in America and led to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
Read the rest of the story at Christianity Today.
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