Nurit Peled-Elhanan: Education Or Mind Infection?

This is a wonderful speech by an Israeli woman peace activist. She has been awarded the Sakharov prize for her peace advocacy by the European Parliament. Many of her speeches are available online, and I greatly admire her willingness to work so hard to advocate an end to violence. Her willingness to speak out for the Palestinians and Lebanese is especially valiant since her own daughter was killed at age 13 in a Palestinian suicide bombing. Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is also a lecturer in Language Education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The speech makes a plea for peace in the Levant, and indeed for peace everywhere. It is eloquent!

This blog is primarily about knowledge, and I want to address the following portion of her speech:

I keep asking myself, what are the means by which good Israeli children are turned into murdering monsters, what are the means by which they are so mind-infected as to kill and torture and humiliate other children, their parents and grandparents, and sacrifice their own life for nothing but the folly and megalomania of their chiefs?.....

The scientist Richard Dawkins was the first to speak about viruses of the mind. Children, because their minds are gullible and open to almost any suggestion, are not immune to mental infections of all sorts of propaganda and fashion. They are easily persuaded to pierce their faces and tattoo their bottoms, to turn their hats around and bare their bellies, to believe in angels and fairies. They are equally easy to acquire political beliefs and to appropriate mental maps which will later influence their decisions on the question of the future borders of the state and on the necessity of war. All of Our children are mind-infected from an early age. So that by the time they are old enough to become real soldiers, they have already learned to be good soldiers, which means their minds are totally infected and they are incapable of questioning the 'truth' that has been inculcated to them. This is part of the explanation one can give to the terrible deeds that are committed today by good Israeli boys, who are characterized once and again as "people of values".

She makes the point that Arab children and American children are also infected at an early age by viruses of the mind. She is not by any means anti-Israeli, but only anti-war and anti-violence.

I wish that schools everywhere would provide knowledge and understanding of other peoples for their students, inoculating their students against the virus of prejudice. As in true virology, an inoculation may not totally prevent the disease but reduce its incidence and reduce the severity of the disease in those who are infected. Indeed, producing herd immunity may reduce the incidence of the disease even in those who are not immunized.

I fear that all of us have been infected to some degree by the viruses of the mind that cause prejudice, but some cases are far more virulent than others. To some degree getting to know other people and other cultures can help to cure the mental disease of prejudice. We can also learn to live with and cope with our viral mental disease; when we know we have unconscious prejudice we can consciously take steps to ameliorate its affects on our judgment and decisions.

Mind viruses of prejudice attack and debilitate the health knowledge and understanding of diversity we need to advance social and economic development and sustain the peace.