A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

October 24 , 2007 More Details of Israeli Attack on Syria, High School Teachers

Today the Washington Post published an article showing satellite photos of the site that Israel is said to have attacked in Syria.  According to the article and the photos that were subsequently shown on Israeli television, the site seems to be identical to the nuclear reactor site built by the North Koreans in North Korea.  Satellite imagery from a year earlier shows the site almost undeveloped.  According the Washington Post, the Israeli strike succeeded in destroying the site totally.
 
The high school teachers' strike continues.  The treasury has made it clear that it is not willing to give in and the teachers seem ready to keep on striking.  There was a related story on Israeli television last night pertaining to high school teachers' training.  It seems that very many of the high school teachers do not have sufficient training in their areas of responsibility.  The Ministry of Education finally came to the conclusion at the end of the last academic year that it needed to develop a comprehensive teacher-training program.  In order to do that however, they wanted to send out a survey to all the high school teachers and find out exactly what education, both formal and informal, they had received.  The head of the teachers union, Ron Erez, refused to allow the teachers to answer the questionnaires, claiming they violated their privacy. 
 

Nobel Prize winner and professor of chemistry at the Technion Aaron Ciechanover spoke today about the greatest threat Israel faces.  He minimized the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran.  Instead, Ciechanover stated that the greatest threat the country faces is the collapse of its educational system.   The constant strikes, he claimed, were but a manifestation of a system that is failing its students and thus, failing the country.