Israel News, Monday, 01.09.2025 

  On the first day of school, a 12th grader joins her peers in protest outside the Education Ministry: ‘All the teens need to get out there, because in the end, it’s our future. In another year or two, we’re going to the army, and we can’t go on like this’  Linda Dayan


 Around 100 teens gathered on Monday, under the sweltering sun, outside the Tel Aviv branch of the Education Ministry. Offering a civics lesson to anyone entering through its revolving doors, they held a banner reading “Without the hostages, there’s no school,” and chanted “Bring them all home now!” to a drumbeat. The students declared they would not begin the routine of a new school year without a hostage deal and a cease-fire in Gaza.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of students from dozens of schools across the country participated in the strike on their first day of school. One was 17-year-old Dafna, from northern Israel’s Jezreel Valley, who was supposed to attend her first day of 12th grade on Monday. Instead, she was protesting.

“It’s been almost two years that our hostages have been in Gaza, and we can’t study when there are [47] men and one woman in captivity,” she told Haaretz. “We can’t normalize this and live normal lives alongside this. We need to fight this with all our might, doing everything we can.”

Her parents were on board with her decision to strike, as was her teacher, and even her school principal. “We have full support,” she said. “I think that all the teens need to get out there, because in the end, it’s our future. In another year or two, we’re going to the army, and we can’t go on like this.”

Other 11th and 12th-graders, like Dafna, are likely in the stages of job selection for the military. This involves a battery of tests, simulations, interviews and field days to determine which job a young soldier will be assigned. They would already have had their first call-up to the military induction center and learned whether they are fit for combat. By this age, teenagers often know whether they will be expected to physically fight – and possibly die – for their country.

And by this age, they know that close to 75 percent of Israel’s population wants this war to end, and that the families of the hostages are living, if one can call it that, in anguish. They know that we are in the midst of the longest war in Israel’s history, and that 900 soldiers have already been killed in it, including 456 in operations in Gaza.

For many, especially those who do not have the privilege of refusing military service for familial or economic reasons, their future is sealed before they can legally vote.

Israel’s high school students may not yet have the right to choose their government, but they are still expected to trust it, a point they set out to remind their leaders of on Monday.

They have to trust that if they are kidnapped while serving the country’s army, Israel will wholly commit to freeing them. In Hamas captivity remain six Israelis who were kidnapped in military uniform or from their base, including Hadar Goldin, whose body has been held in Gaza for 11 years.

The current governing coalition may believe that they were given a blank check to do as they please when they received a Knesset majority back in the 2022 elections, including trapping Israel in a forever war in Gaza. But the people they expect to keep fighting it aren’t the ones who elected them.

“I think the schools are listening to us, but the state? Not yet,” said Dafna outside the Education Ministry. “The government isn’t listening to us, and I think we need changes in the government, too – in everything. This change will come from us, from the youth.”