Adverse aspects of citizenship education in the global era: The Israeli case

To say citizenship is to say inclusion. Bestowing citizenship status on individuals is nothing but including them within a given polity. The obvious mechanism of inclusion may be through immigration policies, which confer on outsiders the right to enter the body politic and go through its naturalization processes to legally become full and equal members. But inclusion may take other forms, less visible but definitely not less important. One may be indigenous and yet barred from full inclusion within the body politic, for full inclusion means the allocation of rights-civic, political, economic, and cultural. And as we know, it is often the case that indigenous groups are systematically discriminated against in the allocation of these rights in settler societies like the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, and many South American societies. Denying individuals’ citizenship status is to deny them state protection from natural and social misfortunes and the opportunities the state provides to lead prosperous and meaningful lives.