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For one Saturday, it is possible to be happy. Come Sunday, the struggle for survival will continue.

For the adult volunteers, Israelis and internationals, it is not easy to disconnect, to be carefree and happy like the children.

Information travels from person to person. It was heard that there are refugee mothers detained with their children in a southern prison. Already for two months they are there, and the Ministry of Education, despite its promises, has not made education accessible to the children.

What will happen with the tiny children here today? They did not receive citizenship during the period of Minister of the Interior Pines (Labor). Rumors spread of the establishment of a detention center/”hotel” for holding mothers and children. The fathers have already been deported. Someone is reminded of a documentary film about children who reach the age of 18, after their entire life was spent in Israel, and are deported with their parents to their country of origin, to which they have zero emotional connection. Their entire world crashed down upon them.

Not a week passes during which the inhuman tragedy, the racist stupidity and the criminal negligence, do not hit you hard. I am told of a teacher who informs a volunteer that there are no funds to address the learning gaps of the children of migrant workers, because “now refugees from Darfur have also arrived.” As if there was a quota for the oppressed. If additional ones arrive, then there is no money for the earlier ones. For it is well known that the state has priorities, and, heaven forbid, we should forget that we are surrounded by enemies, and we have all sorts of refugees and illegal residents. Denial of humanity is so very easy in our society; one in which even a teacher is able to speak like this and go on as if nothing happened.

And here is another pearl of wisdom I regularly hear amongst educators: “put the affairs of your city first.” Yet, in this era of globalization, the only thing we must ask in reply is, where does our city end? “Don’t we have enough troubles of our own?” is yet another gem.

One of the Israeli volunteers told me that the situation is so difficult from a humanitarian perspective that we forget to “speak politics” amongst ourselves or with the refugees. And I believe that he is correct, for in a situation of survival, it is a privilege to deal with “politics.” And perhaps this is a result of the current situation. Everything becomes a privilege. This is also the biggest victory of neoliberalism, to turn political people into fire fighters. So much so that the situation is unbearable.

Other volunteers question me about whether there is a chance that the immigration police will invade this place. I tell them no. There is an unspoken agreement that where there are children and mothers, the immigration police do not enter. However, I also remember that a year ago, small children wet their beds in fear of the immigration police. I recall the drawings reflecting their fears. I remember an eight-year-old boy who told how he hid behind garbage cans when a police car passed by, and that this is the reason he arrives to school late. I remember the male and female volunteers in the school for immigrant children, volunteers who were later deported. Women and men who truly cared and who, following long hours of cleaning and janitorial work during the day, would become teachers to the children of their countries. These volunteers could have served as an example for education officials with diplomas. With no formal education or experience, they built this project with their bare hands. At night they learned grammar and prepared lessons for the children. They learned to be patient; they learned to hold the children. They learned to speak with their mothers. There was no miracle here. It was a taking of responsibility, caring and solidarity with those who needed their help.

In my previous office, I hung a poster on the wall with a quote from Marek Edelman, the lieutenant commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, who said that to be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never with the oppressors. The number of angry, negative, explanatory and apologetic responses from educators, justifying force, was significantly higher than the few who identified with this statement. This is one way of many to examine the level of humanism in education within our society. The moral commitment of educators is not measured by the number of instrumental indicators they achieve with their students, but by their ability to take full responsibility—without exceptions and reservations—for each child, regardless of who s/he is. Taking responsibility does not necessarily mean the possibility exists to provide solutions. It means that the educator must say that all the children are her/his responsibility, all of them, with no exception. An educator should not make an account of profit and loss, or of institutionalized racist policies.

The choice of a parent to migrate for work is too difficult to bear. They must choose between leaving their children with the extended family and going to work in the global market, or bringing the children with them, knowing they will grow up in overcrowded and filthy nurseries, with no appropriate emotional care. Some of the social workers in Tel Aviv attempted to declare some migrant worker mothers as negligent, and even obtain orders to take their children away. These social workers begin with the false premise that the parent ostensibly has choices. What here is the choice? Not to see the children for years? To work in a foreign country for years in order to send them and their family money, while damaging them emotionally? Or to raise them here, with negligence, and hurt them emotionally? What emotional injury is better, for these young mothers?

An overdose of humanism, of humanity and of compassion is required to understand and to explain.

So what is humanist education under these conditions? Humanist education is the moment and place in which you remain human, despite the horrors around you. Humanist education is the desperate desire to not loose hope in a cruel world.

Humanist education is to fantasize that the world can be like this past Saturday. A warm winter sun warming the faces of children waiting to break the piñata, so that a rainfall of candies will fall on them.