School violence and its prevention in Israel

This article opens with a comparative bird's eye view of school violence as a serious world-wide problem, thereafter focusing on school violence in Israel. It draws attention to the fact that school violence in Israel has been recognised as a grave problem for years. It draws attention to the fact that schools are more violence-prone than clubs, cinema-theatres, community centres, even discotheques. What is more, the article cites data that clearly indicate that the situation is going from bad to worse. The article briefly reviews numerous surveys that reflect this situation, and expands on violence as the liability of the school system. It then moves on to analyze a certain violence-prevention program devised by and implemented in a certain junior high school in a medium-size town in greater Tel-Aviv. The article tries to explain why the intervention program should be judged a failure, and points out that this is typical of many other programs initiated in the Israeli school system.