Analysis Of The Language Policy Of Israel And Its Roots

Israel is a modern democratic country which majority is Jewish,that is to say，Israel is a Jewish state, and it is also a multiracial and multilingual immigrant country. This paper wants to make a better comprehensive understanding of Israeli language policy by analyzing the problems existing in the Israeli social status, history, language teaching, curriculum setting and teaching process produced by Hebrew, Arabic and English.Hebrew revived successfully in the wave of the Zionism movement, and became the principal language of Israel. It had a great connection with Zionism, Judaism, social communication and the sense of responsibility of Jewish intellectuals. The government actively promoted Hebrew, funded for Jewish immigrants to learn Hebrew and made it into institutionalization, then made Hebrew become Israel’s dominant national language. In order to let the Arabic minorities accept the consciousness of Israeli citizenship, the government also strengthened their Hebrew education as the second language. And at the same time, about other kinds of languages, especially the minority languages, the government made it a rule that Hebrew and Arabic were the official languages and in the Arab community school, Arabic was their mother language, Hebrew was the second language and English was the first foreign language However, because of the influence of many factors, Arabic was becoming more and more vulnerable in Israel and even was in danger of being marginalized.As a global language, English has an increasing statue in Israel with time going on, and its position is only next to Hebrew, even shaking the dominance of Hebrew at some extent. As a result, the purpose of Israel’s language policy is to consolidate and strengthen the dominance of Hebrew and pay attention to the education of Hebrew. Meanwhile, because of the needs of each groups, the teaching of Arabic language is also not ignored; and it is also the trend of social development to raise the status of English with the tendency of economic globalization and the global language of English. Therefore, the policies of the three languages:Israeli Hebrew, Arabic and English, reach a certain balance among the tradition and modern, the main national and ethnic minorities, and globalization and nationalization. It will benefit the construction of a modern democratic country and the formation of modern citizen society of Israel, and also will promote the social stability and the comprehensive national strength of Israel.