Keep calm, carry a motion: Israelis in UK-style debate

BRITISH-STYLE DEBATING for teenagers landed in Israel on Tuesday, when the London-based Institute of Ideas took its Debating Matters competition to Tel Aviv.

Teams from six high-schools, most of whom speak English as a second language, were pitted against each other in English-language debates on such thorny topics as animal experimentation, space exploration and “megacities” in the developing world.

“I barely talk in English outside of school, so this was really difficult for me,” said Harel Kol-Namer, a 17-year-old from Ramot High School, after arguing passionately that space exploration is a “waste of time and money”.

But his careful preparation paved the way to a strong performance — and as the day-long event came towards a close, judges and organisers declared themselves wowed by the Israeli contestants. “You can only admire it when people who speak English as a second language give as good as they get,” said Claire Fox, founder and director of the Institute of Ideas.

The Institute of Ideas hopes to hold the Israeli event annually, and possibly expand beyond the one-day format it took this year. It decided to branch out to Israel after an invitation from the Anglo-Israel Association, the co-organiser of the Tel Aviv event.

The debates were lively. In the one about space exploration, students from Yachad Modi’in argued that humans must seriously explore colonising faraway planets, learning to treat space exploration as “a musthave for the survival of mankind” — and even suggested that Israel could come up with money for this purpose by holding fewer elections. The opposing team rebuked them, saying that humans must not “just run away from responsibility when it gets hard”.

There were Jewish, Muslim and Christian youngsters in the teams. Hedaya Shoman, a 14-year-old who was wearing a hijab, enthused about debating and the confidence it gives her. “I didn’t really know about debating when I got involved in this — but now I feel I’m ready to stand up in front of anyone,” she said.