The dispute that erupted during the Cabinet meeting on Oct. 22 between Minister of Development of the Negev and Galilee Silvan Shalom and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be remembered mainly for the way Shalom blasted Netanyahu. “Go send your son to be a welder!” he hurled at the prime minister, and his words immediately made the media headlines.

Pundits were quick to present this clash as yet another indication of the deteriorating relationship between Netanyahu and senior members of the Likud Party. While that is certainly true, it is hardly the main point. The conflict between the two men does have a political layer that goes back years, and this was undoubtedly another example of the tainted relationship between them. More importantly, however, it focused public attention on one of the most painful social issues facing Israel, an issue of the kind that has never really challenged or bothered Netanyahu in the past.

Whether the dispute was intentional on his part or whether it was personally motivated, Shalom opened up a serious discussion about vocational training in Israel. At the crux of the debate was a network of schools intended to train young people in various technical professions. In practice, the network actually kept students from the periphery — most of them of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) origins — from pursuing a more academic track, from continuing on to a higher education and from becoming an integral part of the country’s cultural and economic elites. Social criticism of the phenomenon, coupled with economic and industrial developments, saw these vocational tracks gradually shut down since the 1980s, so that today there are significantly fewer programs of this kind.

Anyone who went through these schools in the country’s development towns is familiar with the random selection process. In this process, the class head teacher determined which students would pursue an academic track that would enable them to receive their matriculation certificate and increase their chances of integrating into Israeli society; which students would learn the skills to become a welder, a metalworker or a carpenter; and which students would learn how to sew. In most cases, students placed in a vocational track were destined to spend the rest of their lives branded as being somehow weaker and less talented. They were denied the opportunity to improve their social status. The same thing occurred for decades, generation after generation. The social distinctions that were perpetuated can still be felt today.