What is wrong with "peace education" in Israel? In this article, I attempt to decipher the cultural codes of Israeli schools in their relation to issues of peace, conflict and citizenship. It combines findings from two studies in order to understand how "school culture" animates "peace education." My main contention is not that "peace" is or is not being taught in the Israeli schools. Rather, I ask how "conflict" is being taught, and what underlines the schools' conception of conflict. Arguably, what Israeli schools are trying to avoid is not "peace education" "per se," but the very idea of "political education." An adequate approach to peace education, I propose in a more general vein, ought to focus on conflict not as an aberration, but as a part of our cultural mindsets and conceptions of the world. An example from the campaign for the rights of labour migrants' children is used to demonstrate a different approach to political education.