Israel at war on Palestinian Education
JVL Introduction
There is an often cited fact that the proportion of people in Gaza with a PhD is the highest in the world. We might wonder what there is to fear from an educated population since, for example, the US and the EU may freeze funding for Palestinian education on the basis that the textbooks are antisemitic.
This is not new: after Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem “Israeli officials reviewed every page of the Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks taught in Palestinian schools, censoring them radically” A similar process followed the post Oslo “new Palestinian curriculum, a sustained attack on it began in 2000 and has continued unrelentingly.”
Much credibility is given to the findings of a biased organisation while a more independent study found that Palestinian textbooks “adhere to UNESCO standards including a strong focus on human rights, and explicitly highlight a universal notion of these rights.”
One might also ask why the same investigations are not taking place in relation to Israeli text book. The original article posts this link to an earlier New Arab article How Israeli education serves the occupation and genocide in Gaza , which includes this from Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s seminal work on Israeli textbooks: “No Israeli textbook includes any positive cultural or social aspect of the Palestinian Life-world… Palestinians are defined as ‘non-Jews’, ‘Israel’s Arabs’ or ‘Philistinians’.”
Israel has destroyed most of the schools in Gaza, killed at least 10,000 children and c 500 educators. Over 600,000 children have now missed more than a year of school and the threat of further withdrawal of funding because of ongoing allegations of antisemitism will create further problems for generations.
LL
This article was originally published by The New Arab on Mon 27 Jan 2025. Read the original here.
Israel’s war on Palestinian education is about erasing identity
Anna Saif explains how Israel attempts to weaken national consciousness by smearing Palestinian education as antisemitic and violent.
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“Jesus wept”, as some of we non-Jewish members must continually recall.
A factor in the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians is the denial of their history, education and culture. The parallels with the Nazi`s is striking and brings to mind the words of Heinrich Heine, written over two centuries ago:
“Where one burns books, there one eventually burns people”.
The policy of any nation seeking to occupy and enslave another, is to remove the most – as they see it – educated and intelligent members of the victim community, since it is those people who will be the natural leaders of any rebellion. The Soviet Union did this when they murdered 20,000 Poles in the Katyn Forest Massacre. The Israelis appear to have taken many of their techniques from the old Soviet Union, possibly because many of their citizens are immigrants from the USSR.
This article opened my eyes to yet another aspect of Israel’s stranglehold on Palestinian life that I’d never heard of before. When will the rest of the world wake up to the enormity of injustice the oppressor is wielding against a small and powerless occupied indigenous population? How dare Israel dictate what children learn, without similar scrutiny of their own biased educational materials?
Reading this and everything you send each day, which is increasing exponentially, I have begun to worry that while it is extremely important that “we” are being educated about these crimes against humanity, our time for sharing the information you send and responding to it and above all, campaigning against all of it publicly is being sidelined. Does JVL have a campaigning arm that is as strong as our information arm? Who among us and who out in the world of power to make change happen, is receiving and is able to take and is taking action against these crimes after receiving this information, and is reporting back on the outcome, having taken that action? I am ashamed to say I am not, because my own political work lies elsewhere and swallows my time. Hence I think it is important for some of JVL to lead on this and make sure we as followers are channeled into taking action, sharing reports like this, signing letters of protest to those responsible, and so on. This won’t happen if we are left to do it individually, I fear. Sorry!!!
No need to apologise; it will be interesting to know what other people comment. Of course we are involved in campaigning, mainly with partners but perhaps more is needed. Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
@ Marge and @ Leah
Maybe some of us could do more with the same amount of time as we’ve got if we worked as a “production line” as often as possible? Too often we’re trying to do everything ourselves because we have no team to work with.
For example, local groups (eg the one in Hastings) come up with some brilliant stunts to inform and win support over Gaza. If the group briefly wrote up the initiative (the idea, how to carry it out and how well it worked) and sent it in to a central body (JVL?) for display on the website then other groups could adapt and use the same stunt. It’s normally easier and quicker to adapt an idea that works than to come up with one of your own ….