“Prevent” is preventing school students’ speaking for Palestine
JVL Introduction
Are teachers preventing discussions on Gaza because they feel ill equipped or are they concerned about getting wrong it as outlined in this Guardian article? Are they worried by the tone of the government’s guidance published on October 19th 2023? While, eg, giving as sources both the Community Security Trust and Tell Mama (in that order), the language used was biased towards Israel. It forcefully condemned the Hamas attack on southern Israel but said nothing about Israel’s “response” even though, by then, Israel had already killed 3,785 Palestinians [2,524 of them women and children) and 12,493 had been injured, over 7,000 of whom were women and children. (CNN Report)
The government’s Prevent Strategy is preventing students expressing solidarity with Palestinians. At one East London primary school, for example, many parents there were furious when they received a letter from the school reprimanding them for allowing their children to wear the colours of the Palestinian flag to Children in Need day on 15 November. Previously the school had flown the Ukrainian flag and with parents support had held fundraising events for that country. (One report is here )
We are pleased that the National Education Union debated this issue at their Conference and passed a motion that, among other things, called on the Union to “publish educational resources to “increase understanding of Palestine and Israel” and reaffirm its support for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign”
LL
This article was originally published by Upday News on Thu 4 Apr 2024. Read the original here.
Pupils wearing pro-Palestinian badges 'referred to counter-terror scheme'
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The (840) senior UK lawyers and judges’ latest warnings to Sunak and co about the legal jeopardy they’re in over Gaza might explain why the Tory government is so unprincipled in its behaviour towards Israel.
In sections within the final pages of that letter the legal experts warn the UK government against giving Israel diplomatic cover and assistance via the bilateral treaty negotiated (in 2019?) between both countries.
That bilateral treaty is of huge importance to both die-hard Brexiteer ministers and to ministers terrified about the impact and costs of Brexit.
The government can’t afford to jeopardise one of the very few finalised trade agreements and new trading relationships which they can claim as successes to offset all the evident Brexit losses. Suspending the deal with Israel could restart the Brexit-related and leadership civil wars within the Tory party, possibly killing it.
Given the horrors the government could face if it has to axe its treaty with Israel, the unprincipled response might well be to do everything possible to silence the voices demanding that happens. Prevent could be part of that strategy.
When ‘prevent’ first came out, attending a session on Prevent was obligatory as we were youth workers. My area of work was inclusion development and the right to voice work with children and young people. When I read through the bumpf we were given, I was horrified. the system in my view, had a solely punitive approach and was contrary to how we would sensibly approach issues with young people. Apart from that there was a right wing bias which worked on stereotypes, that all Asian people were potential terrorists out to kill off the western way of life, which struck me as peculiar, as it was the western states that that had gone out to oppress indigineous people of countries they usurped for centuries. I also felt that the approach Prevent then used and possibly still uses today is biased against people from ethnic minorities. There was also no mention what so ever of inviting right wing racists to these Prevent sessions. I view this fact as extremely worrying.
In the team I worked in, we agreed to avoid Prevent if at all possible by doing what we always did: engaging with young people we worked with, by naturally challenging harmful behaviours by whoever behaved in that way towards others. We felt we needed to get away from stressing all the time the things that divide us rather than showing and celebrating all the things that unite us, that we have in common. And that is what those insisting on Prevent Programme are afraid of. I would like to refer to Ken Loach’s latest film the Old Oak (I think) that demonstrates the above.