Israel’s assaults on Palestinian education amount to genocide by Nada Elia & Rima Najjar

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Its effects can be seen in the recent cuts (the schools have seen the proportion of their operating costs covered by the state fall from 70 percent to 29 percent), the violation of the freedom of movement of schoolchildren and teachers in the occupied West Bank and harassment by Israeli settlers and soldiers, the targeting and arrest ofpolitically active students, the raiding of Palestinian universities at will and the firing of tear gas into campuses, the bombing of schools in Gaza, the denial of exit visas and travel permits to Palestinians wishing to study abroad or even elsewhere in Palestine and of entry visas to Palestinians with American and other citizenship who wish to teach in their homeland… Educational apartheid in Israel must be understood for what it is: an attempt at cultural genocide. Under the United Nations’ 1948 definition of genocide, this crime may include imposing conditions of life on a racial or ethnic group with the intent of wholly or partly destroying that group…

Only half of Palestinian children in Jerusalem were enrolled in the public school system, a study conducted in 2010-2011 found. Meanwhile, costly private schools are largely unsupervised and often fail to provide basic learning conditions. Palestinian children have limited opportunities of going on to study in Israeli universities or to obtain jobs with decent pay.The Israeli government recognizes only one politicized curriculum — its own Zionist one. This curriculum uses Zionist terminology to describe geographic areas in Palestine, like Judea and Samaria for the West Bank and Temple Mount for Haram al-Sharif, the compound that houses al-Aqsa mosque.

 

Continue reading at https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-assaults-palestinian-education-amount-genocide/14867

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