Dear Teach Palestine Family

We hope you are doing ok during this unbelievably difficult period of time. We’ve been heartened by all the stories of great teaching and activism about what’s happening in Gaza and throughout Palestine, but it’s taking a toll on all of us.

We’re excited to share new resources that we hope will support you and your teaching:

Against Erasure: Anti-Palestinian Racism and Curricular Violence in Schools and What We Can Do about It

By Nassim Elbardouh

Nassim Elbardouh is an anti-racist educator currently working as a teacher mentor at the University of British Columbia. Nassim has extensive experience working alongside students, teachers, and school communities in recognizing and addressing racism and oppression in K-12 settings. Although this inspiring and thought-provoking article is about Canadian schools, we believe it has broad relevance to schools in the United States and beyond.

Teaching Gaza Now: A Multiple Narratives Approach

Created by Teach Palestine co-coordinator Samia Shoman, “Teaching Gaza Now” includes background and resources for guiding students to explore one of two critical questions:

Should what is happening in Gaza be considered a global humanitarian crisis? To what extent do we have a responsibility to do something about it? What is your responsibility?
Do current events in Gaza meet the definition of genocide based on the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide?

Like Samia’s multiple narratives curriculum on Palestinian history, this curriculum is based on original sources and critical thinking.

Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story—An Introduction to Gaza for Children

Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story is a beautiful children’s book by Malak Mattar, now a world-renowned artist, who grew up in Gaza. It’s a thoughtful, hopeful, age-appropriate introduction to current events in Gaza for children. This lesson, by Jody Sokolower and Donnie Rotkin is aimed at 3rd to 5th graders, but can be adapted for younger or older students.

RESOURCES

for Learning More about the War on Gaza

Download a PDF of this Resource List

As the war on Gaza intensifies, we’re watching in horror as an unimaginable catastrophe catapults forward. As teachers, we know we need to help our students discuss and try to make sense of what’s happening. This is both difficult and critical because the mainstream media, as well as our local, state and national governments, are almost completely dominated by the Israeli narrative. We have curated a few resources to help educators understand what is happening on the ground in real time, as well as background information about Palestine and resources to use with students at different grade levels. Let us know if you’d like to talk or have questions: TeachPal@mecaforpeace.org

News Sources & Social Media accounts
on what’s happening in Gaza now

For up to date stories on what is currently happening in Gaza, check out:

● “Gaza on the 8th Day of Israeli Aggression” tells the story of the destruction of Gaza and the loss of life through numbers and statistics (as of October 14, 2023).

● “The Violence of Demanding Perfect Victims”

● Middle East Monitor

● Jerusalem writer Mohammed El Kurd — @mohammedelkurd on Instagram

● Jewish Voice for Peace — @jvpbayreas on Instagram

● Institute for Middle East Understanding — @imeu on Instagram

● Eye on Palestine — @eyeonpalestine

Background Information & Teaching Resources
on the Roots of Current Events in Palestine

● “It’s Not That Complicated” — from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

● Project48.com provides multimedia resources on the history of Palestine and the Israeli occupation

● Teach Palestine Project has curriculum, and suggested books and videos

Infographics

Visualizing Palestine has created a series of resources that help to put the current events in Gaza in context as the product of a system of violence:

● “Four Wars Old”

● “Israel’s Closure of Gaza Started Long Before the Blockade”

● “Short Walk Home, Long Walk to Freedom”

● “Gaza Health Access Under Israeli Siege”

● “Undrinkable: 97% of Gaza’s Water is Undrinkable”

● “Rising Israeli Settler Violence in the Occupied Territories”

Click here to download a PDF of this Resource List

Vows to My Homeland

Vows to my Homeland, 10 min.

Shoruq and MECA
Arabic with English subtitles.

Shoruq, a cultural and community center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem, took Palestinian youth to visit their ancestral villages. Sarah Faraj was one such youth, and her livestream of her visit is seen by Aya, a teenager living in Gaza. Aya asks Sarah to visit her ancestral village, Al Jura, located a few miles north of the Gaza Strip. Ayat surprises her grandmother, Um Nabeel, with a video call with Sarah, who takes them on a live virtual tour of Al Jura, the village Um Nabeel calls home and refuses to forget.

This short, heartfelt video captures the intergenerational Palestinian refusal to forget about their homelands, and would make an excellent introduction to studying forced migrations, the Nakba, Gaza, and/or the right of return.

Grade level: 6th grade and above.

New Tools for Teaching Palestine

Dear Teach Palestine Project family,

Although this has been a rough fall to be a teacher—all the pedagogical, emotional, and physical stresses of teaching while still in the midst of a pandemic—we hope you’re finding joy in being back in the classroom with students and that you’re staying healthy.

The right-wing attacks on teaching Palestine, Ethnic Studies, Black Lives Matter, and Critical Race Theory have been horrifying. We’re working with educator activists across the country to organize a more united approach, and we’ll keep you posted as that develops. Let us know what’s happening in your area! We’d love to talk and connect you with organizing efforts in your area if that would be helpful.

We just added new curriculum to the website based on Jody’s recently published book, Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village. Determined to Stay builds on an understanding of settler colonialism in the US and Palestine, with the goal of helping educators bring Palestine into their classrooms and make connections to issues that youth face here in the United States. Here’s a link to Nina Shoman-Dajani’s review of the book in the new issue of Rethinking Schools magazine.

We’re excited to see educators starting to use the book in their classrooms—and we’d like to support any way we can. We may be able to get you a class set—just let us know what you need!

We created two lessons based on the book. “Determined to Stay: A Case Study” is a stand-alone lesson—designed for a day or two of teaching. It uses narratives from the book for a jigsaw activity that introduces students to the connections between ongoing colonial conquest in Palestinian and the United States.

“Determined to Stay: An Introduction” is designed as an introductory activity to teaching the book itself. It includes more voices to create interest and questions about reading the book. Both lessons include an energizer, background information and essential vocabulary.

Determined to Stay centers on the Palestinian village of Silwan, just south of Jerusalem’s Old City. To learn more about Silwan, join us for a virtual brunch featuring Silwani community leader Jawad Siyam and Jody, December 5 at 10 am PST/1 pm EST. Hope to see you there!

We’ve also added new resources, so check out the rest of the Teach Palestine website. And, if you can, support the Teach Palestine Project!

In solidarity,
Samia and Jody

Israeli Troops Destroy Palestinian Schools in the Jordan Valley

Photo shows: Children at Al-Maleh school demonstrate for their right to an education.

October 25, 2021, Israeli occupation forces raided Al-Maleh school in the northern Jordan Valley and demolished a new building under construction.

The Al-Maleh school was built at the end of 2020 as part of the Right to Education Campaign. The small school has only four classrooms, filled with kindergarten and elementary students from Khirbet Al-Maleh and the neighboring communities.
To increase the capacity of the school MECA partnered with Stop the Wall Campaign to construct one more classroom and a school clinic that Israeli occupation forces demolished and confiscated.

Last week, we visited Al-Maleh and the school children brought their books and signs to a protest demanding their right to education. Please stand with these children and take action now.

The Israeli occupation has a long and violent history of destroying schools serving Palestinian Bedouin communities throughout the Jordan Valley. These include the kindergarten in Khirbet Makhoul (2013), the school in Khirbet Samra (2012), and the school in Ras Al-Tin (2020). As of 2019, the Israeli occupation had given more than 42 schools in Area C orders to be partially or totally demolished. (Created by the Oslo Accords, Area C, which comprises 60 percent of the West Bank, is under complete Israeli control. Currently, an estimated 300,00 Palestinians and 400,000 Israeli settlers live there. In addition to withholding the right to education, Israel denies Palestinians in Area C adequate water, healthcare, and other basic human rights).

Denying Palestinian children their right to education in the Jordan Valley and other parts of Area C aims to displace Palestinians in violation of international law.

MECA has teamed up with Rebuilding Alliance to advocate for the return of the two rooms and playground shade for Al-Maleh school and for the dismissal of demolition orders against other Palestinian schools by asking Congress to help.

Please, take action now!

Learn more! Read this new report from Stop the Wall on “Denial of education: An Israeli apartheid tool to annex the Jordan Valley”

Defend CRT and Ethnic Studies! Join our People’s Assembly!

The current attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT) are a terrifying indication of the rabid racism of the right wing. CRT isn’t an abstract idea for graduate students. Authentic Ethnic Studies, all anti-racist education, is based in CRT. When elementary school teachers have their students write counter-narratives about the strengths of their communities, they’re teaching CRT. When middle school teachers compare “Manifest Destiny” in the US to the “Promised Land” in Israel as ideologies of settler colonialism, they’re teaching CRT.

So we have to fight for ethnic studies, including Palestine, and CRT in the same breath. And we need a united strategy and organizing to do that!

In coalition with Save Arab American Studies and the Free Minds, Free People conference, we’re launching a National Liberated Ethnic Studies Coalition, and we hope you will join us in the fight against rightwing, Zionist attacks on education!

Register for the Ethnic Studies People’s Assembly on Sunday, August 1st.

The Ethnic Studies People’s Assembly culminates a weekend of panels and workshops on Ethnic Studies and Transnational Solidarity at the Free Minds, Free People Conference. See the full schedule and register for the conference here. There is a minimal fee. For just the Ethnic Studies People’s Assembly, register (no fee).

Please pass on this invitation to trusted partners, allies, and educators around the country.