A year of devastation. Education in the face of the genocide in Gaza

For more than twelve months we have been witnessing a massacre of incalculable proportions and consequences against a people, the Palestinian people, which is being broadcast live before the eyes of the world by its protagonists. Eleven months ago, when its most bloody consequences had not yet manifested themselves, the massacre was already described as ‘textbook genocide’ by the then director of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in New York, Craig Mokhiber. His letter of resignation exudes the frustration and impotence of someone who, after a life dedicated to defending human rights, is witnessing the obvious failure of the international community to protect them.

The genocide did not begin on 7 October 2023, but since that date the Zionist Israeli state has escalated its colonial project of extermination of the Palestinian people. In the twelve months since then, what is happening in Gaza confirms that the Palestinian people are being subjected to suffering beyond what is humanly bearable, and that the so-called ‘Gaza war’ is plagued by violations of all agreements, statutes and conventions of international law. The consequences of all this are tens of thousands of children killed and displaced, exposed to a real risk of death by malnutrition, to systematic bombardment of places explicitly presented as safe for the civilian population by the Israeli army (refugee camps, hospitals, schools), and, in short, to continuous episodes of extreme violence against the civilian population.

This is confirmed by Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in her latest report presented on 30 October to the Third Committee of the General Assembly, ‘Since its creation in 1948, the State of Israel has treated the occupied people as an odious nuisance and a threat to be eradicated, and has subjected millions of Palestinians, for generations, to daily indignities, mass killings, indiscriminate imprisonment, forced displacement, racial segregation and apartheid’.

The 35-page report documents in detail all the acts that Albanese considers to constitute ‘patterns of behaviour that reveal an intent to employ genocidal acts as a means of ethnically cleansing all or part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Nearly a year of aggression by pursuing a scorched earth policy has resulted in the calculated destruction of Gaza: the human, material and environmental cost is impossible to quantify. Since March 2024, there have been more than 93 massacres and Israel has killed 10,037 Palestinians and injured 21,767, bringing the total reported numbers to nearly 44,000 and 96,000 respectively, although figures from reliable sources are incomplete and may underestimate the number of casualties. Aid distribution sites, tents, hospitals, schools and markets have been repeatedly attacked with indiscriminate use of aerial and sniper fire,’ the document states.

Specifically, the devastation perpetrated by Israel in the Palestinian educational context is also devastating in scale.

The destruction of schools, libraries and universities, and the killing of teaching and service staff at all levels of education has left more than 800,000 students without access to education. It is estimated that 40,000 secondary school students in various branches will be unable to participate in this year’s higher education exams. 85% of educational facilities According to an 8 October report by Euro-med Human Rights Monitor, 80% of schools and all universities in Gaza have been destroyed or severely damaged, rendering them out of service due to deliberate attacks.

Essential socio-educational services for children and youth suffer the same devastation. Without electricity and stable internet access, online education is virtually impossible.

Preventing the right to education for children and youth in Gaza is a manifestation of genocide with a name of its own: scholasticide.

Education is an intrinsic human right and an indispensable means to develop other human rights.

Naomi Klein, a Canadian Jewish thinker and writer, refers to what is happening in Gaza as an environmental genocide because that genocide has become mere background noise.

A background noise that is gradually blurring the magnitude of the destruction in Gaza, which, as promised by Israeli leaders, has rendered Gaza unfit for human life.

As teachers at any educational stage, we have the responsibility to use education to denounce this intentional and flagrant violation of human rights and prevent it from continuing to sound like mere ‘background noise’.

Precisely for this reason, the University Network for Palestine was created at the beginning of 2024, with a presence in 46 of the 50 public universities in Spain.

From the University Network for Palestine (RUxP) we want to facilitate the exchange of information, resources and contacts between the educational community of our state, promoting and supporting initiatives and experiences of collaboration between institutions and educational centres, as well as participating in the joint organization of classes, workshops, seminars and courses that confront genocide, colonization and apartheid, safeguarding the right to education in Palestine.

In fact, at the University of Malaga, through RedUMAxPalestina, we have been organising all kinds of activities (round tables, conferences, workshops, exhibitions, screenings, management of scholarships for students from Palestine…) in this sense.

We invite all collectives and representatives of the educational context of the state to join RUxP’s demands, especially in the rupture of academic relations with Israeli universities and academic centres:

Sign up here

 

In the University Network for Palestine we will continue because we still believe in a university that forms dignified, just and critical human beings, and not mere technocrats insensitive to their environment. We will not cease in our efforts; we will exhaust all avenues and we will not stop until the end of genocide, colonisation and the complicity of our institutions with them.