Hugh Reilly: Plight of young Palestinians is stain on whole world

Published on Tuesday 6 January 2009 19:00

IN NORMAL circumstances, the £10 Zavvi Christmas gift voucher given to me by my son would have sent me into a vortex of depression.

Luckily for me, I was already in a Black Dog mood as a consequence of Israel's Godzilla-like onslaught on Gaza. Looking at the pictures of the death and destruction wreaked upon a largely defenceless population, one could only weep.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, exhorts schools to extol the virtue of citizenship while, in my opinion, he looks the other way when a strategic ally murders innocents by the dozen. In a testament to this government's moral compass, the juvenile vulgarity of Russell Brand received more ministerial condemnation.

Israeli spokesmen claim only Hamas infrastructure is being targeted, but that line, like the one that Israel regrets civilian casualties, is beginning to sound a little tired. For example, the education ministry was flattened for no apparent reason. Further, one of the first targets on Israel's to-do list was the Islamic University, a building for learning that is now a gap site. The explanation proffered for its destruction was that it carried out unspecified terrorist activities. This fanciful excuse doesn't hold water, much like the SS Dignity after it was deliberately rammed by an Israeli patrol boat in international waters when it tried to take much needed medicines to Gaza.

Earlier this year, the UK government vehemently voiced its disapproval of a proposed academic boycott of Israel but, in a blatant act of hypocrisy, on hearing of the obliteration of the Islamic University, our government hit the mute button.

Israel's desire to prevent Palestinians receiving an education knows no bounds. In May 2008, seven Palestinian students won Fulbright scholarships to attend universities in the US. The Israeli government, which controls the borders of the Strip, refused to grant permission for them to travel to Jerusalem for visas. According to Israeli sources, as part of the blockade, only humanitarian or medical cases would be allowed to leave.

Thousands of teenagers in Gaza are now denied higher education, but that is not a concern for the Israeli government. Instead, its concern is with textbooks used in Palestinian schools that allegedly contain "incitement" against the occupying power.

Maybe I'm being a tad naive, but were French school-children living under German occupation expected to read bestsellers about Bismarck and play musical chairs to the sound of Wagner?

Education in Gaza had been on its knees for months before the recent fighting, largely due to the tightening of the economic siege designed to change the democratically elected government (oops – I forgot that Israel is the "only democracy in the region").

On the other side of the fences around Gaza, Israeli kids in Ashkelon and Sderot have been denied an education by the rockets fired by Hamas. Sadly, this is a price Israeli politicians feel is worth paying to ensure Gaza remains the world's largest open prison.

As a teacher of modern studies, I find it bizarre that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not feature at any level of our national courses. In the Eighties, it was a key part of the Higher syllabus but was mysteriously dropped.

Schoolchildren in Scotland watch the violence on TV but are totally ignorant of who the colonial power is and who is the oppressed. During an impromptu classroom discussion, a kid mentioned Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit, who is held by Hamas. Unfortunately, the youngster was unable to name any of the 44 Hamas legislators or 11,000 Palestinian prisoners currently in Israeli jails.

It is to the world's shame that Israel continues to place Palestinian education on a par with Zavvi gift vouchers.