Palestine in the classroom

The topic of Palestine in the classroom is one that exemplifies the words of the late radical education scholar, bell hooks (2014), who stated that ‘the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy’ (p. 12). Yet, the classrooms within Palestine look very different to others around the globe. Since October 2023, Israel has intensified its efforts to annihilate the Palestinian people that reside in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli military officers have produced several self-made-videos where soldiers are mocking destroyed schools or using schools as places to execute Palestinian civilians (The New Arab, 2024). These actions epitomise what Palestinian Professor Karma Nabulsi defined as ‘scholasticide’ (Ahmad & Vulliamy, 2009), which describes the patterns of Israeli colonial attacks upon students, scholars and educational institutions. Ten months into the genocide, it was estimated that 8572 school students and 497 teachers/school staff have been murdered whilst 65 educational institutions were bombed and vandalised by Israeli soldiers (Middle East Eye, 2024).