תגית: Darfur

Should Swedish Teachers be Forcing Their Activism on School Children

Don't teachers know that getting school and pre-school children involved in their "support Palestine" is against Swedish school laws and regulation?

Published in Svenska Dagbladet: https://www.svd.se/a/rPW3RA/kulturdebatt-ska-forskolebarn-patvingas-politisk-aktivism

It was a regular day at a regular Stockholm pre-school. The children arrived in the morning and after the parents rushed off to work, they got busy making cute creations using paint and beads. But this day had a special theme – the bracelets the children made were all in the colors of the Palestinian flag, as were the hand prints that they put on white sheets of paper titled "Support Palestine". According to a social media post, the pre-school was also involved in raising money for the Sewedish Palestinagrupperna NGO.

This wasn't just a local initiative. It turns out that a self-titled "preschool teacher and lecturer who fights to strengthen the preschool's mission", who has tens of thousands of followers on social media, has been giving ideas and inspiration for what he called "pre-schools for Palestine day". The content itself was hardly impressive, but it made an impression on some pre-school teachers who decided to impose their political activism on 4 and 5-year-olds. In Jönköping, for example, a couple of pre-school teachers got children to draw watermelons to "show love and solidarity with Palestine". in Upplands-Bro, a pre-school teacher claimed on social media that "the children have been given beads and crafts in the colors of the Palestinian flag" and went on to say that the children will ask their parents to buy food for Palestinians and let Palestinians live in their homes.

Where is all this coming from? Surely, Swedish educators know that political activism in schools is opposed to the school law. In order to understand the phenomena, I went to a teacher's union meeting dedicated to a discussion about the union's policy concerning Gaza. Since the teachers attending the meeting, some of them wearing so-called Palestinasjals, didn't know who I was, they spoke freely about their concerns.

One spoke passionately about the disgrace of Swedish teachers supporting the Nazis in the 1940s. She then said "in twenty years someone will write – 'my teachers were silent!' I don't want to bear that shame". Another spoke about the cowardly silence in Swedish schools and said that many teachers are willing to speak out and show civil courage. The use of "civil courage" is interesting here. Civil courage means that there's a price for your actions. Otherwise, why is it courage? Raoul Wallenberg saved tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest 1944. The price – death in a KGB prison. Nelson Mandela fought for equality in apartheid South-Africa. The price – 27 years in prison. Miss Gunilla promotes Hamas narratives. The price – a reasonable salary from the Municipality of Stockholm funded by Swedish tax payers. There is, of course, a real price too, but it's not paid by the teachers. It's paid by children who feel unsafe and unwelcome when they encounter pro-Palestinian activism where there supposed to feel protected and appreciated.

In the union meeting, however, the teachers claimed that it's not about being pro-Palestinian, it's about values. "we have the Children's Rights Convention in our curriculum, human rights, children's rights", one of the said, "children are being slaughtered, burned to death in tents, and we cannot even make a statement". This claim is worth addressing since human rights are, and should be, part of the school plan. But since the world is a complicated place, school programs stick to values, history and social sciences and generally avoid ongoing, political conflicts. If schools would deal with this war, they'd have to deal with others. There are active genocides, civil wars and massacres going on in dozens of countries and still, Swedish schools don't dedicate their resources to Tigrayans, Darfurians, Curds, Uyghurs and Rohingya people and they certainly didn't discuss the victims of the October 7th massacre in Israel. Should Gaza be an exception just because it's a fashionable topic in Swedish activist circles? Even if the Palestinians were defenseless victims of a one-sided genocide and even if drawing watermelons could somehow save them, the result of turning Swedish schools into a political Hyde-Park will be even less time left for mathematics, Swedish, arts and science. Do Swedish students really excel in these subjects so much that they can allow themselves this righteous indulgence?

But even if they did, focusing on Gaza would be problematic. The current war in Israel and Gaza has victims on both sides. Israeli children as well as Palestinians were killed, Israeli teen-agers were raped and kidnapped, Israeli students also lost their homes and became orphans and their schools are being bombed and destroyed too. Swedish activists who publicly "support Gaza", don't see this as an equally important issue. The teacher's union leadership even explained that solidarity help funds only go to UNRWA because Israel "can take care of itself". This comes from believing in a specific narrative: Israel is a colonialist state based on ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians who are now victims of a genocide.

There are, however, competing narratives. For example: the Jewish national movement (aka Zionism) and the Palestinian national movement both have justified claims on the same territory and they're involved in a bloody conflict which can only be solved by compromise. And here's another: Iran is using its Palestinian and Lebanese proxies in order to annihilate Jews while it's engaging in an influence campaign in Europe which is designed to acquire western allies (such as Swedish teachers) who'll support its antisemitic genocidal aggression. The battle between these narratives is important, it's what politics are all about, and it should take place in many places, but not in schools, and aiming at 4-year-olds is a particularly cheap shot.

And finally, there's antisemitism. A Malmö school report (2021), a Stockholm school report (2022) and a government report (2024) all clearly show that Jewish students and Jewish teachers in Swedish schools are victims of antisemitism and that one of the reasons for this is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is present in classrooms and schoolyards. Does anybody seriously believe that even more of it will help addressing antisemitism? Of course not. But fighting antisemitism isn't as fashionable as it used to be, and it's not only about schools anymore.

It's happening everywhere. Political activists preach against indifference and demand that teachers, nurses, midwives, and social-workers "stand up for Palestine". That's all very well, but here's another option; perhaps teachers can stand up for their students, midwives can stand up for future mothers and nurses for their patients. Political activists can arrange demonstrations, write op-eds and promote the "global intifada" in their spare time, just like people with similar hobbies burn the Quran or shave their heads and march for "white power" after work and not during office hours. At the end of the union meeting, one of the teachers said: "I'm a child of the revolution. I came to Sweden from Iran and the revolution there started from the teachers". Sweden's teachers can exercise their freedom of speech because they live in a democracy, but considering the results of the revolution in Iran, perhaps it's best if they do it as far away from children as possible.

From the Armenian Genocide to Xinjiang, Tigray and Mynmar

No less important than recognizing a genocide: fighting the current one

President Biden's recognition of the Armenian Genocide is an important step in the struggle against mass atrocities – genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes. But it's far from being enough and it won't do much for those who are being persecuted, discriminated against and murdered in places like the Chinese Xinjiang province, the Tigray region in Ethiopia and Myanmar.

Published in "Haaretz": https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-no-less-important-than-recognizing-genocide-fighting-current-ones-1.9775795

About a week before the outbreak of World War II Adolf Hitler met with his army commanders at his Bavarian Alps headquarters. At this meeting he spoke about exterminating the Poles by mercilessly killing men, women and children. There are some who say that this speech also included the rhetorical question: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’’

That statement has served as a warning and an illustration of the famous saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But that’s only one reason why it’s important. Another one is that the denial of a genocide is a part of genocide itself. It conceals the crime, exonerates the murderers and erases the victims’ existence as a group.

For those reasons, last week, many praised the U.S. president for recognizing the Armenian genocide and criticized other countries, including Israel, for not doing so because of political and economic interests. As justified as the criticism may be, and as positive as the declaration by President Biden is, we should recall that despite the importance of historical memory, there are other forces that shape the present and the future. Recognition of a genocide that took place over 100 years ago is only the first step in a long journey.

This journey passes through places like Xinjiang in northwest China, the Tigray region in Ethiopia and Myanmar. In China, members of ethnic minorities such as the Uighurs are being sent to “reeducation” camps, in which the prisoners are held without trial in grueling conditions and suffer from cruel indoctrination, torture and rape. In addition to the camps, testimonies, leaked documents, satellite photos and media reports reveal a series of other steps against the population in Xinjiang: forced labor, tight surveillance, separating children from their parents and a ban on practicing Islam. There is also evidence of medical experiments, organ harvesting and forced sterilization, all almost without intervention by the international community.

In Ethiopia’s Tigray region and in Myanmar local longstanding ethnic conflicts include horrific reports. News from Tigray in the last few months included acts of slaughter, looting, uprooting the population, deliberate starvation by burning crops, and widespread rape. In this round of the conflict the perpetrators are the Ethiopian government with the assistance of forces from Eritrea and Amharic militias. In Myanmar the second half of the previous decade saw tens of thousands of Rohingya people murdered, and hundreds of thousands persecuted and expelled. Testimonies revealed horrific acts such as setting entire villages on fire and throwing their residents into the flames, acts of gang rape, and tossing infants into the river. Since the military coup in February, the situation of the Rohingya may deteriorate even further.

The sad truth is that in the short term, the recognition of the Armenian genocide won’t help the victims in China, Ethiopia and Myanmar. History teaches that acts of genocide were not prevented in Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur or Syria in the 1990s and 2000s despite the universal recognition of the most comprehensive genocide in history – the Holocaust. Nor did they take place due to a failure to recognize the Armenian genocide. Recognition is necessary for prevention, but it’s insufficient. In order to combat present and future genocides at least three additional elements are needed: facts, limits and institutions.

There’s a great deal of discussion about media and public discourse in the 21st century suffering from relativization and multiple narratives. In addition, some of the conflicts that lead to genocide are complex and hard to understand. The terrible result is that the murderers can always paint a picture in which they themselves are the victims. That is how reports are published, based on partial truths, maintaining that the Uighurs are fundamentalists and terrorists, the Rohingya are Muslim invaders and the Tigrayans themselves carried out acts of ethnic cleansing. Only undisputed facts and a wide context can counter the abundance of opinions and propaganda.

But facts aren’t enough. “They shall understand that a limit, under the sun, shall curb them all,” wrote Albert Camus in “The Rebel.” “Each tells the other that he is not God” (translated by Anthony Bower). In a world where Authoritarian leaders and their regimes aim to achieve absolute power, recognition of the past and understanding the present must lead to placing limitations. Wars will probably continue to accompany mankind for years to come. We must recognize that and place clear limitations on them.

This isn’t new – international treaties, institutions, courts and tribunals have tried for decades to place limitations and prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The situation of these institutions has never been worse, but even if they suffer from weakness, political biases and corruption, in the absence of a world power that is committed to putting an end to acts of horror, and is capable of doing so, the international institutions must recognize the past, discover present facts and place limitations. Nothing else will prevent the next genocide.