KUALA LUMPUR – Activities held during Palestine Solidarity Week in schools under the Education Ministry (MoE) need to be controlled and monitored, said Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
The prime minister was quoted as saying that “we need to ensure that it doesn’t become a problem”.
“We discussed this in the cabinet meeting earlier today.
“...we encourage the organisation of such programmes, but we won’t force all schools to participate,” he added.
Anwar’s comments followed the surfacing of images of pupils brandishing toy guns resembling M-16s and dressing up as militants, believed to be taken during preparations for Palestine Solidarity Week.
The photos have promptly garnered backlash from concerned activists and members of the public, with Global Human Rights Federation president S. Shashi Kumar cautioning that teachers are not trained to conduct such programmes.
Urging MoE to cease the programme, he said efforts to generate awareness on such conflicts should be universal and not limited to any particular ones.
Criticism has also been levelled against MoE’s Palestine Solidarity Week for its potential ramifications stemming from the educators’ own lack of understanding of Palestinian resistance.
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories such as Gaza and the West Bank has long been condemned by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Its ongoing brutal escalation of airstrikes on Gaza following armed resistance group Hamas’ unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7 has been deemed by Israeli historian Raz Segal as “textbook genocide”.
One of such bombings by the Israeli army killed at least 16 Palestinian Christians at the St Porphyrius Church in Gaza on October 19, Al Jazeera reported.
In an opinion piece for The Guardian, Segal said: “Without the historical context of Israeli settler colonialism since the 1948 Nakba, we cannot explain how we got here”.
Users on social media platform X have also criticised the government for conducting the Palestine Solidarity Week without ratifying the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Refugees, which would allow Palestinian refugees to obtain formal education in government schools. – The Vibes, October 27, 2023
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