Destruction of Palestinian places of learning
Nearly five months into Israel's devastating onslaught on Gaza amid a muted response from the self proclaimed supporters of peace and human rights, Israel has launched a massive ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza while rendering the Palestinian territory uninhabitable.
So far more than 29,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed, and over 69,000 others injured in the Israeli strikes on the besieged coastal territory.
Nearly 2 million people have also been displaced in Gaza as a result of the Israeli onslaught.
The Israeli regime has destroyed hundreds of schools, including those run by the UN in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
According to the speaker for UNICEF, Jonathan Couric, there is absolutely no form of education or schooling in the Gaza strip at the moment.
There were approximately 625,000 school aged children in the Gaza Strip. None of them are attending schools now.
The level of violence and the ongoing hostilities and the intense bombing currently taking place doesn't allow for education.
According to Palestinian education officials, at least 280 government schools and 65 UNRWA run schools have been destroyed or damaged.
Nearly 240 teachers have also lost their lives in Israeli strikes on Gaza.
Also, more than 4850 students have been killed, and over 8200 others have been injured as of February 6th.
Al-Shaima Akram Saidam was one of these students, a teenager who graduated from high school as the top ranking Palestinian student of 2023 with a 99.6% grade point average.
Two months before the Israeli onslaught on Gaza Saidam's home was filled with drums and loud ululation of women celebrating her achievement.
Shaima had decided to study English translation of the Islamic University of Gaza before she was brutally killed, along with several members of her family in an Israeli airstrikes targeting a refugee camp in Gaza in October.
Since October 2023, more than 625,000 students and 22,500 teachers in Gaza have been denied access to schools due to the Israeli attacks.
I need to study in a new school, to play & study and have fun in it. But unfortunately, the school was destroyed and we had to flee to the Deir El-Balah refugee camp.
Palestinian Child
My dream is to become a journalist. That was the future that I had been dreaming of since I was a little child.
We cannot drink water, like we used to because it is contaminated. There is no clean water.
We live in a tent; the cold, the snow, and rain are killing us.
Child refugee
The Israeli military has even targeted the UN school sheltering Palestinian refugees, killing defenseless civilians, most of whom were women and children.
The Gaza Strip is home to 12 universities, almost all of which have been targeted by the Israeli military.
In January, the Israeli military blew up the last standing University in Gaza, the Israa University. The Israeli military had used the building of the university as a base for the deadly operations against Palestinians in Gaza before destroying it.
Israeli soldiers used hundreds of mines and filmed themselves leveling the educational institution to the ground. The video, which went viral, sparked online controversy with many academics and university students around the globe calling for an academic boycott of Israel.
In this video, a reporter grills the US State Department spokesperson on the US silence on Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
I don't know if you've seen the video it's pretty widely available, it looks like a controlled demolition, it looks like what we do here in this country when we're taking down an old hotel or a stadium.
You have nothing to say nothing to say about it?
To do that kind of an explosion you need to be in there. You have to put the explosives down and it takes a lot of planning and preparation to do, if there was a threat from this particular facility they wouldn't have been able to do it.
US Journalist
I have seen the video’ I can tell you that it is something we are raising with the Government of Israel, as we do often do, to ask questions and find out what the underlying situation is, as we often do when we see reports of this nature.
But I'm not able to characterize the actual facts on the ground before hearing that that.
I did see the video, I don't know what was under that building. I don't know what was inside the building.
Matthew Miller, US State Department, Spokesperson
It doesn't matter what was under the building because they obviously got in there to put the explosives down...
US Journalist
Again, I'm glad you have factual certainty. But I just I just don't…
Matthew Miller, US State Department, Spokesperson
Many observers are now saying that Israeli forces deliberately target universities and academics as part of a strategy to undermine the Palestinian capacity to survive, resist, and, continue as a people.
So let's talk about the assault on educational and cultural institutions. It's clearly by design. I mean, this is not accidental.
Why is it that Israel is determined to obliterate educational and cultural institutions? And there are many that I haven't mentioned, including Gaza Public Library, Gaza's cultural center.
Why are these important targets for the Israelis?
Chris Hedges, Independent Journalist
I think they want to wipe out everything that points to the Palestinian identity or Palestinian culture.
It's like their propaganda says they would, people with no land came to a land with no people.
Ahmed Alhussaina, Vice President, Gaza Al-Israa University
The Israeli attacks on educational centers in Gaza come against the backdrop of the fact that the top Palestinian academic figures have been deliberately targeted in Israeli attacks.
Since October 7th the Israeli military has killed at least 94 university professors in Gaza.
Israeli attacks have killed 94 university professors.
These include Professor Sufyan Tayeh, the president of the Islamic University of Gaza, an award winning physicist and UNESCO Chair of astronomy, astrophysics and space sciences in Palestine, who died along side his family in an airstrike.
Dr Ahmed Hamdi Abu Absa, Dean of the Software Engineering Department at the University of Palestine, reportedly shot dead by Israeli soldiers as he walked away, having been released from three days of enforced detention.
Professor Mohammed Eid Shabir, Former President of the Islamic University, Gaza professor of immunology and virology and former president of the Islamic University of Gaza.
Professor Refaat Alareer, poet and professor of Comparative Literature and Creative Writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, was killed along with members of his family.
Chris Hedges, Independent Journalist
Despite all Israeli restrictions, Palestine has one of the highest literacy rates in the world with a literacy rate of 96.3% as of 2014; the literacy rate is even higher among males with 98.4% being literate.
The Gaza Strip has the highest literacy rate with a literate population of 96.8% compared to 96% in the West Bank.
Women have made significant progress in literacy over the past two decades, with the rate jumping from 78.6% in 1995 to 94.1% in 2014.
The high literacy rate among Palestinians is a testament to their commitment to education, despite all the challenges they face.
They don't want people to educate themselves. They don't want education.
They want to destroy schools and universities because that's the only way the Palestinian have you know, we have no weapon, we have no future, so every Palestinian in Gaza, as I know, they will deprive themselves of food and they will send their kids to college and then it becomes like kind of, you know, necessities almost, everybody send their kids to college they have to they don't let them you know, just after high school and sit down, they ask them to go to college.
And even young children are convinced that you have to build a future and you can get your country back by educating yourself.
Ahmed Alhussaina, Vice President, Gaza Al-Israa University
Two years before the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza, two journalists asked a number of children in Gaza about their dreams. They said they wanted to continue their education and build their country.
My dream is to become a doctor; to treat people because of the war.
Child 01
I want to become a pilot and travel and free Al-Quds.
Child 02
I want to become an engineer. Because whenever the Israeli occupation destroys our houses, I could rebuild them.
Child 03
I want to build my country and let it prosper, to see my country under my hands develop into a beautiful place.
Child 04
Over the past eight years, Palestinians have demonstrated that Israeli aggression cannot extinguish their unwavering spirit and aspirations.
Despite the immense challenges faced by the Palestinian people, their resilience remains unyielding.
They have already shown that their dreams for freedom, justice and self determination cannot be destroyed by genocide or by occupation.
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