There has been a lot of attention on the suffering and killing of children in Gaza in the past month, but what is seldom mentioned in Western media is the levels of academic achievement and excellence in Gaza and the Palestinian territories prior to these attacks, and the scale of the damage that has been done.
According to the World Bank, Gaza and the West Bank have some of the highest literacy rates in the world, with a literacy rate of 97.5% for people above the age of 14. Children in Palestine deeply value their education, and have long seen education as the key to finding opportunity.
Here’s a video of children returning to school for the start of the Fall semester in Gaza, just two months ago:
As Thomas White, the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency – UNRWA for short – said in the video, children in Gaza have had their education interrupted over the past several years because of Israeli attacks. They’ve been enduring trauma and poverty, and they have persisted in spite of that.
In fact, more than half of the 2.2 million residents of Gaza are under the age of 18. Children.
One of the most common news reports that I heard from Gaza prior to these attacks were of children memorizing the Quran – memorizing by heart the entire 604-page book of the Word of God.
And Gaza’s universities have had very strong reputations. The Islamic University of Gaza is world renown. Al Azhar University – one of the oldest universities in the world – has a branch in Gaza.
Now, because of Israel’s complete siege and attacks, the children of Gaza are suffering and being killed. Schools aren’t operating, and, as some of the largest buildings in Gaza, they’re serving as shelters for the more than 1.5 million people who have been forced to flee from their homes.
A young girl in Gaza who was forced from her home, but brought her diplomas with her, talking about wanting to be an engineer when she grows up:
Here’s a PhD student in Gaza, Hamza Mustafa Abu Tawha, sharing a video of a portion of his library before it was destroyed:
On November 2nd, Truthout reported:
“Israeli air raids damaged four UN-run schools in refugee camps across the Gaza Strip over the course of just 24 hours this week, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) reported Thursday.
According to the agency, the bombardments damaged two schools-turned-shelters in the Jabalia refugee camp and Beach refugee camp in northern Gaza. The shelter in Jabalia, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, was hit after two days of heavy Israeli shelling in the area that killed and wounded hundreds.
Israeli strikes hit two more schools-turned shelters in the Al Bureij refugee camp in southern Gaza — an area that Israel has been ordering Palestinians to evacuate to as a supposed safe zone.
In all, the Israeli strikes killed at least 23 people and injured at least 36 people. The UNRWA reported that the strikes killed at least one child — though, with the high proportion of children being killed by Israel’s genocide, and Palestinians warning that Gaza is becoming a “graveyard for children,” it is possible that the Israeli strikes killed far more children.
According to UNRWA estimates, the four shelters that Israel bombed or damaged were housing nearly 20,000 people combined. In total, the agency says that roughly 150 UNRWA buildings are being used to shelter around 700,000 people, or around a third of the 2.2 million Palestinians who live in Gaza.
UNRWA called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” in the face of the devastation.
“Across the Gaza Strip, these shelters should be a safe haven, under the flag of the United Nations. International humanitarian law leaves no doubt that civilians and civilian facilities must be protected,” the group wrote. So far, Israeli strikes have killed 72 UNRWA employees since the current siege began on October 7, 2023, the agency highlighted.
“Overnight, we lost Mai, a bright software developer in her mid-20s with physical disabilities. She was displaced from her home and killed in the Jabalia Refugee Camp with members of her family,” the agency wrote. “How many more? How much more grief and suffering? A humanitarian ceasefire is overdue for the sake of humanity.”
Al Jazeera reported from the ground at the site of the schools:
Israel has damaged at least 92 schools in Gaza. And it’s not just schools that Israel has bombed, but universities as well. On October 12th, the Israeli military bombed the Islamic University of Gaza. On November 4th, Top War reported that Israel bombed the Gaza campus of Al Azhar University, killing at least 12 people and injuring more than 50, with an unknown number of casualties remaining under the rubble.
Video of the bombing of Al Azhar:
According to Middle East Eye, as of November 8th, Israel has killed 10,569 people, including 4,324 children, and wounded more than 26,000 people. At least 2,550 people are still missing, including 1,350 children. The vast majority of these people are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.
The past month is certainly not the first recorded incident of Israel targeting and destroying Palestinian cultural and educational institutions. In fact, the theft, appropriation, and erasure of Palestinian cultural and intellectual traditions have always coincided with the appropriation and theft of Palestinian land.
Benny Bruner produced the documentary, “The Great Book Robbery,” about the systematic theft of more than 30,000 books from Palestinian libraries during the Nakba of 1948:
Thus it is incumbent upon anyone who wishes to see truth, justice, and reparations for Palestinians to call for an immediate end to Israel’s attacks on Palestinian children and Palestinian educational institutions, for an end of the siege of Gaza and the occupation, and the right of Palestinians to return to their lands, and for the books held in the Israeli National Library to be returned to the Palestinian people.
One. 