As Gazan Teachers Are Killed and Schools Destroyed, West Philly Bookstore Holds 'Scholasticide' Teach-In
Lauren Abunassar
With back-to-school season in full swing in the U.S., many Palestinian liberation activists are using this time to raise awareness of the ongoing ‘scholasticide’ in Gaza. Last Saturday in Philadelphia, an interdisciplinary panel of activists hosted a ‘scholasticide’ teach-in and silent auction fundraiser at West Philadelphia's Making Worlds Bookstore. Speakers educated attendees on the meaning of ‘scholasticide,’ which the United Nations defines as the systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure. Over 20 people who were waitlisted for the event stood outside the bookstore hoping to enter and learn about the educational crisis in Gaza. Meanwhile, inside, every seat was filled and many only managed to find standing room.
Philadelphians came out on Saturday, August 31 for a teach-in at Making Worlds Bookstore in West Philadelphia, where speakers reported on the violence and scholasticide currently taking place in Gaza. Photo: Lauren Abunassar
Healthcare Workers for Palestine organized the teach-in, which featured talks by Philadelphia-based medical workers, educators, and activists, including Palestinian activist and novelist Susan Abulhawa (Mornings in Jenin and Against the Loveless World); Arab-American Dr. Nayla Labban, an OB-GYN at Penn Medicine; Aliana Atienza, a student organizer of Penn’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter; Palestinian American teacher Hannah Gann; and medical student Nipun Kottage, who also studies the aftermath of state violence. The event focused on the educational collapse in Gaza. It also raised funds for Phoenix Elementary School, a first- through fifth-grade school that Abulhawa helped found in Gaza.
“Palestinians are being erased. One of the hallmarks of colonialism is the erasure of the native,” Abulhawa told Al-Bustan. “Stories are part of history’s audits. And that’s a threat to this mythological story of Zionism. The act of storying itself is revolutionary, is liberating, is an act of resistance and defiance.”
The teach-in was, as such, an effort to both educate and share stories from inside Gaza. Panelists addressed the impact of Israel’s attack on Gaza's educational institutions.
A Philadelphia-based coalition of healthcare workers in solidarity with Palestine organized the teach-in, which featured a silent auction aimed at raising money for the Phoenix School in Gaza. Photo: Philly Healthcare Workers for Palestine.
‘Scholasticide,’ a term that was first coined by Palestinian professor Karma Nabulsi, who was studying Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2009, has been an ongoing issue of grave concern for human rights’ organizations monitoring the attacks on Gaza. According to a report published by the United Nations in April, more than 80% of the schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, with conservative estimates counting more than 5,400 students killed, 261 teachers killed, 95 university professors killed, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers injured. Beyond this, over 60% of educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed, leaving over 625,000 students without access to education. In the first 100 days of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, all 12 of Gaza’s universities were bombed and either wholly or partially destroyed.
“I felt such cognitive dissonance setting up my classroom to welcome students back [knowing these statistics],” Hannah Gann told audience members, adding, “Palestine is a moral litmus test of the world.”
Emphasizing the onus on Philadelphia educators to discuss what’s happening in Gaza with their students, Gann reflected on the lack of support the Philadelphia School District has shown to Arab-American and pro-ceasefire students and families. What’s more, Gann said, teachers have targeted Palestinian students for wearing keffiyehs, have told Palestinian students they do not have a country, and have shared students’ personal information with outside organizations in an effort to penalize them for developing school projects on Palestine.
No stranger to censorship, Abulhawa spearheaded the Palestine Writes Literature Festival at Penn last September. The festival, which was erroneously called anti-Semitic by some Penn donors and organizations like ADL Philadelphia and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, played a role in catalyzing the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce to investigate anti-Semitism on college campuses. The presidents of Penn, Harvard, MIT, and Columbia were all called to testify in a televised probe which ultimately led to Penn president Liz Magill’s resignation. “The bottom line is that the people who have an inordinate amount of power in this country — political power and economic power — are Zionists,” Abulhawa told Al-Bustan on why education on Palestine is facing so much censorship and pushback in the U.S. “The idea of Palestine is threatening [to them]. They have a particular narrative about Israel and Zionism that is completely refuted – and easily so – by Palestinian indigeneity, culture, and history that is documented and verified and for which there is ample forensic evidence.”
Abulhawa called her work to develop the Phoenix Elementary School in Gaza “a drop in the bucket.” “We’re reaching 120 kids out of one million,” she said. “But it’s what we can do.”
Children at Phoenix Elementary in Gaza, a school which Philadelphia novelist Susan Abulhawa helped found. Photo: Playgrounds for Palestine.
The school is located at a house that has not yet been bombed. It’s run by several women who, themselves, were pulled from the rubble of earlier bombings. Abulhawa noted that the children of one of the teachers were all killed in a bombing. And though, at the moment the school is only set up to serve 120 children, other children often gather outside of the house to listen to the lessons even in the unimaginable heat. “Palestinians are taking care of each other in every way we know how,” Abulhawa said.
Fellow speaker Dr. Nayla Labban offered insight into why ‘scholasticide’ has been a prevailing tool in the ongoing genocide: “The high literacy rates in Gaza are an explanation of Israel’s targeting of educational institutions; it attacks a crucial element of Palestinian and Gazan identity: [the prioritization of education].”
Labban's sentiment was echoed by medical student Nipun Kottage, who spoke about the connections between the Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka, the genocide in Gaza, and even the state of censorship and policing of education in Philadelphia. He described Israel’s attacks on educational institutions as “an attempt to destroy the future” and “the strategy of killing possibility.”
Aliana Atienza, one of the lead organizers of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Penn, noted the power of collective efforts in the face of this targeting. “The Gaza solidarity encampment on the Penn campus is a testament to the power of making space. Space is something institutions are deliberately trying to take away.” Atienza compared today’s student resistance movement to similar movements that took place during the Vietnam War or during the final years of apartheid in South Africa. “History repeats itself but the students will continue,” she said.
Teach-in organizers hosted a silent auction fundraiser as a part of Saturday’s programming, which will run through September 7, and all proceeds will go towards the Phoenix School. By the end of the day, the auction had raised over $2,100 in donations.
Though speakers’ remarks offered a sobering description of the devastation in Gaza, Abulhawa spoke to Al-Bustan of hope as a kind of imperative act of solidarity. “There is always hope. As long as we’re alive, there is hope. We don’t give up,” said Abulhawa. “The act of breathing is an act of hope. The act of having children, falling in love, those are all acts of hope. Who are we to give up to despair? That would be the ultimate betrayal: despair.”
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Lauren Abunassar is a Palestinian American writer and journalist. A Media Fellow at Al-Bustan, she holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MA in journalism from NYU. Her first book Coriolis was published as winner of the 2023 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.