RUTHFULLY YOURS

 The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has a paid secretariat and a network of some 40 branches in the UK plus affiliated groups. Sinisterly, it includes the entire land of Israel on its logo.

Among its current links is the London Palestine Place fest (Palestine Place, incidentally, was the purpose-built and deliberately-named nineteenth century headquarters of a notorious London missionary society that existed for the sole purpose of converting Jews to Christianity!)

In its own words, which I take from its leaflet entitled “Palestine-Israel: The Basic Facts”, the PSC

“produces publications for its members and the general public and disseminates information through its website; lobbies the media, institutions, the British government and local MPS; organises public meetings, film shows, conferences, debates, boycott events. pickets and demonstrations at local, national and international levels; promotes relations between British and Palestinian oranisations and communities”

It’s promoted BDS with gusto since 2001, not least by picketing supermarkets selling Israeli goods, button-holing passers-by, and thrusting anti-Israel propaganda at them. “This is an excellent way to start up a discussion with the general public,” one member is quoted as saying. “You start with imported avocados and end up with the Fourth Geneva Convention!”

In my experience, there’s always a wad of Israel-demonising leaflets on hand at such demos. But what is not as generally known as it might be (for it’s not usually among the material distributed at pickets and rallies) is that in 2009 the PSC produced a particularly pernicious piece of propaganda aimed at poisoning impressionable teenage minds against Israel.

This pernicious piece of propaganda is called “Teachers Pack on Palestine” and a leaflet describing it was given to me hot off the press when, at a PSC-sponsored Israel-demonising exhibition of children’s drawings from Gaza, I was mistaken for a schoolteacher.


“Exploring Palestine through Citizenship” the leaflet (its punctuation leaving much to be desired) thus enthusiastically thrust at me begins. It continues (the non- italicised words in square brackets consist of my asides):

“PSC, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and CAABU, the Council for Arab-British Understanding have put together an excellent online educational resource designed to introduce secondary school students to Palestine. They are mainly geared towards the Citizenship Curriculum, but can be used in English, Media, History and Geography lessons.

1) Forced to leave home
After brainstorming what they would take from their homes if they had to flee at short notice, students will do short role-plays based on fleeing home.
[I guess these role models, Jews fleeing their homes in Jerusalem under the gaze of Arab troops, are kept under wraps]

2) Role-play – refugees
A role-play to explore some of the key questions around one of the most central issues regarding Israel-Palestine. In character students will discuss the Right of Retun and who has responsibility for the Palestinian refugees.

3) Handala – a boy whose face we don’t see
Students will look at 10 cartoons by Naji Al-Ali, a Palestinian political cartoonist and one of the most popular in the Arab world. Students will explore the power of symbiosis and draw their own cartoons

4) The opinions of maps
[Yes, folks, they are the four maps

that turn up repeatedly on PSC literature, but which as explained here are mendacious and misleading]

Students will look at a range of maps of Israel-Palestine representing different perspectives and identify the main themes of each map – thereby increasing their understanding of some of the main issues, improving their map literacy and addressing the question of whether any map presents only “bias-free” facts

5) Something to cheer about?
The class will prepare and conduct a press conference around the British government’s refusal of visas to the Palestine under-22 football team

6) Why didn’t Reem finish school?
Students will be given a series of information cards about Gaza and from these each group will construct a story to explain why a girl living in Gaza might not finish school
[I assume this has nothing to do with Hamas’s sexism, right?]

7) A village and a wall – news story
Students will make a news bulletin about the weekly demonstrations in Bil’in, a Palestinian village cut through by the Wall

8) Bil’in – role plays
Students will look at photos of Bil’in, a Palestinian village cut through by the Wall, and work in groups to make role-plays based on the photos

9) Trading: different people, different chances
The class is split into several groups, and some of [sic] designated Palestinians and some settlers. The teacher administers the occupation as the different groups produce goods to sell – giving students an insight into how the occupation and the settlement enterprise affects Palestinian livelihoods

10) What’s in your shopping bag – is it illegal?
Students will learn about fair trade and the issue of products in British supermarkets as being labelled as Israeli when they are from illegal settlements. In groups, students will produce a flyer, poster and letter to a supermarket

11) Difference and sameness in a democracy
Students will read a couple of articles and do online research in preparation for a formal debate that takes Israel-Palestine as a case study: This house believes it is easier to be democratic when people are the same” [What is meant by this? That democracies should not be pluralistic? That only Islamic states are valid? That the Jews of Israel should become Muslims? If I can’t make head or tail of this preposterous motion for debate, I pity those of tenderer age who are supposed to grapple with it.]

12) False advertising
Students will look at an advert from the Israeli tourist board that was taken down following complaint and write their own letter of complaint. They will learn about the advertising code
Here’s the ad, adorning a wall in the London Underground, as I explained here:

13) New news, old news, whose news
Students will look at events in a given week in the West Bank and Gaza and whether these events made it into the British press. Students will reflect on why or why not, and on the nature of news
[Is there an implication here that Jews control the media? It looks suspiciously as if something of that kind is being suggested]

14) Being neutral
Students will look at the controversy around the BBC’s decision in 2009 not to show a humanitarian appeal for Gaza in order to explore notions of neutrality and fairness

15) Spray-painting the Wall
Students will analyse graffiti from the Wall in the West Bank and read an article on it, developing an understanding of the rolr that graffiti and art can play in such a context
[I assume this

fine example of the graffiti artist’s skill won’t be shown to the kids!]

16) More on Bil’in: there are two lessons based on Bil’in, a village in the west Bank that has been the site of weekly demonstrations for four years against the Wall – which cuts straight through the village. Backgrounder on the Wall and Bil’in for teachers and for [sic] something for students
Download the lesson plans, handouts, worksheets, powerpoint and other resources from PSC … website …

There’s a kindergarten in Palestine which teaches very young children to hate Israel and prepare for jihad.

This PSC pack teaches older children in Britain to hate Israel and see it as an illegal state. Preparation for its removal from the map. we might say.

Much indignation has been expended in recent weeks on a question by a British examination board which asked students to explain (not “to justify” as some hotheads have charged) the causes of antisemitism. In my view, the question, from a historical standpoint, is a reasonable one, provided no propaganda of the type we see above has not infiltrated the classroom and infected children and their answers.

I find it extraordinary that poison of the PSC teachers’ pack kind is permitted in state school classrooms. Does Education Secretary Michael Gove tolerate this misuse of school time on school property? Does he even know? And if he does not, why has it not been brought to his attention?

I’ve no idea how successful the pack has been, or how widespread its use in schools is, or whether it’s occasionally “updated”, but given the poison against Israel found on so many British campuses, it seems fair to surmise that it has had at least some measure of success.

Shouldn’t Anglo-Jewry, so quick to attack an examination board for perceived sinister motives, be doing more to counter this propaganda?