SaveOurSchools Campaign

In response to the destruction of the al-Maleh school, we released SaveOurSchools action alert calling on people across the world to urge their governments to pressure the Israeli occupation to return the confiscated materials back to the school. In the action alert we also call for the protection of five other schools from Israeli imminent demolition.

Twinning for Justice
Following this alert, some organizations have started a cooperation with the Irish National Teachers Organization (INTO), the largest Irish teacher union, with over 50 thousand members. We has started a pilot project of school twinning, which aims to defend Palestinian children’s right to education as well as their right to exist. The project includes 4 Palestinian schools, threatened with demolition. Palestinian and Irish students will be able to exchange letters, photos, drawings, and videos that will allow Irish students and schools to learn what education under apartheid means to Palestinian students. Palestinian students will be able to learn about Irish history of struggle against British colonialism and together they can discuss efforts of solidarity. As a result as soon as Israel demolished the as-Sfai school in Masafer Yatta, Irish trade unions released a call in cooperation with the Irish trade Unions to defend as-Sfai school, which was demolished and confiscated several times.

With this project we aim to:
1- Create empathy, connection and a sense of responsibility
2- Build awareness around Israel’s systematic and planned policy to deny Palestinians the right to education
3- Educate about how Israel uses the denial of the right to education as a tool within its policies of ethnic cleansing, annexation and apartheid
4- Build a network of people and institutions that effectively take action and pressure governments to hold apartheid Israel accountable.

The #EndEthnicCleansing network has now started a working group to further develop concrete international support and action to challenge Israel’s denial of the right to education for Palestinian children. Through this project we encourage citizens, unions and institutions to take political action.

• While schools may agree with the school you are twinning to send some symbolic donations, we have explicitly stated that this cannot be the aim of the effort. For far too long the international community has rendered Israeli apartheid sustainable, including by paying for the damages and losses caused by Israeli violations of Palestinian rights. Palestinians are demanding justice, freedom and equality and asking the international community to build pressure to stop Israeli apartheid. Palestinians don’t want charity, but solidarity.
• We further want to ensure that we will have a number of twinnings with schools from the global south so that we develop a vision of the world that unites people across the global south in an anti-colonial vision and divert the gaze from the west.