‘Is it fair for Hamas to attack?’ School asks pupils to justify 7 October atrocities
Education secretary begins 'urgent' review as appalled Mumsnet parent shares Israel-Gaza conflict lesson pack from son's classroom
A UK secondary school has asked students to justify Hamas’ terrorists atrocities of 7 October.
Screenshots shared by a concerned parent on the parent network Mumsnet show the lesson plan on the Hamas-Israel war. The school in question is not identified.
The anonymous poster writes that her son’s school has “had a couple of lessons and an assembly about the conflict in Israel and the terrible situation in Gaza”. She adds that she has been sent a copy of the slides used in the lesson and is “horrified” as they “build up a very one-sided picture of Israel persecuting the Palestinians for no reason” and “democratically elected Hamas standing up to them”.
She notes that there are “11 slides on Israel taking over land” but “by contrast there’s one line on the Holocaust and two lines on the 7 October attacks, one of which says ‘They [Hamas] killed some and took hostages.”
Students are then asked: “Is it fair for Hamas to attack?”
The parent, who is not Jewish and makes clear that she thinks “both Hamas and the Israeli government are appalling”, writes: “To me this is inviting students to justify terrorism when they’re nowhere near sufficiently informed about what they’re justifying.”
The original post has since been removed, with Mumsnet telling Jewish News: “The post was removed at the original poster’s request due to privacy concerns.”
Screenshots of the original post have been shared across social platform Twitter/X.
The Department for Education referred Jewish News to the following post on 14 December from secretary of state Gillian Keegan on Twitter/X to “reflect the department’s position”.
She writes: “Hamas are terrorists. Their actions are indefensible and anyone encouraging support for them should feel the full force of the law. Extremism has no place in education and I have launched an urgent review into this case.”
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