PDSB has added a day set up to denounce the creation of Israel to the official school board calendar
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Trustees at the Peel District School Board have been inundated with more than 1,000 emails asking them to do their jobs.
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Specifically, parents and community members are requesting that the board remove Nakba Day from their official calendar of days to commemorate at the board.
Nakba Day is a highly contentious, highly political commemoration against the establishment of Israel in 1948. The day is marked on May 15, the day after Israel’s Independence Day, and was started in the Arab world as a protest against Israel’s existence.
The name of the day comes from the phrase Dhikra an-Nakba, which means Memory of the Catastrophe. We now have a school board officially recognizing the establishment of the State of Israel as a catastrophe.
“Peel District School Board failed to follow its own policies when it added the ‘Nakba Remembrance Day’ to the Days of Significance calendar,” reads the form email that is being sent again and again.
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“Including the ‘Nakba Remembrance Day’ marks the first time a school board in Canada has officially adopted a day of significance that is in objection to the independence of a sovereign, democratically elected country (one of the only of its kind in the Middle East), and one of Canada’s long-standing allies.”
A request for comment to board members receiving the email was sent on Friday and as of this writing, no response has been received. A statement was issued last week by the Peel District School Board before this campaign started.
“We value the diversity of the communities we serve in the Peel District School Board. The board has a Months of Recognition/Days of Significance committee to review applications from PDSB community, students, staff and families for new days for each school year,” the board statement read.
“Applications for this day were reviewed and it was identified as a Community Observance day for this year. Community Observance days recognize the diversity of PDSB communities with no specific actions for schools.”
Make no mistake, while the board says there are “no specific actions for schools” associated with this day, this is still significant and inappropriate.
There will undoubtedly be several teachers willing to use Nakba Day to tell their students that Israel’s very existence is a catastrophe. They won’t tell the full story, that with the United Nations creation of Israel, which Canada voted in favour of, that a state was offered to Palestinian Arabs who rejected the idea and demanded all the land for themselves.
Nor will the teachers who jump on this “opportunity” to bash Israel relay to the students that instead of accepting the two-state solution in 1948, that Palestinians — backed up by surrounding Arab countries — started the first of several wars to try to destroy Israel.
In the current context, students will be taught that Israel is an occupier and an oppressor and therefore illegitimate. It’s the full extension of DEI identity politics into the classroom and it is outrageous.
“School boards need to get back-to-basics on: Reading, writing, and math,” Ontario’s Education Minister Stephen Lecce said in a statement in response to questions about Nakba Day being added in Peel.
“Over the past months, I made my expectations clear to all school boards that there is no room for politics or the influence of personal opinions in Ontario classrooms. At a time when so many young Canadians are divided, it is critical that schools bring people together.”
Sadly, Peel District School Board isn’t listening. Neither is the York District School Board where a group of teachers are selling “Chips for Gaza” to students at lunch and recess to send money to the Gaza Strip.
Would the board allow sales reps for Israel Bonds into the school? Not likely.
“When too many students are not meeting provincial standards of literacy and math, school boards should leave politics outside of the classroom, and focus on the academic achievement of students,” Lecce said.
He’s right, but the boards aren’t listening and as so many parents have said in those emails, the boards also aren’t doing their jobs.
blilley@postmedia.com
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