Dear Ms. Pringle,
I write to you with deep respect for NEA’s mission of fulfilling the promise of public education to our nation’s students, and with equally deep respect for your partnership with Education International to expand the promise of public education worldwide. I hope you will consider carefully EI’s thoughtful condemnation of all acts of violence and step back from an oversimplified one-sided approach to supporting peace in the Middle East.
Your announcement for a February 10th solidarity rally asks, “No Ceasefire? No Endorsement! Revoke Biden’s endorsement until he supports a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.” I urge you to focus not on a solution that will simply “end” the conflict, but one that will end it such that all the children of the Middle East can reap the benefits of education and flourish.
As you recognized when you tweeted on December 8, echoing EI’s December 7 statement: heinous acts were perpetrated by Hamas, and hostages must be released. Your statement acknowledges that lives were taken not only in Gaza but in Israel, too. In recognition of these horrific events, your partner EI and in turn its partner the Council of Global Unions, have both taken great pains not to call for a naked cease fire, but to insist on hostage release as part of the deal. Further, the American Federation of Teachers similarly adopted a resolution on January 30, 2024 calling for these same conditions and also explicitly calling out Hamas (as well as Netanyahu) as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Simply put, a cease fire without hostages and with Hamas in place will only produce more bloodshed, more war, more suffering.
These position statements are wise for several reasons. First, to push for a cease fire without the return of hostages would allow Hamas to move the hostages without fear of an Israeli raid to rescue them. Further endangering the lives of these hostages in this way would be a crime against humanity and cannot be condoned. Secondly, a cease fire that leaves Hamas in place will leave Palestinians, especially school children, in perpetual peril. Hamas has taken billions of dollars of aid intended for schools, hospitals, roads, parks — all assets that work in partnership with education to grow children who can flourish – and used it instead to build weapons, arsenals, terror tunnels and luxury estates for Hamas leaders. Hamas co-locates missile launchers in schools, stores weapons and artillery on school grounds, and places entry doors to its terror tunnels in school rooms and even alongside children’s beds and cribs. Children are literally living and learning amidst weapon arsenals and terror tunnels.
The Hamas disregard for Palestinian life could not be more clear than was exposed in an October Russian TV interview. The interviewer asked why, since Hamas built nearly 300 miles of tunnels, they did not build any bomb shelters for Palestinian civilians. Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk replied “tunnels are meant to protect us [Hamas members] . . . As for the Gaza strip, you know and everybody knows that 75% of the people in the Gaza strip are refugees. And refuges are the responsibility of the United Nations,” not the responsibility of Hamas.
Would it be humane to reach a cease fire while these monsters toss aside and actively threaten the welfare of the Palestinian people? Do we want to return children to schools that have missile launchers in the classrooms and weapons stockpiles on the playgrounds? Hamas must be disempowered.
A cease fire with Hamas in place will doom the Palestinians to perpetual lives of danger and poverty without critical infrastructure, food and medicine; and it will doom innocent hostages to never see the light of day, paying with the price of their lives for harm in which they played no part. Hamas leader Taher El-Nounou said in a recent interview, “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us.” New York Times, 11/8/23.
That is what Hamas wants: a permanent state of war. Surely that is not what the NEA wants, nor is it what the Palestinians nor Israelis want. We all want peace. We won’t get it with a naked cease fire that leaves Hamas where it is now. Please cancel your solidarity march, as it is not a march for peace. With Hamas in place, we will have perpetual war. Let’s work for peace.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I trust it will be handled with the seriousness it deserves. Feel free to contact Gerard Filitti at [email protected] with any steps taken.
Sincerely,
Pablo Nankin, MD
#EndJewHatred
#EndJewHatred is a non-partisan international grassroots civil rights movement that unites ordinary people, activists, and organizations from around the world who support the cause that defines the movement: to end Jew-hatred in our lifetime.
Sent from my iPhone
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