Bullying in school over views re Palestine and Lebanon

[AnonymouseQuestion]

My children go to a secondary school that has approx 30% Muslim kids. Many are very politicised over what is happening in the Middle East. My kids have said for a while that it’s impossible to have any view at school other than Israel is evil and is committing genocide. This week my 11 year old came home very upset as a girl had fought with him over something else then returned to the classroom and told everyone that my DC supports genocide. Friends of my DC turned on them and said they were evil, my DC said they didn’t support genocide and the child was cross about something else but people shunned them anyway. I’ve now spent the weekend with my 11 year old constantly asking me whether what’s happening in Palestine is genocide and when I said that was an over simplified and divisive question and it was best not to get into discussions of that at their age my older DC said to their younger sibling “you can’t say that, just agree loudly that it’s genocide at school or you will suffer.”

I then asked my older DC if that sort of thing was common or would be seen in their year group and they said yes. They said that one of their friends once laughed when a Jewish boy fell on the stairs and said “he deserves that as he’s Israeli” when my child said the child wasn’t Israeli just Jewish they were told to shut up and their friend group were encouraged to shun them.

Would you report this to the school? Is it common in other schools at the moment?

Gosh that's terrible, absolutely needs to be stopped. This is happening in many schools, 2 of my 3 daughter's schools have had the same. In one of the schools it led to quite serious bullying of some of the Jewish girls.

It can escalate very quickly, stop it now.

This week my 11 year old came home very upset

I’ve now spent the weekend with my 11 year old constantly asking me whether what’s happening in Palestine is genocide and when I said that was an over simplified and divisive question and it was best not to get into discussions of that at their age my older DC said to their younger sibling “you can’t say that, just agree loudly that it’s genocide at school or you will suffer.”

They don’t sound “very robust” to me OP. They sound like they are, quite reasonably, feeling intimidated and concerned

*if I report it I don’t want the school to act to address what specifically happened to my kids. I want the school to consider how to address the whole student body about the wider issue.

Well verbalise that to the school

Nothing strange about it

It is very worrying that a complex issue is being simplified into good and evil

Maybe schools need some lessons in what is or isn't genocide

It's reflective of society and indeed Mumsnet though.

If you dare to empathise with Israel that apparently makes you a supporter of genocide.

Goodness a very blinkered view of “society”

Whilst it's important to support the right side of the history and acknowledge with your children the facts, I would not put up with bullying. Many children are very passionate about what's happening and do get carried away, it absolutely doesn't mean they should be picking on other kids. Maybe send a email out to the head of the school to have a word in an assembly to every child that bullying at any level should not be tolerated.

It seems nowadays people cannot just accept people have a different opinion and just move on.Look at brexit for example.Mumsnet is particularly bad for this.Anyone qho disagrees with the hive mind is 'goady.'

Good old anti-Semitic Jew hatred.

Yes, it’s bullying.

Whilst it's important to support the right side of the history

There is no “right side of history “.

Yours,
A professional historian.

A word in assembly?
Ours had very robust assemblies setting out clearly what was allowed and not allowed.
Thereafter, behaviour management, including suspensions.

I know. Dear lord that's worrying.

It's the polarisation of society. If you're not with me, you're against me. It became absolutely impossible to discuss Brexit on here.

This definitely needs to be reported but in my experience a lot of schools live in wilful denial of such issues, they’re probably aware and feel unable to do or say anything for fear of the repercussions . Definitely the case in a school I used to work in that had a spike in racism related incidents when the catchment area changed.

I used to teach an option at GCSE about this issue, called the Arab- Israeli Conflict.
I wouldn't touch it now.

Conflating all Jews with the actions of Israel is extremely antisemitic. School need to be addressing that (in the same way I’m sure they would address a Muslim child being called a terrorist just because of their religious background).

anti semitism is completely unacceptable, how do you know that child wasn't reprimanded later? Also shocked at the amount of comments here saying the genocide in palestine is "complex", sounds like justification for ethnic cleansing more like.

That Jewish kid must be having an appalling time. Yeah I’d raise this, if kids are creating an environment of intimidation thats not acceptable. The “Israeli” thing is just racism isn’t it.

One of things about growing up is understanding that people will have different perspectives and being able to talk sensibly about those things. The school need to pull these kids up on this.

Your kids are being affected though. They’re seeing their classmates being treated badly and not feeing able to speak out. They know it’s not right but don’t want to say anything out of fear of being ostracised. How would you feel if your work was full of BNP supporters who pressured you to agree with their racism or if a group of incels made it impossible for you to speak out against workplace sexism?

Your DC has also been accused of being a genocide supporter for heaven’s sake. They’ll know (or have an idea) what genocide is and will feel horrendous for being called that.

You don’t have to agree with a particular side to see what is unacceptable behaviour in a school. Laughing at a child for falling over because they’re Jewish is appalling. Is it ok to push black children down the stairs? Push the gay pupils out of the lunch queue?

PLEASE report it. Even if your children aren’t being directly impacted, constantly being worried about what you say is a horrible environment to endure.

It is complex. It just is. If it wasn’t complex there wouldn’t be a problem in the school.

OP I think there are two issues here. One is antisemitic bullying, which needs to be dealt with extremely robustly as would any racist bullying.

The other is the overall atmosphere of intolerance. The school is doing a very bad job if it is not teaching children that in a pluralistic society people will disagree with you. This is all part of the ‘British values’ that they are meant to uphold and also the critical thinking which should run through the whole curriculum.

Spot on, @Jamandchips . Plus, it is a very complex issue indeed.

You don't sound professional at all

This.

You need to report to school as this sort of behaviour is likely to be widespread and is possibly going both ways.

Whilst it is extremely complex, 'evil' acts are being carried out in the ME by Israel, hamas and hezbollah. You can be on the right side of history by condemning the genocjde and murder of innocent civilians on all sides.

It's not. It's being factual.

Genocide and ethnic cleansing have specific meanings

No wonder the kids behave like that, when presumably adults parrot the same

This is the problem. Even this thread immediately starts to touch on arguments about whether it’s a genocide and who is pardoning ethnic cleansing. Most of us aren’t able to make a properly judgement, it’s so complex and steeped in emotion. How can kids in a school be expected to navigate this when adults struggle? But one thing is for sure and that’s dividing into camps that won’t respect each other only means there will be more conflicts in future and so we need to find a way for our kids not tomorrow the over simplified divide stuff online. I know it’s going to be impossible but I wish the school could somehow shut down what’s going on. I can’t see how they could but I will email the head.