KUALA LUMPUR: Former Penang Deputy Chief Minister II Dr P. Ramasamy said the Palestinian Solidarity Week has spun out of control with serious implications.
This was after several videos had surfaced on social media of teachers and students garbed in military-like gear and brandishing a toy gun while professing their support for Palestine as well as the most recent clip which showed a school teacher setting an Israeli flag on fire.
Ramasamy said that while expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, particularly in the context of the planned genocide by the Israeli state, is important, involving school children in such expressions is a separate and concerning matter.
"Is it true that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has created a monster that he might not control in calling for Palestinian solidarity in schools throughout the country?
"Both Anwar and the education ministry are not in a position to control the events in some schools. How the events marking the solidarity week will metamorphose remains to be seen.
"Children are seen marching with toy guns as they are being prepared for war against the Jewish state with the majority of the students and teachers having a poor rudimentary understanding of the Palestinian struggle."
He also said that Palestinian solidarity should not be part of school activities and called out the prime minister to stop using and manipulating school children for his own political fortune.
"These political parties apart from their genuine concern of the Palestinians in the current attacks launched by the military forces of Israel are not naive of the domestic political considerations.
"Anwar might have miscalculated the need for the Palestinian solidarity week in schools that have the tendency to spiral out of control.
"Anwar, like it or not, bereft of Malay support is using the Palestinian suffering to drum up domestic political support among the Malays in the country."
He also added that garnering solidarity on the base of race and religion might not do justice to the emancipatory cause of the Palestinians.
"Anwar himself admitted that the Palestinian issue is a humanitarian one, nothing to do with race or religion.
"It is the plight of ordinary Palestinians who have lost their land, property and homes to the Jewish state.
"It is not that Anwar doesn't know that the Palestinian issue in the Malaysian context might be turned into a religious one by those supporters of Pas and Bersatu."
On Thursday, the Education Ministry announced that it would be holding a Palestine Solidarity Week from Oct 29 to Nov 3.
It said that it would involve all educational institutions under the ministry, including schools, vocational and matriculation colleges, as well as teacher training institutes (IPG) nationwide.
The ministry said the initiative's primary objective was to instil humane values, encompassing human rights and courtesy, among students.
It also added that it would be done by fostering attitudes of empathy and concern for the suffering of individuals, irrespective of their race, religion, or social status.