YOU can count on Malaysia to be with the Palestinians in their struggle to establish a homeland. It has stood by them since 1957. This time around, there is something extra.
The Education Ministry has declared a Palestine Solidarity Week starting today. But something went amiss before it could even start. A disturbing video of teachers and schoolchildren carrying toy weapons in a school event went viral, prompting calls for caution.
The intent of the ministry calling on educational institutions to observe the Palestine Solidarity Week is as noble as to make students understand the humanitarian issues involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Some schools and teachers have surely taken the wrong pedantic path. Weapons, toys though they may be, don't edify humanity. They drill them into violence and indiscipline. It is likely that these very same teachers may have seen videos of Israelis teaching schoolchildren in the country, some as young as 9, to hate Arabs.
But to replicate the Israeli hate is to invite these young, pliable Malaysian minds to take the path of hate and violence. Weapons are only necessary when we are under attack and that, too, for combatants.
Toy weapons and burning of flags are dangerous teaching aids. The damage may not be seen now, but it takes root the moment weapons are celebrated. Hate is always on slow brew to terrible violence. The teachers who weaponised the school assemblies may not have realised the future dangers they were grooming in the young minds. But they should have known better.
Here is a far better way to mark the Palestine Solidarity Week. A pedagogical warning, though. Let facts speak for itself. Emotions will nudge us into grey areas, but never put them above facts.
The young minds, even those in universities, do not really understand the reasons for the Israel-Palestine conflict. Neither do they know the reasons for the more than 100 years of inaction of the international community. These must be shaped into learnable bits.
Begin with the reasons behind the conflict. But first a hurdle to be dismissed. Contrary to popular belief, the conflict isn't a complex issue. It can be reduced to two words: settler colonialism. Like the colonialism of old, the new colonialism of the Zionists and later those of the Israelis, is about occupation of the homeland of the Palestinians.
The Israelis of today, of course, deny that they are settler colonists, but the writings of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, and memos exchanged between then British foreign minister Balfour and Cecil Rhodes make this clear.
Want a better teaching aid than weapons? The Balfour Declaration of 1917 is a document of contrived Israeli destiny. The battle to free Palestine from the clutches of the Israelis began in a catastrophic way in 1948, just before Britain and United States, with good help from Europe, created Israel in May.
This brings us to our second pedagogical interest, the reasons for the international community's inaction. The only institution that could have ended the conflict is the United Nations, but it is being crippled by the five most powerful nations in the world in the UN Security Council: the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.
They must be told, weapons never brought peace anywhere, let alone Palestine. Teachers don't toy with weapons. Those who do must stay out of schools.