LETTERS: We urge the Education Ministry to maintain the Palestine Solidarity Week programme taking place this week.
This is in reaction to calls for it to be scrapped.
This arose from videos showing pupils in a school play-acting with mock rifles, as if they were militant fighters, and reportedly this was authorised by the school.
We can understand why some parents were alarmed.
However, several points need to be highlighted. The incident occurred at only one school and nothing similar happened at any other school.
The incident occurred before the solidarity week started and had nothing to do with it.
More than anything else, it was an isolated incident reflecting overzealousness on the part of adults in charge.
Plus, the ministry has taken disciplinary measures against the school management.
We maintain that the solidarity week has a good and noble intention of creating awareness among the young on the plight of Palestinians, who, over the past 75 years, have suffered grave injustice at the hands of the Zionists, especially now with the situation in Gaza.
It is an issue that transcends ethnicity, religion and nationality.
We urge the ministry to maintain the solidarity week and, if deemed more appropriate, to limit it to secondary schools.
PROFESSOR NAZARI ISMAIL
Director, Hashim Sani Centre For Palestine Studies; Universiti Malaya, 18 NGOs and civil society organisations
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times