London, March 13, IRNA ,Britain’s biggest teachers’ union is being urged to promote a Palestinian view of the “unresolved injustice” of the Middle East conflict.
At its annual Easter conference on March 25, delegates from the National Union of Teachers (NUT) are being asked in a resolution to take a pro-Palestinian stance against Israel’s 60-year occupation.
“This unresolved injustice entrenches many opponents of the world’s most militarized states in a conviction that real peace, democracy and equality are not what those powers aspire to in these more recent conflicts,” the resolution says.
It congratulates NUT members who have already established twinning arrangements with schools in Palestine and encourage more to do like wise.
Delegates are urged to also agree “to purchase and circulate the most recent education pack produced by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which promotes an understanding of the history of this most protracted dispute in the Middle East.”
The motion comes after Britain’s largest lecturers’ union, the Universities and Colleges Union, voting last May to introduce an academic boycott of Israeli regime, but which was later overturn after intervention from the British government.
The teachers’ resolution also goes on to urge members to stop promoting in schools career opportunities in the armed forces and to support any teachers who face “victimization or other professional difficulties” in implementing the policy.
“Military intervention in schools customarily presents a partisan view of war, largely by ignoring its fatal realities in favour of promises of travel, skill training and further or higher education course sponsorship otherwise often unavailable,” it said.
The motion suggested that schools were being exploited for recruitment by the armed forces because “unpopular recent wars have contributed to a decline in volunteers.”