Thursday 🇵🇸 Reflections

Reflections on Day 279 of genocide

What happened on October 7th, 2023?

This is a central historical question that we as history teachers are not allowed to ask. Last summer, my Curriculum and Instruction professor made a comment that sticks with me to this day. She reminded us that as history teachers, we have the power to shape where we put the “question marks” in history. Although we strive to create inquiry activities that allow students to come to their own conclusions, we have the right and responsibility of shaping the intellectual playground that students can explore.

There is room in the World History curricular cannon to talk about violent resistance to colonialism. Very few (at least in San Francisco) people will push back against a lesson on the Algerians kicking out the French settler colonial project, the Vietnamese kicking out the French and then the United States, Ethiopia resisting the Italians, the Sepoy Rebellion or even the Lakota defeating General Custer. In general, decolonial movements are celebrated in the World History cannon.

However, there is a set narrative about October 7th. We are not allowed to question it. A uncritical narrative about evil, terrorist brown people attacking pillaging and raping innocent Israeli civilians which lacks clear evidence and is laced with racism and denial. Any deviation from this official narrative is (as I have noted previously) grounds for loosing your job. Yet, as the genocide in Gaza drags on, I feel a moral responsibility to help my students investigate this question.

I would like to be able to teach “Our Narrative… Operation Al Aqsa Flood” as a historical document to my students. It is an 18 page white paper released by the Hamas media office outlining the rationale and objectives for the October 7th operation, and support for independent and transparent investigations into what happened on October 7th. I would like to be able to have students use their corroboration, critical thinking and close reading skills to do an inquiry activity comparing the Hamas narrative of October 7th to articles in the New York Times (the paper of record in the United States), United Nations Reports, and sources from Israeli newspapers. Such inquiries could be based around accusations of sexual violence, the Hannibal directive, Israel blocking investigations, or a comparative inquiry between what happened at the occupation fence in the 2018 Great March of Return and 2023’s Operation Al Aqsa Flood.

However, as someone employed by the colonizing power it is clear that the historical thinking skills are not what is most valued by our education system. If I want to keep my job, I must be willing to teach history that does not disrupt the narratives of this empire in the present until I have more job protections and/or a union that is actually willing to put its weight (more than its words) behind teaching for justice.

What I’m Reading/Listening to This Week: