It has come to our attention that the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation – Ireland’s Largest Teachers’ Trade Union (INTO) and the TUI, Teachers Union of Ireland, Teacher’s Union, Representing Teachers & Lecturers, Education (TUI) are endorsing a series of events in schools across Ireland.
Organised by Teachers for Palestine and titled ‘Let’s Talk About Palestine’, the campaign is scheduled to take place within schools across Ireland from 29th April – 10th May.
The campaign is being promoted on Teachers for Palestine’s social media accounts including their Twitter/X account, which has been active since November 2023. A number of other organisations/groups are tagged and thanked in the X post, including Ireland’s largest public service trade union FORSA, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), Irish Sport for Palestine, Irish Artists for Palestine and Irish Psychologists for Palestine.
The series of suggested actions include requests to ‘Fly the Palestinian flag in your classroom or outside your school’ and a ‘Petition to make your school an Apartheid Free Zone’.
Please take action!
Call To Action
- Please contact school principals. If you are a parent with children in Irish schools, or if you know of parents with children in Irish schools, please contact, and ask your family and friends to contact, their children’s school principal, in-person, by phone or by sending them an email. We have enclosed a template email which you may use, although it is always better to use your own words.
- Please also contact Norma Foley, Minister for Education and your local TDs for which we have attached a separate, template email. Again, it is always better to use your own words.
- Email address for Norma Foley TD is norma.foley@oireachtas.ie
- You can easily search and contact your local TDs at contactyourtd.ie.
Suggested email to school principals
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Suggested email to Norma Foley, Minister for Education & your local TDs
A Chara, Norma Foley TD, Minister for Education/local TDs
It has come to my attention that there is a campaign called ‘Lets Talk About Palestine’ organised by Teachers for Palestine and endorsed by INTO, the TUI and other groups/NGOs on social media platforms, and aimed at children in all Irish schools.
The campaign is scheduled to run from 29th April – 10th May, 2024.
[As the parent of a child/children in an Irish school] I am writing to voice my strong objection to this campaign which, in my opinion, is discriminatory and divisive in nature, and which aims to impose a wholly one-sided political narrative on the tragic, ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Our children’s teachers have a moral responsibility to ensure that children are not taught an unbalanced and inaccurate narrative, or selectively told of events surrounding the tragedy of the current Israel-Hamas war, or to cause Jewish and/or Israeli children attending our schools to be unfairly targeted.
A teacher’s work is underpinned by the ethical values of Respect, Care, Integrity and Trust, and which underpin the ‘Code of Professional Conduct for Teachers’.
I am therefore asking you to intervene as a matter of urgency, and to put a stop to this campaign, now.
I look forward to hearing from you shortly,
Kind regards,
……..
Thank you for your attention in this matter. It is important that we push back against this rising tide.
