Teachers miss the point

Editorial

This weekend, a governing body of the B.C. Teacher's Federation will debate two resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

One is a relatively innocuous statement of peaceful intent (though, because it is based on past positions of this organization, it could be intuited to criticize Israel). The second, which calls on the Canadian government to press for the dismantling of Israel's security barrier, is less generous.

The BCTF could offer opinions on a range of subjects, like the inculcation of murderous anti-Semitism in Palestinian and other Arab schoolkids from kindergarten through university. Instead, they focus on the construction of the barrier that has saved innumerable innocent Israeli lives from the very suicide-murderers the Palestinian education system and the larger Arab culture of anti-Israel hatred and violence inspire.

If the BCTF were genuinely concerned with peace in the region, they would take a position on an issue that is exactly in their purview: the impact on the minds of the young of an education system that teaches not coexistence and negotiation, but hatred and violence.

Instead, the BCTF seems destined to oppose the only defence Israel has successfully employed to stop the killing of its civilians – a last-hope security barrier that, as an act of utter desperation, Israel was forced to construct to separate its citizens from those who have repeatedly blown them to pieces.

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