Last week, the president of my union, the Maine Education Association, emailed more than 10,000 educators in our state with an announcement: The MEA had voted at its annual convention to urge our pension fund to divest its holdings from “any corporation, state-owned entity, or financial product identified as being complicit in the violation of the human rights guaranteed to Palestinian civilians under international law.”
I’m a proud fourth grade teacher and union member, and this vote by the MEA elevated me to new plateaus of pride. Halfway across the world, in Gaza and the West Bank, a human rights catastrophe is unfolding like I’ve never seen in my lifetime. We can do nothing about it, or we can try to do something. The MEA, I’m proud to say, has voted for something.
The facts are bleak. The United Nations reports 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed by Israeli forces so far; of the roughly 25,000 who have been fully identified, the U.N. reports roughly 60% are women, children or older adults. The Israeli military has reduced much of Gaza to rubble. (In the occupied West Bank, conditions are better, but not by much. Right-wing Israeli settlers and police have killed over 500 Palestinians since Oct. 7, making it the deadliest period in West Bank history.)
The violence is shocking, and the world is noticing: In January, the International Court of Justice found plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and ordered Israel to take measures to prevent it. More recently, the ICJ ordered Israel to halt its invasion of Rafah, the last safe enclave for Palestinian civilians. Yet Israel has continued its bombardment and advance, with new civilian massacres daily.
As a teacher who has committed his life to nurturing and educating young people, I’ve been particularly gutted to learn of the annihilation of Gaza’s once-famous educational system, responsible for one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Since Oct. 7, over 80% of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli military, according to the U.N. This includes all 12 of Gaza’s universities. The Israeli military has killed or injured more than 10,000 students and 1,000 teachers. More than 600,000 children now have zero access to education. In a statement last month, U.N. experts declared that “it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide.’ ”
I know from years of teaching the importance of a stable learning environment – especially for students going through traumatic experiences such as homelessness, poverty, hunger and domestic instability. I can’t help but see my students in the tragic statistics coming out of Gaza: wonderful 10-year-olds who want only to be curious and have fun and spend time with their family and pets and friends, now left with no school, no homes, dead family members, the lifelong effects of malnourishment and hanging on for dear life.
What can we possibly do, across two oceans, up here in our northeast corner of America? We may feel helpless as individuals in the face of tragedy on such a scale. Fortunately, as history has shown, we are not powerless.
When people first started calling for boycotts and divestment from South Africa in the 1980s, there were doubters and skeptics who said these actions would never make a difference. But momentum built, pressure grew, and the apartheid government eventually agreed to a political, nonviolent end to apartheid. Maine was part of that pressure campaign, voting in 1987 to divest all state funds from the apartheid regime.
We need the same nonviolent pressure on Israel now, to end the assaults on Palestine, to secure release for the Israeli and Palestinian hostages, and to ensure a free Palestinian state, once and for all. Will one vote by the teachers union make a difference? Only time will tell. But if the largest union in Maine can make this demand, other unions, institutions and individuals are sure to follow.
We are trying to do something. I could not be more proud of my fellow educators for leading the charge.
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