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Petitioner submission of 5 October 2021

PE1879/I: Provide an accessible and professionally developed learning and teaching resource on Israel and Palestine

We wish to respond to the 2 October 2021 submission of Scottish Friends of Israel (SFI).

Throughout the SFI submission there is no reference to Palestinian rights. In our view, this indicates that the organisation does not recognise Palestinian rights. Those who support those rights are described as anti-Israel, with the resource regarded as “stirring up anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hostility”. This feature of SFI’s submission should be noted particularly in relation to the contribution from the sole academic who commented on “the psychology of the principal proponents of the proposed resource.”  In our view, any psychological profile will, of course, be skewed by the adoption of SFI’s approach and language used.

The offending homework in North Lanarkshire was not an isolated incident. One year later, in 2016, it appeared in at least one Glasgow school following a complaint by a local Councillor. We believe that this is a clear indication of the availability of a flawed resource leading to the use of the same inappropriate homework.

SFI’s attempt at what we consider to be obfuscation has to be challenged. In our view, much of the submission, it has to said, is irrelevant. However, that the resource was “quality assured” and then “taken off the public area of GLOW without explanation” does, in our view, withstand scrutiny. Documentary evidence is available. Likewise, for “The body issuing the alleged ‘quality assurance’”. There is nothing ‘alleged’ involved.

And, it cannot be repeated too often, we believe that the issuing of the letter from which the above extracts were taken was not the act of an errant individual but would have been the product of team effort before the letter, giving the resource its stamp of approval, was issued.

During the consultation on the resource, every effort was made to represent different voices and opinions using authoritative sources. Approaches were made by the project leaders to various Jewish community groups with an offer for them to join the writing team. These offers were either declined or met with silence.

Of the five Stakeholder groups who participated in the consultation, four and a bit approved of the resource. “The bit”, was a member of the Stakeholders from Israeli/Jewish community in Scotland, the same group of which SFI was a member. One West of Scotland Jewish educational body, who did not take part in the consultation process, scrutinised the resource and gave it approval.

We, Scottish Friends of Palestine, utterly reject the SFI’s condemnation of the resource as “stirring up anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hostility in the minds of Scottish schoolchildren”. The Collation of Consultation Responses indicates approval of the resource by those four of the five stakeholders who took the time and care to review and provide helpful comment during the consultation period. This, we believe, clearly refutes SFI’s position.

Finally, what SFI’s submission does underline is the need for a bias free approach to the resource, hence the emphasis in the petition on re-establishing the ‘strategic review group’ to oversee any revision of the resource. We believe that such a body would void all efforts at political lobbying by those keen to destroy or influence the content of the resource.