Asking pupils whether they would ‘fight back’ if they lived in Gaza or to ‘understand’ Hamas is not education but ideological instruction. Such activism harms children and poses a threat to society itself
January 21, 2026 13:53
The lesson plans uncovered by the JC this week should set alarm bells ringing well beyond the Jewish community. What NEU members shared in Bristol in the days after October 7, 2023 reveals a degree of political radicalisation among those tasked with educating Britain’s children that ought to worry the country as a whole.
The materials have little to do with teaching critical thinking. Pupils are asked whether they would “fight back” if they lived in Gaza, invited to “understand” Hamas, and steered towards judging Israel as guilty of terrorism and apartheid, while raising the spectre of genocide. Israeli hostages vanish from the narrative, while Western governments are cast as “Islamophobic”. This is not education but ideological instruction, normalising sympathy for terror and hostility not only to Israel but to Britain itself.
The NEU’s insistence that the materials have since been removed does little to address the underlying problem. This content did not emerge in a vacuum. It reflects a culture nurtured by a union leadership that has made anti-Zionism a central plank of its identity. Secretary General Daniel Kebede has attended anti-Israel protests, spoken of “globalising the intifada”, backed the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and overseen motions branding Israel an apartheid and genocidal state. Against that backdrop, it is hard to argue that teaching materials portraying Hamas violence as explicable and Israel as potentially genocidal, are a rogue aberration. They look far more like an inevitable outcome.
These revelations come as the NEU is already under scrutiny. Jewish MP Damien Egan was barred from speaking at a Bristol school because of his support for Israel, with a local union representative celebrating his exclusion. Meanwhile, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis has raised concern over Holocaust Memorial Day observance in schools since October 7, a worrying sign of how hostile the environment has become when commemorating six million murdered Jews is deemed contentious.
Until now, concerns over the NEU’s anti-Zionist politicisation have understandably focused on the exclusion and discrimination of Jewish teachers and pupils – even as it now becomes clear that the threat posed by radicalised teachers is even more serious than previously understood.
Recent news that the union has launched an inquiry by an independent KC into alleged antisemitism may therefore count as progress. It is difficult, however, to see how the union can possibly curb discrimination against Jewish teachers and children or the drift into apologetics for terror, as long as anti-Zionism remains a central organising principle. Unless the NEU abandons these ideological battles and returns to its core remit of pay, conditions and professional standards, it will continue to fuel the very anti-Jewish sentiments the KC is meant to investigate.
This is because anti-Zionism inevitably translates into discrimination against Jews, who overwhelmingly support Israel – particularly when it hardens into a core identity: a totalising worldview through which institutions, events and people themselves are judged, and from which ever more radical conclusions are drawn as the Bristol lesson plans show.
Allowing extremist indoctrination into classrooms corrodes democratic education and harms vulnerable children. The question is whether government, regulators and school leaders are prepared to act. This is not only a Jewish problem. Teachers ready to condition pupils to “understand” terror do not merely fail in their duty; such activism poses a threat to society itself.
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