I went to Jericho, Ramallah and Bethlehem in 2019.
Nick Bilbrough, a friend in my former home town in England, ran a Palestinian online educational charity, the Handsup Project, and I was supporting him at the time. We had this plan to visit Gaza to put on a series of short playlets that the children there had written, but then most unusually the Occupiers gave them and their local teachers permission to travel to Bethlehem to perform. Apart from one teacher, it was the first time that any of them had been outside Gaza. You will see some of them in this video (33 minutes).
I have no idea how many of them have survived. Here is the Handsup web site, but I noticed that it has not been updated for six months so I feared the worst:
https://www.handsupproject.org/
So I wrote to Handsup in the UK and got a long reply the same day from Rajaa, their Palestinian manager. They are still working in Gaza in tents amongst the rubble!
Extract follows.
It’s been a very very bloody brutal indescribable year on Gaza. Every one of us the Hands Up project is severely traumatized by the unfolding genocide in Gaza. However, we never stopped working to support our teachers and students there especially when there is absolutely no access to Education for the second year in a row.
For over six months now, we’ve been supporting a team of 5 brilliant teachers running the Stories Alive project in the north and south of Gaza. Teachers have been using the Stories Alive book written by Nick Bilbrough and published by the British Council.
These sessions are held face to face in the teachers’ tents or in what’s left of their destroyed houses.
We also have been supporting two successful drama clubs in the north of Gaza, Jabalia and in Deir Al Balah. The one in Jabalia is called ‘The better together’ drama club led by Hanaa Mansour and the one in Deir Al Balah is called ‘We care’ drama club led by Sahar Salha.
Both of the ‘Stories alive’ and ‘Drama clubs’ are conducting masses and masses of educational activities focusing on grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, and speaking activities.
Students are learning English by doing so much drama activities, performing plays and also by retelling stories and writing their own versions of the stories.
Here are some examples of the great work produced by students over the past 6 months.
Hanaa’s students’ play (It will be over soon).
What students think about the Stories Alive British Council material.
Teach, play , love in Stories Alive sessions.
Ahmad retelling the story of the Lion and the Mouse.
And last but not least the iconic play We can, the 2024 version peeformed by Bassim (a Hands Up project student who’s 19 now). The first version of this play was performed by Bassim when he was only 12.
Our work is different now as you can imagine. We are no longer able to arrange link ups with Gaza as we used to do before. But we are so proud to carry on doing our work despite the challenges and the unbearable situation everyone back in Gaza are living though. On the other hand, an underway project of arranging up masses of link ups in the West Bank of which will be starting as soon as it’s approved by UNRWA chief field education programme there.
We also have our exhibition of the ‘Moon tell me truth’ poem books is currently touring the UK (about to go to Peterborough museum). These poems were written in May last year by students in Palestine, mostly from Gaza.
That’s not all, of course. There are so much more things to mention regarding our work in Gaza. However, I won’t make this email longer than that.
Getting Out
That is the title of my next piece, to be posted Wednesday 30 October.
Opening lines:
With the situation in the West getting worse and worse for free thinkers, more and more are looking to get out. I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on alternative countries to resettle, but I can enlarge on the little I know, mainly through personal experience. At the outset I feel I must stress, you aren’t too poor and you aren’t too old to find a paradise out there in the Jungle that is just waiting for you. So do it now, before it’s too late!
Auschwitz: six facts, and seven questions
“A masterpiece”
3,779 views, 16 restacks
https://waltking.substack.com/p/auschwitz-six-facts-and-seven-questions
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