Development Education and Palestine: Confronting the Non-Response

Over these past nine months, like many development educators, I have been reflecting on the role of development education in relation to responding to the ‘plausible genocide’ against the people of Gaza and the wider violent oppression inflicted on the people of Palestine by the Israeli occupation (International Court of Justice, 2024: 13).  In one sense, I have been reflecting on development education as pedagogy and the effectiveness of this for educating, politicising, and mobilising the public to act.  In another sense, I have been reflecting on the development education sector as a community of practice and whether it has effectively organised and mobilised a whole of sector response to the ‘plausible genocide’. 

This article will address the above by firstly considering the pedagogical roots of development education and whether these roots remain central to practice, or if the positioning of development education has become, perhaps unintentionally, complicit in systems of harm, violence and oppression leading to an ineffective or ‘non-response’ to the ‘plausible genocide’.  Secondly, the article will consider the sector as a community of practice and ask whether it has become depoliticised from its radical foundations and reified into a system where it is ‘safe’ and more ‘comfortable’ to be collectively silent and non-responsive during periods of extreme settler-colonial violence and oppression, such as the current ‘plausible genocide’.

Development education, at its roots, is firmly located in critical pedagogy. 

“At the very least, critical pedagogy proposes that education is a form of political intervention in the world and is capable of creating the possibilities for social transformation.  Rather than viewing teaching as a technical practice, critical pedagogy, in the broadest terms, is a moral and political practice premised on the assumption that learning is not about processing received knowledge but about actually transforming it as part of a more expansive struggle for individual rights and social justice” (Giroux and Paul, 2023: 165).

The critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire (1973) is considered fundamental to the roots of development education, where ‘action and reflection, theory and practice come together in what Freire calls praxis’ (Swartz, 1998: 168), an intersection that provides the impetus for human agency that will directly intervene for change.  The assumption is that such agency is humanised, politicised, and mobilised to seek systemic transformation for social justice.  In this respect, it would be reasonable to expect that development education would have crafted pedagogical interventions that make visible settler colonialism, colonialism, neoliberalism, Zionism and systems of domination and exploitation that fuel violence, racism, ecological breakdown, and white supremacy which we see manifested in the unfolding ‘plausible genocide’ against the people of Palestine.  It would be expected that in its practice, development education is overtly political and radical with an educated and mobilised public working to take back power from the global elite through disinvesting and disengaging from structures and systems that exist to maintain the function of the current, unjust, and extremely violent global economic system.  Freire himself stated that:

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (Freire, 2000: 34).

Indeed, it has been argued that development education has become reified into a system which serves the function of the current dominant economic paradigm which maintains the interests of the global colonial and settler-colonial powers.  Although development education may function as ‘critique’ of the current system, promoting active citizenship and critical thinking which seek ‘radical reform’, it has failed to challenge the legitimacy of the system in itself, therefore leaving the system intact and uncontested.  Indeed ‘radical reform’ models are critical in their nature, aiming to ensure ‘modernity’s violence is recognised as something systemic to be addressed by re-structuring social relations at multiple levels’ (Andreotti et al., 2015: 26).  However, these models work from the assumption that the system, as it stands, can be transformed to become more equal and fairer through a level restructuring and reform.  The system itself remains dominant.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the positioning of development education practice within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  In short, whilst the SDGs seek reform, they leave intact the system of colonialism, settler colonialism, extraction, arms trade, resource depletion, growth, Zionism, and neoliberal systems of exploitation, violence, and harm.  As McCloskey put it, ‘clinging to the SDGs is unlikely to alter the neoliberal trajectory on which we are set toward more social fragmentation and political authoritarianism’ (McCloskey, 2019: 152).

Indeed, political authoritarianism is explicitly apparent as armed police officers descend upon student encampments to arrest young people for demanding Israeli boycotts, divestments, and sanctions in solidarity with the people of Palestine (Gonsalves, 2024).  It is also apparent in the push towards the criminalisation of Palestinian activism and the rise in motions across Europe and the United States (US) calling for the banning of the chant ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ (Staff, 2024; EJ Press, 2024).  This is indicative of government agendas to weaponise antisemitism to silence and censor opposition to dominant Zionist, settler-colonial, and colonial rule.  As Jewish Voice for Peace has stated:

“conflating antisemitism with opposition to the Israeli government’s policies or ideology is especially dangerous right now.  Supporters of Palestinian rights are losing their jobs, being doxed, and harassed online, being attacked physically, and facing congressional censure for trying to save lives.  But the Israeli government, U.S. government, and anti-Palestinian organisations run concerted campaigns to redefine and misstate the meaning of antisemitism, aiming to falsely conflate it with criticisms of Israel or Zionism.  They do this so the Israeli government can avoid accountability for its policies and actions that violate Palestinian human rights” (Jewish Voice for Peace, 2024).

So, how then should we as development educators respond to this persistent cycle of violence, genocide, and political authoritarianism?  How should we position our development education interventions, and where do our responsibilities lie?  It seems increasingly more obvious that positioning our work against ‘radical reform’ models of intervention, such as those premised on the SDGs, are futile.  It seems that such models serve to maintain ‘business- as-usual’, and do little to disrupt, agitate and disinvest from the dominant systems of violence, harm, and ecological destruction.  We, as development educators, must pay close attention to all the evidence in front of us.  We must admit that the system is broken, violent, unsustainable, harmful, and cannot be fixed through reform.  The system is ‘beyond reform’ (Andreotti et al., 2015), and we have a responsibility to disinvest from this broken system.  We must abandon pedagogical interventions that seek reform through ‘feel-good’ solutions which only serve to maintain the function of a violent system.  We must cultivate the courage to face the discomfort that the system, as it stands, cannot be adapted, and we must be prepared to face the uncertainty, complexity, and grief that this might bring about.  We must look to pedagogies rooted in ‘difficult knowledge’, ‘the implicated self’, ‘eco-centric education’, and ‘indigeneity education’ to ensure we are equipped with affective, relational, and critical capacities to confront our own complicity in systems of harm and to help us hospice new ways of being.

We, as development educators, must open our eyes to all of the above.  We can no longer ‘look away’ and continue to be non-responsive to this broken and violent system.  If we continue to seek ‘radical reform’ through our pedagogies then we must admit that we are complicit in normalising colonial, settler-colonial, neoliberal and Zionist dominance, and violence. 

In fact, in relation to the current ‘plausible genocide’ on the people of Palestine, we should be exposing reality ‘as it is’, rather than continuing with broader development education thematic interventions which pursue ‘wishful thinking’ or ‘quick fix actions’ rooted in reform thinking for the current system.  In true solidarity with the people of Palestine, we should be making visible that the system is ‘beyond reform’, and we should be educating on ‘colonialism’, ‘settler colonialism’, ‘Zionism’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘apartheid’, ‘orientalism’ and ‘genocide’.  We should be emphasising how Palestine is currently the epicentre of the unjust, violent global system that fuels poverty, inequality, racism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and ecological destruction.  If we fail to unearth the system ‘as it is’, then we will have failed to fulfil our ethical obligations to challenge the hegemonic violent system, and we will have ultimately sided with the oppressor i.e. the Israeli-US-European settler-colonial and genocidal axis.  In this respect, it cannot be claimed that our complicity is ‘unintentional’, as we cannot claim that ‘we did not know’, or ‘we did not understand’ the extent of this brutal and inhumane barbarism which seeks to maintain and grow its global dominance of people and their land.

Furthermore, as a wider development education sector, if we become increasingly complicit and continue to position our work within models of reform, then what does this mean for us in relation to the authenticity of our practice?  Does this mean our practice has become depoliticised from its radical roots?  As Audrey Bryan asked in 2011, has the mainstreaming of development education through government funding and policy support resulted in a ‘de-clawing’ of a sector ‘stripped of its radical underpinnings’ (Bryan, 2011 in Khoo and McCloskey, 2015: 6)?  It would be reasonable to assume that during a violent and ‘plausible genocide’, the development education sector would have responded through actively calling for a ceasefire, demanding government sanctions, demanding an end to arming Israel, supporting boycotts and divestment, and getting behind the groundswell of public solidarity by joining protests across the island of Ireland.  However, despite development education being theoretically aligned with the oppressed, the sector has failed as a ‘unified community of practice’ to harness its resources to ‘call out’ the genocide and back public engagement to push for stronger action from our government.

In short, as a sector there has been silence and a non-response to the genocide.  For example, the Irish Development Education Association (IDEA) is the national network for development education in Ireland and a leading voice for the sector.  With over 120 members, 80 of which are organisational members, it represents organisations working in primary education, post-primary education, adult and community education, youth education, and higher education (IDEA, 2023).  IDEA, however, has yet to be a leading voice for the sector in relation to harnessing a collective and radical response to the genocide. 

By January 2024, three months into the genocide against the people of Palestine, three IDEA member organisations, Comhlámh, Síolta Chroí, and the Centre for Global Education, met to discuss the non-response from IDEA and the wider sector as a whole.  Subsequently, a series of online seminars were organised, of which sixty-two individual development educators attended.  All educators were affiliated with IDEA as members.  IDEA staff also attended the seminars. There was a general consensus that the sector should be responding politically through lobbying the government, calling for a ceasefire, supporting solidarity protests, promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement (BDS, 2024), making the sector apartheid-free, deepening our understanding of Zionism, settler colonialism and Palestine, and connecting with voices from Palestine so that we can listen, learn, and act with integrity and true solidarity.  There was a call for IDEA to lead the sector in such actions as a national network and collective voice.  IDEA agreed that this was something it would consider as part of its wider strategic planning for the future, but for the foreseeable future, it would act as a focal point for members to share tools and resources which might be useful for teaching. 

Nonetheless, in relation to the above seminars, the sixty-two development educators agreed that it was important to write to the Tánaiste, Micheál Martin, to express horror at the unfolding genocide on the people of Gaza, and to urge the Irish government to send a clear message by breaking off all trade with Israel, including military research, weapons production, and the development of Ireland’s weapons industry.  The government was also urged not to attend the White House or meet the Biden administration during the St Patrick’s Day celebrations.  It was expressed that adopting a ‘business-as-usual’ approach to relations with the US government is unacceptable in the context of US complicity in Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza (Fernández, 2024).  The government was further urged to join proceedings with South Africa by supporting its case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (International Court of Justice, 2024). It was stated that by supporting South Africa, Ireland would be sending a clear message that it is firmly on the side of international law, international humanitarian law and the United Nations’ Charter.  It was added that it would also extend solidarity and support to the Palestinians suffering grievous human rights abuses, indiscriminate violence, and appalling privations in Gaza.

Since the letter was not led by IDEA as a national network, the sixty-two development educators agreed to approach their employers to request if they could sign on behalf of their organisation, and if not, then they would sign as individual freelance educators without disclosing the name of their organisation.  Of the sixty-two who signed the letter to Micheál Martin, only ten organisations were disclosed.  Here, if anywhere, highlights the need for a sectoral response led by IDEA.  Perhaps, then, more organisations would be likely to add their name to such endeavours. 

Looking at the sector as a whole then, can it be said that it has become depoliticised from its radical foundations and reified into a system where it is ‘safe’ and more ‘comfortable’ to be collectively silent and non-responsive during periods of extreme settler-colonial violence and oppression, such as the current ‘plausible genocide’?  What might lie behind the collective non-response of the sector in relation to supporting the people of Palestine?  These are questions that we should be delving into as a sector.  We must confront the abhorrent ‘ease’ at which the sector has failed to be mobilised to support the people of Palestine.  We must confront the reason as to why the sector has not been led in releasing a statement to, at the very least, call for a ceasefire.  We must confront why the sector, as a whole, is not getting behind public protests and showing up on the streets of Ireland in solidarity with Palestine.  If, as development educators, we are not vocalising our abhorrence at the genocidal assault on the people of Palestine, and if we are not debating the structures and systems upholding the occupation and system of apartheid, then we must openly face up to the fact that we are complicit in this system of violent oppression.  It has never been clearer that there is a link between Euro-American power, the Zionist project, and the settler-colonial imperialist violence which is infused with racism, Islamophobia, and the ultimate dehumanisation of the people of Palestine.  As a development education sector and community of practice, we should be ‘loud’ in calling this out and taking direct action for change.

References

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BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement) (2024) available: https://bdsmovement.net/ (accessed 8 July 2024).

EJ Press (2024) ‘Motion calling to ban from the river to the sea slogan adopted in Dutch parliament’, European Jewish Congress, 8 February, available: https://eurojewcong.org/news/communities-news/the-netherlands/motion-calling-to-ban-from-the-river-to-the-sea-slogan-adopted-in-dutch-parliament/ (accessed 10 July 2024).

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Freire, P (2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York:  Continuum.

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Jewish Voice for Peace (2024) ‘On Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and Dangerous Conflations’, available: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2023/11/09/antisemitism-dangerous/  (accessed 3 July 2024).

Khoo, S and McCloskey, S (2015) ‘Reflections and Projections: Policy and Practice Ten Years On’, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, Vol. 20, Spring, pp. 1-17.

McCloskey, S (2019) ‘The Sustainable Development Goals, Neoliberalism and NGOs: It’s Time to Pursue a Transformative Path to Social Justice’, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, Vol. 29, Autumn, pp. 152 -159.

Staff, T (2024) US House resolution condemns chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, Times of Israel, 17 April, available: https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-house-resolution-condemns-chant-from-the-river-to-the-sea-palestine-will-be-free/#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20House%20of,effort%20led%20by%20Democratic%20Reps (accessed 10 July 2024).

Swartz, P (1998) ‘Paulo Freire in the Composition Classroom’, Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bi-sexual Identity, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 167-172.

Caroline Murphy is currently working as the CEO for Comhlámh.  She has over fifteen years’ experience of working for organisations across the Irish international development sector with key experience in development education, strategy, policy, and safeguarding. Caroline has contributed a range of research and evaluation consultancies to the wider sector, focusing on development education, public engagement, safeguarding and NGO messages and frames.