On the afternoon of November 26, I received a call from the principal of the school where I teach informing me that three former students had been shot dead in the United States.
Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdulhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, some of the most brilliant students I have known and taught, were shot and nearly killed. I choked on my tears as I called another teacher to let him know.
I started teaching English at Ramallah Friends School in the central occupied West Bank in October 2019. The following year, I started teaching Hisham and Kinnan and met Tahseen. I got to know them as they prepared to cross the finish line of their high school journey, and in one year, they managed to leave an incredible mark on me as a teacher.
Their diligence and commitment to excelling in their studies motivated me to be the best teacher I could be.
Ramallah Friends School is the only International Baccalaureate and Quaker school in the occupied West Bank. Our student body is diverse and includes students from the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, but also dual nationals from Western countries.
All students come from families who work tirelessly to provide their children with the best possible education that Palestine can afford. Our students follow a rigorous curriculum, to make them more eligible to apply to universities abroad.
Yet living in the precariousness of military occupation means that my students regularly miss classes due to general strikes that take place after Israeli soldiers kill children and adults – sometimes just meters from the school or their home.
Every Palestinian student, whether attending a private or public school, has a classmate who has been arrested, detained, tortured or killed by the Israeli army.
Palestinian children are constantly confronted with their mortality and must be extremely aware of their surroundings every time they pass through a checkpoint or travel to another city.
My students – and Palestinian students in general – who apply to go to university abroad are looking for better and, ultimately, more secure opportunities.
Kinnan, Hisham and Tahseen all applied to many top universities. I vividly remember the moment Kinnan and Hisham shared with me that they had been admitted to Haverford and Brown. It was the first time I finally saw all their stress and anxiety disappear.
They crossed the most important finish line of their high school careers. I was incredibly proud, but not surprised. I witnessed their eloquent and introspective thoughts in class. I saw them struggle with the course material and excel. I knew what they were capable of accomplishing even if they couldn’t immediately see it themselves. I was their teacher and they were my students, and that was all that mattered to me at that moment.
When Kinnan, Hisham and Tahseen graduated, I realized that it would probably be the last time I saw them, as they were leaving for the United States. I never imagined that the next time I would hear about them it would be that they had been victims of a shooting.
I think I can speak for my entire school community when I say that we were all in a state of shock and disbelief. Western media and government officials cannot separate the attempted murder of our students from the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the assault on the Jenin refugee camp, land theft, serial settler violence and of the colonization of Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank – all perpetrated by Israel.
My students have been slaughtered because their language and identity are seen as a threat by the mind of the white colonizer.
I was debating whether or not I should say something about the shooting. I made a decision when I saw Hisham’s heartfelt and principled statement read at a candlelight vigil at Brown University.
Although I wasn’t surprised by his wisdom, I was still amazed. He put things into perspective for me and many others with his final sentence: “your mind should not be focused on me (him) as an individual, but rather as a proud member of a people oppressed. »
The cruelty of this tragedy left me in a state of unease. How do I deal with my students? How can we motivate them and give them hope? How can we ensure their safety? The reality of being a teacher in Palestine means that these questions haunt the mind. This is incomparable to what Palestinian parents feel on a daily basis.
The truth is that after November 26, I discovered that my students had always given me more hope than they did them, and that no Palestinian was safe anywhere in the world.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.