By Asma Mustafa, Nidal Al Haj Sleiman, Reem Ben Giaber and Jumana Al-Waeli (April 2025)

On March 28 2025, the SWANA Forum for Social Justice hosted Ms. Asma Mustafa who spoke about her lived experiences as a teacher in Gaza over the last 18 months. Asma, who is a proud English Language teacher with multiple professional recognitions, has recently resorted to using her voice and words to share with the world the struggles of Palestinian children and teachers. Asma has been regularly writing Arabic blogs, speaking to international newspapers and news channels, and giving interviews to international journalists to tell the stories of students, parents, fellow teachers as well as her own story. Asma’s stories and blogs have documented the horrific struggles of displacement, Israeli attacks on Palestinian families and children, and the day-to-day impact of loss, fear and destruction of homes and schools. 

Listening to the extraordinary courage and perseverance of Asma Mustafa was deeply moving. What she described was education seen as an assertion of rooted life and continuity – what it means to be human. We need to feel connected to others and the land around us, we need to be able to communicate based on a shared understanding of lived experience and we need to be able to co-create ideas, materials and futures that assert our right to life, dignity and flourishing.

When Asma looks into the camera and declares that she carries a mission, a message for her people, we all listen.  She tells us, and any despairing teacher colleagues in Gaza, that in the absence of all conventional educational resources, the teachers must be the classroom, the textbook, the curriculum, the pen, the paper and even the pedagogical process itself. We, attending the Webinar, are quiet under the weight of this truth. Gaza teaches us every day and it teaches us about teaching and learning itself. Education has lost its way – it has become about information and not knowledge. It has become about delivery and consumption, not reconstruction and co-creation. We must heed Asma’s call to embody education within our lived experience now, not as preparation for life later on. In Gaza, life later on is not a given but education now is.

And Asma’s embodiment of education entails holding her students, telling them stories, singing with them, playing games and drawing with them so they remember what it means to be alive, joyful, creative and hopeful, what it means to be human.

While our conversation with Asma reconstructs all the above for us, below are potential helpful activities that we shared at our Webinar and that we can get on with in the meantime. One attendee already responded to the first suggestion and put together a Resource Handbook with links to various resources on her drive (compressed and collated) so that Asma and other teachers do not have to waste time, battery charge, data and effort to scour the internet for resources to use with primary school students in Gaza. We all thank Farah for her work.

All that is left to say, is keep learning, seeing, thinking, talking and collective acting for/with Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Palestinians everywhere.

Things we can do:

• Help Asma by doing some internet research for short videos, stories, drama games, art activities for Asma’s students. She could share this list with others so she and others don’t have to waste precious charge and data on internet research. Volunteer to be the person to collate a list to send to Asma’s email or Google Drive. 
• Donate to UNRWA, Save the Children UK, donate to BRISMES and FOBZU.
• Buy and donate eSIMS
• Join a mentorship scheme like this one where you can help university applicants through the complicated forms: 

https://www.muslimresearchersnetwork.org/mentorship.html or https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hiba-b-ibrahim-%F0%9F%8D%89-%F0%9F%87%B5%F0%9F%87%B8-a1736859_we-need-more-volunteer-mentors-to-work-with-activity-7308942379271471105-TMZ5?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAABx48WEBLjdhmemj8dm_U2UIc9BeWVpBrW4&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

• Connect with others and organise yourselves in solidarity for Palestinians. Join your local Pro-Palestine groups, your BDS groups –. Grief for this world is made lighter in community and collective action.
• Create institutional partnerships and links with Colleges and Universities in Gaza. Work in your universities and institutions to set these up. Here is a helpful guide developed by FOBZU and centres in Bristol and Cambridge University in the UK: https://fobzu.org/blog/2025/03/05/partnerships-with-palestine-guide-launch-hosted-at-bristol-university/