Last week, IDEA hosted the second webinar from our 2025 series, ‘Exploring Contemporary Crises and Issues through Global Citizenship Education, ' focusing on Palestine.   

If you missed out, you can watch the full video below! 

The webinar had voices from Northern Ireland, Palestine, academic researchers and teachers offering powerful perspectives and practical supports for educators. 

We examined our responsibilities as educators when we discuss conflict-related violence and displacement? What approaches can we use to do this? 

A native of Belfast, Brendan Ciarán Browne, PhD, FTCD is Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution, and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin opened the webinar with a passionate input. He has spent much of his professional career working in Palestine or focused on the Palestinian struggle, anticolonialism and resistance. 

“As educators we must be continuously educating ourselves, understanding and be truly committed. The cause of liberation of Palestine required you to be up-to-date not only on the foundational work... but the swathes of materials being produced by our colleagues in Palestine, [who] are being erased off the face of the earth. You have to be committed to do the educational work yourself.” 

“You have to unashamedly declare your position as being against anti-Palestinian racism. As being for Palestinian determination and resistance. If you can’t make that commitment, then you don’t have a right to occupy the space to talk about Palestine. Many people have vulnerabilities that undermine their ability to do this. If you have those vulnerabilities, we are sympathetic but if that is the case- vacate the space.”  

“Let’s own our language. Let’s be bold and determined to call Zionism what it is.” 

Watch his full input below!

Bana Abu Zuluf  is a Palestinian educator and interdisciplinary PhD researcher in International Law in the School of Law and Criminology in Maynooth, Ireland. Bana focused on demystifying Palestine 

“I know people are keeping an eye on what’s happening in Gaza but they are not understanding it in the broader light of Zionism and its project in Palestine. There is a danger tendency to complicate what’s going on in Palestine. In fact, it’s quite simple.”  

“Looking at settler colonialism and the displacement of Palestinians... it’s very important not to focus on certain events but to focus on it as a structure. I think educators need to focus on it has a structure. And when speaking about genocide they need to relate to it as a part of colonial erasure.” 

“I want educators to go deeper and look into Zionism as a settler colonial ideology. The issue here is that the people see Israel, Zionism, and settler colonialism. They don’t really merge those together.” 

Check out her full input below!

Andrew Phelan, co-founder of Teachers for Palestine offered more practical insights from his perspective as a Post-Primary Physical Education teacher, currently teaching in a school in Dublin and how Teachers for Palestine began. He gave a fast paced tour of all the ways which teachers can educate about Palestine. 

“We noticed... you can’t do that fundraiser here, or you can’t teach about that history in your class. You can’t bring in a speaker from Palestine here. You can’t do those things. Because it’s too political is what Principals were saying. This is not coming from the Department of Education.... because some Principals were doing it and doing a fantastic job.” 

“We started to look at all the different subjects, and it’s very important to see there’s lots of different avenues in our curriculum. There are loads and loads of opportunities and there’s actually no excuse for us not to teach it.”  

Andrew took participants through the Let’s Talk About Palestine resources for educators LetsTalkAboutPalestine “You don’t have to go to your Principal. You can just teach your subject using the curriculum and using Palestine as your lense. There’s really no excuse there.”   

You can watch Andrew's input in a video below!

Finally, Aline Batarseh, Executive Director of Visualizing Palestine. Aline is a Palestine from occupied Jerusalem, based in the US. Aline talked about Visualizing Palestine and their approach using data and research to visually communicate Palestinian experiences and provoke a change of traditional narratives. She also spoke about how educators can practically use the resources when you are educating about Palestine. 

“We have to address what’s happening in Palestine as a whole rather than as a fragment. This is a challenge when we talk about Gaza. The Israeli genocide in Gaza is not an isolated incident and it is our responsibility to place it in historical context. During the Nakba commemoration in 2024 we produced this visual to really show this ongoing Nakba, this ongoing expulsion, ongoing destruction of homes of villages of people’s lives, ongoing massacres, ongoing colinisation and Zionist idealogy.  

See Aline's input below!