“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
To build awareness and support for the Palestinian Right to Education Campaign (Right to Education (R2E) / “Another Casualty of Israeli War”), Common Ground hosts Palestinian student activists, teachers and professors (in-person or via internet conferencing) to discuss the impact of Israel’s colonization and occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza in denying Palestinians access to education, the need to pressure Israel to uphold access to education, and considering Israel’s ongoing violation of international law, “why Israel’s schools merit a U.S. boycott.”
To support the Right to Education (R2E) campaign, American student unions are invited to “twin” with Palestinian universities, as Manchester University in England and others have done with An-Najah University in the West Bank, and declare:
1) that the right to education is a fundamental human right basic to human freedom, as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which states that “everyone has the right to education,” and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), which recognizes that “education is both a human right in itself and an indispensable means of realizing other human rights;”
2) that the Apartheid Wall, the obstruction and attacks on Palestinian education in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the illegal Israeli occupation not only violate the human rights of individuals, but are an attack on the development of Palestinian society as a whole;
3) if peace is sought, then freedom, justice, education and development are necessary; and
4) it is the responsibility of governments, civil society organizations and ordinary people to defend the universal right to education and to demand its realization.
The Right to Education Campaign (2016) – Palestinian students from Birzeit University preparing for their second tour of the U.S.A. hosted by “National Students for Justice in Palestine” (NSJP), where they'll share their life experiences with American students and academics and discuss the effects of Israeli colonialism on the Right to Education in Palestine.