First see then believe. Three 15-year-old girls, sitting behind school books in the Rotterdam library in the center, wonder whether the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip will last. They are skeptical. They especially don’t trust Israel, they say. They closely follow developments via social media.
It is talked about a lot at home because they are Muslim, just like the people in Gaza. “Then it feels more like family.” The war is a topic in class at school, but not everyone feels involved. “Some classmates not at all.”
Whether young people in the Netherlands are concerned with violence in the Middle East depends on who you ask. The latest, somewhat hopeful developments are being closely followed by one student. And ignored by the other. NRC asked young people and two teachers, whom we also spoke to just after October 7, 2023, how they, and their students, look back on sixteen months of horrific war.
Milou and Josefien (both 15), who are doing homework one table away in the Rotterdam library, understood the background of the war better after their teacher explained it during the political decision-making course. They have been following it “a little” ever since. They still know little about the upcoming armistice. “I would like to learn more about it,” says Josefien.
Another table further, Teya and Büsra (both 15) are working on an English presentation. Teya immediately perks up when she hears the question. “I am Palestinian,” she says. Her parents come from the town of Safad in northern Israel. They left when Teya was a few months old. First to Abu Dhabi and for the past five years the family has lived with three daughters in the Netherlands. They have family in Palestine, she says. Other family members have fanned out across Lebanon and Syria.
There is a lot of talk about the war at home, says Teya. “My father has been angry since the start of the war and even now he has little hope.” Her mother is slightly more optimistic. “But not much.”
At school, her classmates learned about the situation in Gaza, with the teacher often using her as an example. “I found it difficult, but I also understand it. He talks about Palestine and he has someone from Palestine in his class. I can tell how that person feels. My parents would prefer to be there. But they also know: it is unsafe there, it is safe here.”
My father has been angry since the beginning of the war and even now he has little hope
Forgetting and forgiving
History teacher Ilja van Bilsem of the Montessori College Arnhem has not yet had the students of her 3-mavo class in class since the news about a possible ceasefire. In the last lesson she talked to them about how they think the situation can be resolved. The students would not know how, but what they wanted most was that all misery would end and that everything would be “forgotten and forgiven.”
When the war started in October 2023, it did not play a role in most students’ daily lives, Van Bilsem told at the time. NRC. In the months that followed, she noticed a change, she says now. This school year they knew better what was going on in Gaza, including that there were many victims. “I saw that students became more outspoken.”
According to Van Bilsem, the students learned a lot through social media and the news, which they followed both at home and in class. The images in particular had an impact. “We saw bombings of hospitals and children lying there. That caused a lot of disgust among the students.” There was also misunderstanding about the attack on October 7. “They found it unimaginable that people could inflict such suffering on each other.”
Yet the impact remains limited, says Van Bilsem. “I don’t think my students are losing sleep over it. What they see mainly arouses indignation.”
TikTok
Citizenship teacher Jaser Husseini from ROC Nijmegen proposed in the days after October 7, 2023, to widely show all those videos that his students see on their phones, laptops and digital whiteboards in the classroom in the days after October 7, 2023. TikTok on a big screen? That took some getting used to for his automotive engineering students.
His class includes Dutch students as well as refugees from Syria and Eritrea, among others, and children with parents from Israel and Gaza. In those first days he heard from a student about his two cousins who had been killed in the Gaza Strip in an Israeli reprisal. And later there were even more students with relatives or friends who were involved in the war. He also heard from a Jewish student who had lost a niece. They all talked about it in class, angry and sad. The tension that was palpable in society was also there in his classroom. “Times ten. Because at a bus shelter people just give each other dirty looks, but in a class with twenty teenagers with hormones shooting in all directions…
Once Husseini entered the room and two students stood with their fists directly opposite each other. In tears. But they didn’t fight. They had remained standing, in a fighting stance, until he arrived. And the teacher found that encouraging. “They didn’t want to fight. They wanted to talk. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been there. Otherwise they would have reported sick.”
But his students know that Husseini, who himself fled Afghanistan from the Taliban after 9/11, is happy to talk to them. He wants to be open to the “pain and sorrow” of one person, but also of the other. And he tells them that they can only be in the same class together if they learn from each other. When they feel free to tell their story, when they learn to understand each other’s points of view and not allow themselves to be carried away by their anger.
Who are they?
So in the months after October 7, 2023, Husseini had his students show photos of their families on that big screen. “Who are we talking about? Who are they? What do they mean to you?” He noticed that students had little knowledge about each other. Palestinian students had no idea about the history of Jewish students. What it was like for them in the Netherlands after the Second World War, what the Holocaust entailed. And conversely, Jewish students knew nothing about the Nakba and what it is like to be a second or third generation refugee because your grandfather once fled to Jordan or Syria, where war subsequently broke out, while you also have family in Gaza, where you’ve never been.
And he also showed them each other’s videos on a big screen. Taken from their timeline on TikTok, which his students watch on average five hours a day. Not the bloody videos, but those of Al Jazeera and the Israeli media that go viral and appear on their phone screens all day long thanks to the algorithms. On the Palestinian videos: crying children, bombings, victims, suffering. On the Israeli side: also a lot of suffering from the hostages. And in both: a lot of military propaganda about Hamas, or about the Israeli army. They did source research with the whole class. “Who is the creator? Why was it made? What else makes that person tick?”
Students hear so much about war that it almost no longer affects them
Ajax-Maccabi
Ilja van Bilsem remembers how she initially experienced the events surrounding the Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv match. “I thought: Is this a Jew hunt? How scary.” What also struck her was how her students were able to see different sides of the story. “They stated that there was more going on. I thought that was nice of them.” For example, the incident with the Palestinian flag being pulled from a house in Amsterdam by a supporter of Maccabi Tel Aviv. “They saw that on the RTL news. They really thought that was an attempt to start a fight.”
After the incidents surrounding that football match, she discussed in class what anti-Semitism is and where the boundaries lie. “If you don’t agree with what is happening in Gaza, that is different from organizing some kind of hunt for Jews in Amsterdam. They understood that distinction well.”
Van Bilsem notices that students seem to become accustomed to wars and conflicts to a certain extent. “They hear so much about it that it hardly affects them anymore. I find that shocking.” Her students also mainly observe the tensions in the Netherlands surrounding the conflict in Gaza, without really reacting to them, she says.
Putting out fires
There was such a reaction in Husseini’s class, especially after the unrest surrounding the Ajax-Maccabi match in Amsterdam at the end of last year. Then the tension in the class returned again. The citizenship teacher worked eighty hours that week – “preparing lessons, conducting conversations” – putting out fires in the classroom.
The flames had not spread from Amsterdam but from The Hague, where in his view politics, including statements about taking away dual nationality, fueled polarization. “I have nothing to do with this, master,” Moroccan-Dutch students said to Husseini. “I was not present at the riots.” “I was delivering pizza.” “Had to study for my test.” While how many young people actually participated in those riots in Amsterdam? “But apparently Moroccan-Dutch young people throughout the country felt addressed. They are afraid of making mistakes, of being different. While in my classes there is the third generation, right.”
But last week the atmosphere was great. With a ceasefire in sight, a possible peace truce between Israel and Hamas after sixteen months of war in Gaza, a feeling of joy and relief prevails in the hallways and in the classrooms – including among fellow teachers. “One student brought sweets, something made of children’s chocolate, to say: it’s peace, it’s done.”