Conference Program

There has been an international response from civil society to the genocide in Gaza through a growth in activism in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Horrified by what was happening in Gaza, many people have joined the existing Palestine solidarity movements, in some cases being newly politicised and learning about the Zionist settler colonisation of Palestine for the first time. The existing solidarity movements, following September 2023, needed to respond, often with informal and non-formal education along with practical campaigning (praxis), to provide some history and context to the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. At the same time, significant barriers to this political education and action exists, not least the efforts of international Zionist and pro-Israel propaganda, and the actions of the state in seeking to shut down protests – especially in countries such as the UK, where the state is allied with Israel and complicit in its ethnic cleansing operations. In this context, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), as a Zionist institution established for the replacement of indigenous Palestinians with Jewish settlers (Lehn and Davis, 1988; Leon, 2021; Pappe, 2006), provides a useful pedagogical case study as well as effective target for political action. Drawing on activities, especially in Scotland as a devolved administration within the UK, this paper describes several instances of formal, non-formal, informal and popular education in which the JNF is used to provide a deeper political analysis of the current situation in colonised Palestine and stimulate action in solidarity with the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. The case study is situated theoretically in the academic literature on social movement learning (Foley, 1999; Hall et al, 2012), Popular Education (Freire, 1972; Moyo, 2020) lifelong education (Gelpi, 1985; Scandrett et al, 2010) and public sociology (Burawoy, 2005; Scandrett, 2020).