WaughGas

KS2 TA

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@LouHugh62530699 @DebHepps @Teacherglitter At 12ish, you sit in the sun or in a large room, probably next to a kitchen full of ovens etc, to eat. You may not feel like the hot meal or sweaty sandwich so you don't eat and have even less energy. We are asking an awful lot if we expect children to learn in these conditions.

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@LouHugh62530699 @DebHepps @Teacherglitter At school, you're one of a large group and your large group is part of an even larger one. Some who struggle to regulate on a normal day, find the heat and change in routine intolerable. Others can just about hold it together but it is taking every bit of energy they have. 2/2?

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@LouHugh62530699 @DebHepps @Teacherglitter Yes, they do, for the safety of their children. Most parents kind of see this as a priority.

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@Lucillalin3 @LissaKEvans @lowrie918 The Wilf books by Georgia Pritchett @georgiapudding, @NadiaShireen's Grimwood series, Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody by @PatrickNess5 and King Coo by @Adam_Stower all genuinely make me laugh out loud. The children I work with feel the same.

[Simon Smith @smithsmm]

Maybe creating a cultures driven by test and testing has driven children away from the sheer joy of Reading.

Also the increasing use of excerpts rather than whole books. No money in school budgets to update library stock in schools . Not enough teachers who know about books…

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@primaryteachew @CassHT This is amazing! Thanks so much for sharing.

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@LorraineWFA @implausibleblog @Rylan A name like yours?

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@DLNNDanGamer156 @implausibleblog @Rylan Do you also share a room with several strangers, have no idea if loved ones are safe or fear going outside because people have started standing outside your window shouting that you're not welcome and threatening violence?

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@MrBoothY6 So jealous! Have a waiting list of children and parents for this already!

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

“My name is Amos Goldberg. I am an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies. For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence.

And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide.

A year ago when October 7th happened, like all Israelis I was in shock. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. 1200 people - more than 800 of them civilians - were killed in one day. Children and the elderly were among those taken hostage. Communities were destroyed. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal. Like most Israelis, I know people who were killed, who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were taken hostage.

But immediately afterwards came Israel’s response and within weeks thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me some time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes. It was agonizing to confront that reality. I was reluctant to call it a genocide.

But if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide. Each genocide looks different and not all involve killing of millions or the entire group. The United Nations Genocide Convention explicitly asserts that genocide is the act of deliberately destroying a group in whole or in part. Those are the words.

But there does need to be a clear intent.

And indeed, there are clear indications of intent to destroy Gaza: Israel’s leaders - including the prime minister and the minister of defence - and many high-ranking military officers, media personalities, rabbis, as well as ordinary soldiers were very open about what they wanted to achieve. There were countless documented incitements to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble and claims that there are no innocent people living there.

A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my 58 years of living here.

Now that vision has been enacted. Tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed. Over a hundred thousand were wounded. There is a near total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and blocking of humanitarian aid. There are mass graves and reliable testimony of summary executions. Children that were shot by snipers. All the universities and almost all hospitals are gone. Almost all the population is displaced. There have been numerous bombings of civilians in so-called ‘safe zones’. Gaza does not exist anymore. It is completely destroyed. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the stated intentions of Israel’s leadership.

Lemkin - that scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ - described two phases of a genocide. The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.

And therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what a genocide looks like. We don’t teach about genocides in order to realize it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.

But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.

But reality cannot be denied.

So yes, it is a genocide.

And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”

- Statement to Led By Donkeys, December 2024
- Photo: Parliament Square, London, 8.40am, 4th December 2024

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@ErickaWaller1 New book! Yay!

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@VeryBritishTory @ZoeJardiniere It's to do with us like lots of things we're not directly involved in. We send aid to victims of war, experts to help people stuck in mines and fund water drops over wildfires. Very simply, whatever the circumstances, people are dying and that should be to do with everyone.

[Protect the Wild @ProtectTheWild_]

What we don't like about "country sports" is the infliction of pain and misery on animals, it is utterly pointless.

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@GustafsonkKelly @MrSchuReads Absolutely incredible book!

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

Former British Army interpreter @mhottak has a message from the Bibby Stockholm

[Akunjee 🖋 @mohammedakunjee]

In Rafah I saw new graveyards fill with children. It is unimaginable that worse could be yet to come | James Elder | The Guardian https://t.co/633cFeTuzK

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@MrSchuReads @MrHtheteacher @WalkerBooksUK @nadineaishaj Thank YOU!

[WaughGas @WaughGas]

@MrHtheteacher @WalkerBooksUK @MrSchuReads @nadineaishaj It's amazing. One of those books that you want to carry around with you for a while after finishing, just to have it near - unless that's just me?!