In Gaza classrooms, every sentence a teacher speaks may soon pass through a machine. The Palestinian Information Center reported on October 10, citing a US news agency, that Gaza Children Village, a US-based charity working in the Strip, plans to record classroom conversations and use artificial intelligence to flag words it considers “inciting,” “hateful” or “antisemitic.”
How the Gaza Classrooms Monitoring Would Work
According to the center, founder Daoud Hassan, a Palestinian-American neurosurgeon, presented the plan at an online seminar in September. When the system flags a phrase, he receives an alert and contacts the teacher. Recordings would be kept for 72 hours and the charity intends to deploy the system in dozens of classrooms, though no start date has been given and it is unclear whether teachers and parents were told in advance.
The charity’s “Academies of Hope” schools largely follow the Palestinian curriculum, but Hassan has said material he views as glorifying violence or encouraging anti-Israel attitudes has been removed. The group says most of its money comes from individual donors, including American Jews, and that it works with aid groups in North America, Europe and Israel.
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Policing the Palestinian Narrative
The center said board member Bishara Bahbah stated the plan was never brought to the board and that silencing the free exchange of ideas in class is unacceptable. An official at a partner aid group called it a “Pandora’s box,” while Inès Abdel Razek of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy described efforts to control young minds as deeply worrying.
All this comes as three years of Israeli war have destroyed schools across Gaza and left hundreds of thousands of children out of regular education. By the charity’s own account, many of its pupils have lost parents or relatives, martyred in the war. Critics say the priority should be getting children into classrooms, not policing what their teachers say.
Sources: Palestinian Information Center
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