They Tried to Teach About Palestine. They Paid a Huge Price.
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Society
/ March 16, 2026
They Tried to Teach About Palestine. They Paid a Huge Price.
In California, talking to your students about Gaza can have severe consequences.
Mara Marques Cavallaro
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Pro-Palestinian high school students demonstrate in front of the White House on May 24, 2024.
(Celal Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images)
In early 2024—after the death toll in Gaza reached more than 25,000 and school was suspended, after Israel bombed Palestinian children sheltering in classrooms, and after high schoolers in the United States began walking out of them in protest, a ninth grader in California asked her teachers if she could share a poem with the class.
Isa (a pseudonym) had written the verse for an Ethnic Studies project on apartheid. It was inspired, she explained, by the videos from Gaza she scrolled through constantly on TikTok. Videos of mothers carrying their children, with “a lot of, like, fire, a lot of dead bodies,” buildings reduced to rubble, and bagged corpses in mass graves. Videos that haunted her but that had never come up in the classroom, that seemed to be both everywhere and nowhere at once. She wrote:
PALESTINE
It’s always right before I fall asleep
That I’ll keep thinking about humanity
While I lay in the warmth of my bed
I wonder how it feels to know that at any second, you could just be dead
I wonder how I would handle it if I were in their place[…]
What if the blood in my veins would be the Palestinian one?
I would know what it feels like to face the end of a gun
I would sit in the ruin of a place once called home
and pray to God for them to leave us alone.
I would scream and cry for one peaceful day
in which I won’t watch another child be put in a grave[…]
It’s right before I fall asleep
I wonder what would happen to my family.
Isa recited her work proudly, she told me, eager to “finally express [herself],” and make her peers “aware of what was happening.” But when she did, her teachers warned her. If she were to share her writing more widely, they wouldn’t be able to protect her. They themselves, she remembered, were “not allowed to talk about [Palestine]” and “couldn’t help her talk about it.”
When adults “hear the name [Palestine], it’s like they need to shut it down,” she said. “They always think [since] we’re kids we don’t know what we’re talking [about], and they’re always telling us we need to get educated. Well, how are we going to get educated? Nobody’s teaching this to us, nobody’s talking about it. We’re trying to figure this out on our own.”
Isa’s instinct—that Palestine was uniquely off-limits—was a good one. And her teachers were right to …
This affects the entire country.
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They Tried to Teach About Palestine. They Paid a Huge Price.
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Current Issue
Society
/ March 16, 2026
They Tried to Teach About Palestine. They Paid a Huge Price.
In California, talking to your students about Gaza can have severe consequences.
Mara Marques Cavallaro
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
Pro-Palestinian high school students demonstrate in front of the White House on May 24, 2024.
(Celal Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images)
In early 2024—after the death toll in Gaza reached more than 25,000 and school was suspended, after Israel bombed Palestinian children sheltering in classrooms, and after high schoolers in the United States began walking out of them in protest, a ninth grader in California asked her teachers if she could share a poem with the class.
Isa (a pseudonym) had written the verse for an Ethnic Studies project on apartheid. It was inspired, she explained, by the videos from Gaza she scrolled through constantly on TikTok. Videos of mothers carrying their children, with “a lot of, like, fire, a lot of dead bodies,” buildings reduced to rubble, and bagged corpses in mass graves. Videos that haunted her but that had never come up in the classroom, that seemed to be both everywhere and nowhere at once. She wrote:
PALESTINE
It’s always right before I fall asleep
That I’ll keep thinking about humanity
While I lay in the warmth of my bed
I wonder how it feels to know that at any second, you could just be dead
I wonder how I would handle it if I were in their place[…]
What if the blood in my veins would be the Palestinian one?
I would know what it feels like to face the end of a gun
I would sit in the ruin of a place once called home
and pray to God for them to leave us alone.
I would scream and cry for one peaceful day
in which I won’t watch another child be put in a grave[…]
It’s right before I fall asleep
I wonder what would happen to my family.
Isa recited her work proudly, she told me, eager to “finally express [herself],” and make her peers “aware of what was happening.” But when she did, her teachers warned her. If she were to share her writing more widely, they wouldn’t be able to protect her. They themselves, she remembered, were “not allowed to talk about [Palestine]” and “couldn’t help her talk about it.”
When adults “hear the name [Palestine], it’s like they need to shut it down,” she said. “They always think [since] we’re kids we don’t know what we’re talking [about], and they’re always telling us we need to get educated. Well, how are we going to get educated? Nobody’s teaching this to us, nobody’s talking about it. We’re trying to figure this out on our own.”
Isa’s instinct—that Palestine was uniquely off-limits—was a good one. And her teachers were right to …
They Tried to Teach About Palestine. They Paid a Huge Price.
This affects the entire country.
Log In
Email *
Password *
Remember Me
Forgot Your Password?
Log In
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They Tried to Teach About Palestine. They Paid a Huge Price.
Magazine
Newsletters
Subscribe
Log In
Search
Subscribe
Donate
Magazine
Latest
Archive
Podcasts
Newsletters
Sections
Politics
World
Economy
Culture
Books & the Arts
The Nation
About
Events
Contact Us
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Current Issue
Society
/ March 16, 2026
They Tried to Teach About Palestine. They Paid a Huge Price.
In California, talking to your students about Gaza can have severe consequences.
Mara Marques Cavallaro
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Pro-Palestinian high school students demonstrate in front of the White House on May 24, 2024.
(Celal Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images)
In early 2024—after the death toll in Gaza reached more than 25,000 and school was suspended, after Israel bombed Palestinian children sheltering in classrooms, and after high schoolers in the United States began walking out of them in protest, a ninth grader in California asked her teachers if she could share a poem with the class.
Isa (a pseudonym) had written the verse for an Ethnic Studies project on apartheid. It was inspired, she explained, by the videos from Gaza she scrolled through constantly on TikTok. Videos of mothers carrying their children, with “a lot of, like, fire, a lot of dead bodies,” buildings reduced to rubble, and bagged corpses in mass graves. Videos that haunted her but that had never come up in the classroom, that seemed to be both everywhere and nowhere at once. She wrote:
PALESTINE
It’s always right before I fall asleep
That I’ll keep thinking about humanity
While I lay in the warmth of my bed
I wonder how it feels to know that at any second, you could just be dead
I wonder how I would handle it if I were in their place[…]
What if the blood in my veins would be the Palestinian one?
I would know what it feels like to face the end of a gun
I would sit in the ruin of a place once called home
and pray to God for them to leave us alone.
I would scream and cry for one peaceful day
in which I won’t watch another child be put in a grave[…]
It’s right before I fall asleep
I wonder what would happen to my family.
Isa recited her work proudly, she told me, eager to “finally express [herself],” and make her peers “aware of what was happening.” But when she did, her teachers warned her. If she were to share her writing more widely, they wouldn’t be able to protect her. They themselves, she remembered, were “not allowed to talk about [Palestine]” and “couldn’t help her talk about it.”
When adults “hear the name [Palestine], it’s like they need to shut it down,” she said. “They always think [since] we’re kids we don’t know what we’re talking [about], and they’re always telling us we need to get educated. Well, how are we going to get educated? Nobody’s teaching this to us, nobody’s talking about it. We’re trying to figure this out on our own.”
Isa’s instinct—that Palestine was uniquely off-limits—was a good one. And her teachers were right to …
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