The gross narcissism of teachers wearing Palestine badges

Leftie teachers are shocked that they might soon be prevented from wearing Palestine badges in the classroom. Spare a thought for the rest of us who are shocked that you were doing that in the first place. You taught kids, including Jewish kids, while adorned in the colours under which more than a thousand Jews were massacred by Islamo-fascists just three years ago? What the hell is wrong with you? What a testament to the infantilisation of our institutions that teachers now demand the right to coat themselves in the accoutrements of the Current Thing The badge debate has been reignited by Sir David Bell’s review of soaring anti-Semitism in our schools.

Sir David doesn’t actually propose a ban on teachers draping themselves in the bourgeois must-have of Palestine paraphernalia. But he does say schools should ‘consider the appropriateness’ of such sartorial sanctimony. It is ‘entirely reasonable’, he says, for individual schools to outlaw Gaza chic. This was enough to get teachers blubbing on social media. They’re flattering themselves as the brave defenders of boutique liberty against our McCarthyite ruling class.

They’ve won the backing of moonbat MP Zarah Sultana who is outraged – outraged I tell you! – that teachers might soon be ‘threatened with disciplinary action’ just for wearing badges. God I feel old. I remember when you could be threatened with disciplinary action in school for having too much gel in your hair. I spent a whole day in school-issue plimsolls because my Doc Martens were considered inappropriate. Girls frequently had to surrender their hoop earrings to the school secretary.

And it went for teachers too, who were expected to look sharp and neat, not like geriatric edgelords festooned in the regalia of a foreign war. Most popular Ross Clark Who cares if Barclays lays off 5 per cent of its staff? Douglas Murray France is a warning – our civilisation is not immortal Lionel Shriver Can we be surprised that France has descended into nihilism? What a testament to the infantilisation of our institutions that teachers now demand the right to coat themselves in the accoutrements of the Current Thing.

You’re teaching chemistry, not saving the world. Grow up. It is so telling that these people are hell-bent on retaining their Palestine trinkets. They’re basically crying: ‘You will pry my keffiyeh from my cold, dead hands!’ You couldn’t ask for better proof that Gaza-wear has become the holy vestment of middle-class righteousness. I now audibly groan when I pass by a member of the keffiyeh classes. A regulation acrylic keffiyeh wrapped round their shoulders, enamel baubles of vanity on their lapels, very possibly a neatly folded Palestine flag in their Daunt Books tote bag in case of emergency protest – they are insufferable.

We get it! You are virtuous. You hate Israel. You’re so dumb you think war is genocide. Thanks. Give it a rest now, please . That even our schools are falling to the keffiyeh cult is deeply troubling. It takes narcissism to dizzying new heights to turn the classroom from a place of instruction into an arena for competitive sanctimony. What industrial-grade vanity it must require to treat even schools as a stage for your moral preening.

Kids are there to learn, not to be a captive audience for your showy Israelophobia. Put it away. And, yes, the Palestine colours are particularly offensive to Jewish kids. Thanks to the left’s Cult of Palestine, their fawning over this sacred territory that is supposedly occupied by dastardly Jews, it is easy to forget just what a benighted, backward ‘nation’ Palestine is. It is awash, from Gaza to the West Bank, with the most rank Jew hatred.

Hamas is constitutionally committed to the mass murder of Jews, as evidenced by its Nazi-like atrocities on 7 October. Fatah isn’t much better: it gives generous pensions to the families of Jew-killers and its officials have spouted medieval-level anti-Semitism . Jewish kids have every right to feel unnerved and even intimidated by the sight of a teacher in a Palestine badge. Those colours are the last thing their co-religionists saw before being put to death by the anti-Semites of Hamas.

Have a heart. Or at least a brain. I presume a teacher wouldn’t wear the flag of the Iranian regime – though these days, who knows? – so why wear the flag of an equally regressive state-of-sorts that has fascist armies in it funded by Iran? It’s a no-brainer for me that teachers should not be allowed to wear Palestine badges. That’s not an attack on their free speech – it’s an attempt to restore the great, noble duty of a school, which is to teach, to enlighten, to ensure every child feels welcome.

The right of Jewish kids to learn without being reminded of a distant nation that hates them takes precedence over your own insatiable urge to advertise your moral rectitude – is that really so difficult to understand? All the talk of teachers being persecuted for their beliefs is nauseating given the Batley Grammar schoolteacher is still in hiding from Islamo-loons after he reportedly showed his pupils an ‘inappropriate’ image of Muhammd in a lesson about freedom of speech.

How about this: you can wear a Palestine badge to school if your fellow teachers can display an image of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban without being threatened with death – deal?