Since October 7, 2023, the world has witnessed one of the most brutal genocides of our time. The Israeli state has relentlessly sought to exterminate Gaza and its people, leaving behind devastation that defies language. Perhaps there are no new words left to describe the scale of this brutality – especially its systematic attempt to erase the future of the Palestinian people altogether. One of the most devastating consequences of this violence has been its assault on children and young people, and on education itself.When schools are bombed again and again, when children learn to distinguish the sound of drones before they learn to read, and when teachers are killed for doing their jobs, what is being destroyed is not merely infrastructure. An entire education ecosystem – and with it, a people’s future – is being deliberately dismantled. This is not part of some abstract or endlessly debated “Israel-Palestine conflict.” It is not complicated. There are no “two sides” here. What we are witnessing is a moral collapse of international institutions, of governments, and of all those who remain silent in the face of these crimes.A new report launched by the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge and the Centre for Lebanese Studies, in partnership with United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), lays this reality bare. Palestinian Education Still Under Attack: Restoration, Recovery, Rights and Responsibilities in and through education, published in January 2026 and launched on January 22 at Cambridge, is a comprehensive documentation of the destruction of Palestinian education in Gaza and the West Bank. On the panel included Dr Husam Zomlot, Palestine ambassador to the UK; Dr Julia Dicum, head of education, UNRWA; professor Kamal Munir, pro-vice-chancellor of University Community and Engagement, University of Cambridge; and professor Yusuf Sayed, faculty of education, Cambridge (and one of the authors of the report).The report is unequivocal: the right to education is not charity. It is a legal obligation under international law, enshrined in human rights conventions and Sustainable Development Goal 4, and it is being systematically violated.The report documents the destruction of physical learning spaces, the deepening vulnerabilities of children and young people, the extraordinary efforts to continue education under bombardment, and the scale of learning loss now unfolding. It also examines the role of teachers and counsellors working on the frontlines, the severe shortfall in international financing for Palestinian education, and the actions required to rebuild any semblance of a just and sustainable education system.The figures alone are staggering. By July 2025, nearly 92% of school buildings in Gaza required full reconstruction or major rehabilitation. Of the 564 schools in the Strip, 432 had been directly hit. In North Gaza and Rafah, every single school was damaged or destroyed. Clearing the rubble will require removing between 41 and 47 million tonnes of debris – much of it from classrooms that once doubled as shelters.‘A deliberate destruction of the conditions necessary for learning, thinking, and imagining a future’But the damage runs far deeper than buildings. What the report captures is nothing short of what Zomlot, the UK ambassador to Palestine, described at the launch as a “scholasticide” and “educide”, quite literally, a deliberate destruction of the conditions necessary for learning, thinking, and imagining a future. While speaking about why Israel has intentionally targeted Palestinian education, even pre-2023, Zomlot asserted that, “Education is treated as a threat by the occupier. Knowledge is seen as resistance.” For nearly two years, schools in Gaza have functioned as shelters for displaced families.Children have witnessed injury and death in spaces once associated with safety and routine. In the report, one interviewee noted that school is no longer seen as a safe space, instead, it has become a site of fear and trauma. This does not fit neatly into existing models of “emergency education,” because the emergency is not temporary. It has been engineered and prolonged.The human cost is impossible to sanitise. By October 1, 2025, Israeli attacks had killed over 18,000 students and 780 teachers in Gaza, with more than 3,200 teachers severely injured. In the West Bank, 110 students and five teachers were killed between October 2023 and September 2025, while hundreds more were arrested and detained. Across Palestine, the education of more than 740,000 students has been disrupted, and the livelihoods of over 27,000 teachers destroyed.Children are attempting to learn while starving. By mid-2025, one in five children under five in Gaza City was acutely malnourished, and at least 151 children had died of starvation. Parents describe children going entire days without food; some stop them from playing because even brief physical activity worsens hunger that cannot be met. The report notes, “One interviewee spoke about how parents were even stopping their children from playing to avoid them needing more food: Parents are explaining how if their child plays for 10 minutes, he becomes exhausted and has to rest. Mothers try not to let their children play too much, knowing that physical activity increases their hunger … and with no food, this creates additional challenges for their learning and participation in education.”Teachers report students collapsing in classrooms, unable to stay awake. Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world, with an estimated 4,000 children having lost limbs since the genocide began. Over 39,000 children have lost at least one parent.In these conditions, projections of learning loss read less like forecasts and more like warnings. Even if schooling had resumed in September 2025, students would face an estimated five years of lost learning. Further delays push that figure to seven and a half or even ten years (effectively an entire school cycle erased). Without an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the report warns, the collapse of the education system will be irreversible.And yet, the international response remains grossly inadequate. In 2025, only 5.7% of the Global Education Cluster’s funding request for Palestine was met. Support for UNRWA’s education services fell from 55% of the humanitarian response in 2023 to just 11% by mid-2025. While the State of Palestine estimates that US$3.8 billion will be required over five years to rebuild the education sector, it is political will that remains most absent.Yet, the launch of the report ended with some hope. Despite the unthinkable constrained circumstances, teachers who have undergone immense loss are still teaching in tents, students are still coming to learn despite hunger and violence, showing the resilience of the Palestinian people even in the bleakest of times. The ambassador asserted that the reconstruction of Gaza, “…must be headed by Palestinians, for Palestinians.”, reminding us that the ironically named Trump-headed ‘Board of Peace’ for Gaza’s reconstruction is ludicrous and yet another show of Western imperialism.For India, this moment demands a hard reckoning. Once a vocal supporter of the Palestinian struggle, the Indian state’s solidarity has steadily eroded, replaced by strategic alignment and arms trade with a genocidal Israeli occupying power. Indian companies now facilitate the transfer of weapons used in the very destruction this report documents. Diplomatic relationships with Israel are being maintained even as Palestinian universities are bombed, scholars, teachers and students are killed, and an entire generation is denied the right to learn.In this context, silence from Indian academic institutions is not neutrality – it is complicity. Universities and cultural institutions must take a clear stand by boycotting Israeli academic and cultural institutions, in line with the call of Palestinian civil society and the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement. A refusal to normalise apartheid, occupation, and genocide – and a long-overdue declaration that this is neither acceptable nor inevitable, and not something the world should learn to live with.Join the BDS India movement: https://www.instagram.com/bdsinindia/Join Indians with Palestine: https://www.instagram.com/indians_with_palestine/Saba Kohli Dave is pursuing MPhil in Education, Globalisation, and International Development from the University of Cambridge.