Is Remembering Enough?

This Remembrance Day, I am struck more than usual by the meaning of this event. The memorial began in 1919, a year after the Armistice Agreement was signed between Germany and the Allied Forces in Paris, on Monday, November 11th. The ceasefire went into effect at 11:00am, ending the First World War. So much has transpired since, and while the human race has accomplished a lot in the last 100-plus years, we still cannot find a way to worldwide peace. 

At our assembly last week, we reflected during poignant moments led by our veterans and student contributions, including a self-penned poem that will stay with me for a long time. As I remarked then, I have never experienced a November 11th ceremony where there has not been a significant backdrop of global conflict drowning out the trumpet call of the final post, and this raw fact alone is a huge concern for our children as they partake in such a service. Nevertheless, it is incredibly important to commemorate the sacrifices others made in the past so that we never take for granted the peace we at least enjoy here, despite the challenges elsewhere. 

But, particularly given current events, is this remembering enough? How do we even begin to empathise with communities who have faced discrimination, hate, violence, and destruction simply because of their ethnicity, religion or historical contexts? How do we make the jump to action and allyship in the face of such complexity, especially when conflict situations are nearly impossible to separate from bias, misinformation, and our own media echo chambers?

As a school, our fundamental purpose is to educate. As an IB institution, we do so with curiosity at the centre and a commitment to international mindedness and intercultural sensitivity. At Mulgrave, we also add a core set of values that amplifies inclusion, embraces diversity, and challenges us to think beyond ourselves. However, the IB mission statement that “people with their differences can also be right” needs unpacking with our young people. The danger is that IB schools can slip into a form of banal relativism where statements become performative or meaningless if they only speak of ‘peace and understanding’ without also tackling the specificities of global conflicts and politics. We must always bravely move into these spaces if we are going to equip young people with better ways to resolve conflicts. This also includes knowing when you might act, intervene and yes even pick up arms, to avoid greater forms of destruction. In doing so we might  honour the famous warning from Pastor Martin Niemoller following the Second World War:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me —
and there was no one left to speak for me.

The challenging question during remembrance might be: what would you be willing to fight and even die for?

Since October 7th, when war broke out between Israel and Hamas, reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia have been on the rise in our city and around the world. Many members of the Mulgrave community are not only grappling with worry for loved ones in Israel and Gaza but are also struggling with recurring hate that can go unchecked. These are not new wounds, as our remembering tells us. Fighting both antisemitism and Islamophobia is certainly a commitment Mulgrave will always make.  

Equally, we need to move into courageous spaces of complexity and model this for our students by creating environments of sensitive conflict resolution which stand in contrast to a societal backdrop of widening polarisation and fundamentalism. These are places of “yes and” discussion that can call out the horrors and brutality of the October 7th Hamas attack whilst also highlighting the trauma of the growing reprisal death tolls in Gaza.  And places where you can critically question both the foreign policy of Israel and the actions of Hamas whilst at the same time explicitly calling out any evidence of antisemitism or Islamophobia. 

In our IB Theory of Knowledge course, we regularly highlight the highly emotive and politicised language of the media where one person’s’ ‘terrorist’ becomes another’s ‘freedom fighter’ and where terms such as ‘friendly fire’  or ‘collateral damage’ are coined to euphamise atrocity. I am always a little suspicious when terms such as ‘freedom’ or fighting ‘evil’ are overused as proxies to simplify situations or to elicit emotional responses. Instead, we should seek out sources and places that might challenge our pre-existing biases to ensure we gain a full picture of events. We should seek to find Palestinian voices who are critical of the actions of Hamas in the same way we have seen petitions from growing numbers of Israelis critical of Netanyahu’s leadership. 

I am proud of the work schools such as Mulgrave have engaged in as staff and students discussed political complexity whilst honouring the visceral and real pain members of our community are experiencing and sharing. We recognised that during periods when our peers are affected by war, violence, and prejudice, this is not simply a cognitive exercise in political debate but an engagement in layered emotion, pain, and suffering for those personally connected. 

The work of Vancouver’s own Gabor Mate was mentioned in our discussion, himself a Hungrian-Jewish holocaust survivor who has worked tirelessly unpacking the impact and recycled violence, who has applied the lens of trauma-informed psychology to the Israel-Palestine conflict. As we think about remembrance and remembering, it is Mate who reminds us that both Palestinian and Israeli parties lay legitimate claims to memories and experiences of dramatic trauma that inform current political positions. As international bodies and people around the world call for ceasefires, we must commit ourselves to ‘wage peace’ with the same fervour we more often dedicate to war. This is a recognition that whilst violence continues, the resulting cycles of trauma make any chance of dialogue, compromise, or the capacity to understand the ‘other’, impossible. We have to remember that the Armistice and Remembrance we hold up high was only possible because of a ceasefire enacted on the 11th hour of the 11th day.

It is easier to remember violence enacted against us to justify the violence we plan in reprisal. It is much harder to remember moments of forgiveness, compromise, and reconciliation that create opportunities for hope. That is why we need to show our students those who have suffered the most whilst forgiving their enemies in the service of a vision beyond their own pain and anger - individuals such as Nelson Mandela, who had every right to turn 27 years of imprisonment into toxicity, anger and reprisal. As his fellow countryman Mahatma Gandhi said, “the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” 

Choosing forgiveness, healing, and peace is incredibly hard work which requires training, huge self sacrifice, determination, and strength - in addition to remembering.