School administrations in Beirut responded to the call of Minister of Education Abbas Halabi to observe a minute of silence in memory of the martyrs who lost their lives yesterday in an Israeli airstrike targeting their vehicle in Ainatha. Meanwhile, a statement was issued by the Union of Parents and Guardians in Private Schools in Lebanon, which read: "Yesterday, Israeli aircraft targeted a civilian vehicle carrying three students: Rimas (14 years old), Talin (12 years old), and Layan (10 years old), driven by their mother, Huda Abdul Nabi Hijazi, the wife of Mahmoud Shour, between Aitaroun and Ainatha. The three students, along with their grandmother Samira Abdul Hussein Ayoub, were killed. We feel profound sadness for the loss of this family, and we condemn this crime. We extend our condolences on behalf of the students, parents, and guardians in Lebanese schools to the families and relatives of the martyrs, and pray that God envelops them in His mercy and grants them paradise.
The senseless death continues to surround our children, manifested by an occupying entity on Palestinian land. How can we forget the Qana massacre, Al-Mansouri, and others? This is part of a history of violations spanning 75 years of systematic and deliberate killings, and what we are witnessing today in Gaza and Palestine in general is a result of the ongoing violations of the established rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the charters of humanity and international resolutions that protect civilians, hospitals, ambulances, and shelters.
As parents and schools, it is our duty to accompany our children through this ordeal and help them understand what is happening around them. They need to comprehend why Rimas, Talin, and Layan are gone, why hundreds of children leave this world every day in Gaza, and why international resolutions have failed to stop this killing.
We urge you to embrace your children and clarify to them that there is a war ongoing in Palestine, whose impacts are reflected in Lebanon and its south. They inevitably sense our anxiety and fear of a new war, regardless of how much we try to hide it. We encourage you to support your children with psychological support and nurturing, and to share your fears with them instead of isolating them in a bubble, leading them to seek information from other sources. It is essential to explain to them what is happening around them, as the screens are full of it.
We also urge the Ministry of Education to allocate the necessary time to discuss what happened to the martyrs and what is occurring in Palestine, to strengthen our children's resolve, to revisit important historical moments and the horrors of wars and their victims, to provide them with psychological support, and to educate them about humanitarian agreements and the protection of children during war and international treaties."
