Palestinian Electrical Engineering Students Confused By ‘Resistance’

Current, voltage, and conductance reflect nothing of the kind of resistance with which the Palestinian media, leadership, schools, and society have bombarded them since birth.

Ramallah, November 29 – Palestinian students encountering the notion of resistance in electrical circuits expressed bewilderment at the absence of knives, explosives, guns, and other weapons in their texts’ treatment of the subject, education professionals reported today.

Resistance has long been a staple of Palestinian identity and culture, leading student representatives at seven Ramallah-area institutions to question their teachers as to why the scientific and technical texts they have been provided make no mention of the tools of resistance with which they have been brought up. Instead, say the students, they are given confusing formulas, discussion of current, voltage, and conductance, ideas that reflect nothing of the kind of resistance with which the Palestinian media, leadership, schools, and society have bombarded them since birth.

So frustrated are the students that some have gone so far as to accuse faculty, administration, publishers, and the Palestinian Ministry of Education itself of a subtle attempt to undermine the popular resistance to Israel by replacing technical discussion of it with scientific mumbo-jumbo.

“We do not throw around such accusations lightly,” said Ohm Sieman, 17, a junior at Yahya Ayyash Secondary School. “But it remains highly suspicious that at the same time the government is encouraging us to resist he Zionist by any means, and to give our lives in the process, it appears to be denying us any in-depth knowledge of what resistance is about, in the scientific sense.”

“It’s worse than that,” added fellow junior Wayir Ampir, 16. “It looks like they’ve somehow incorporated anti-Islamic content in the texts. Look,” he said, pointing to a paragraph in his book, “it says resistance is partly a function of something called ‘cross-section’ – tell me how that is not a Christian concept? Nothing like that should be  in a text on the sacred Islamic duty of resistance.”

Educators admit to being taken aback by the vehemence of the response. “You’d think we weren’t trying to teach them how to build electrical circuits that can be used to detonate bombs in crowded Israeli buses,” said science teacher Mohan Dess. “Teenagers can be so unwilling to compromise.”

While many students blame the various players in the educational system some believe Israel is actually behind the confusion. “One of the axioms we’ve been taught since forever is that the Jews have paranormal abilities,” explained Barouq Shaqqer, 19, of Layla Khaled Technical College in Jenin. “That being the case, many of my friends and classmates are more willing to attribute this malfeasance to sinister Zionist machinations than to our elders in the resistance, who have never steered us wrong. They’ve told us so themselves.”