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An Edinburgh primary school teacher was filmed acting out a game in which “Zios,” an antisemitic slur, attack Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, and suggesting that children play it too, in an Instagram video posted Sept. 15.
In the clip, reportedly recorded at a conference in Indonesia in July, Sara El-Awaisi, a co-founder of the campaign group Educators for Peace, plays against another woman. Each holds up a thumb as the mosque, while the fingers of her other hand become the “Zios,” grabbing at her opponent’s thumb.
When “Zios” are mentioned, El-Awaisi responds, “We don’t like them.” She later asks whether “the boys and girls” could play too. The caption also encourages viewers to teach the game to their children.
Police Scotland said it had received a complaint and is assessing it. The Times, which broke the story, reported that El-Awaisi’s name had been removed from the staff page of Liberton Primary School, where she taught.
“Teaching children to regard ‘Zios’ as an enemy normalizes an antisemitic slur and encourages prejudice through play,” said the Jewish Council of Scotland, which demanded an “urgent investigation by the relevant education authorities.”
Thomas Kerr, a Glasgow member of the Scottish Parliament and Reform’s deputy leader in Scotland, has raised the footage with Scottish Education Secretary Màiri McAllan. He said the term “portrays Zionists, Israelis and, by extension, Jewish people as a collective enemy. They are not.”
In June, El-Awaisi was honored as a “local hero” at the opening of the Scottish Parliament’s new session, attended by the King and Queen.
UK Lawyers for Israel said El-Awaisi “participated in material portraying ‘Zios’ as a hostile group whom children must resist.”
“Children should not be recruited into an ideological campaign” it added.
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