Israeli Apartheid: A Simulation

Like many people I know, I have struggled to navigate the landscape of my grief since Oct. 7, 2023.

As I read the news reports of the Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostages, I felt my heart shatter as I imagined the pain and suffering of their loved ones. I was also filled with fear as to what this would mean for the people of Gaza — having witnessed four previous wars and bombardments of the tiny enclave. But my fear paled in comparison to the gruesome reality of Israel’s response. Almost a year later, I have been irrevocably changed by the suffering I have witnessed on my screens. 

This suffering was not hidden behind the veil of corporate news media. Students saw it every day. Though their individual algorithms on social media determined the degrees and perspectives of their exposure to this violence, almost all students shared one thing in common: They were curious. What is happening? Why? How can this be allowed to happen? What can be done?

As a social studies teacher, it is my responsibility to help students make sense of the world around them — to put this suffering in context. Mainstream news gives us the false impression that the violence in Palestine-Israel began with the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, but those of us who study history have a different story to tell.

Setup

I teach Inquiry, a 9th-grade introduction to social studies class at Grant High School, a largely affluent, majority-white public school in Portland, Oregon. In 2024, I taught a long unit on Palestine-Israel. The lesson described here attempts to introduce students to the complex systems of fragmentation and dispossession established by the Israeli government to maintain domination and control, and how this system affects the individuals and groups living in the region. It is based on the 2022 Amnesty International report Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians. Like all simulations, it is limited in scope, highlighting some aspects of reality and minimizing others, but is meant to help students gain an overview of the Israeli system of apartheid. We follow up with readings, films, and other activities to flesh out students’ experiences in the simulation.

The Simulation

After studying some historical background of Palestine-Israel, students walked into our classroom to the desks pushed to the edges of the room, piled on top of each other, the chairs stacked alongside them. 

“Whoa, Ms. Kassouf, what’s going on?” Xander asked, as he walked into the room carrying his heavy backpack and Chromebook.

“Hey, Xander! We’re doing a simulation today. Find a corner to put your stuff.”

More students trickled into the room, looking surprised, apprehensive, excited.

I know that role plays and simulations can be controversial teaching strategies — see the Zinn Education Project’s helpful “How to — and How Not to — Teach Role Plays” — but I designed this simulation because I wanted my students to experience firsthand some of the convoluted and unfair dynamics of the system of Israeli apartheid. Just a few months earlier we had wrapped up our Power, Identity, and Culture unit with Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond’s Organic Goodie Simulation, and I thought students would appreciate another everyone-active learning experience. 

Once all the students arrived, I projected the ground rules on the whiteboard:

1. Everyone will start by getting a bag, this is your bag for the entire activity — it cannot be switched or changed.
2. Throughout the activity, you will have different opportunities to acquire candy for your bag. 
3. IMPORTANT: YOU MAY NOT EAT YOUR CANDY UNTIL THE END OF THE ACTIVITY!
4. I reserve the right to confiscate candy acquired throughout the activity.

I began distributing orange, green, blue, and red bags to students. Unbeknownst to students, each bag color represented a different group with a different ID card under the Israeli apartheid system. 

(It’s important to be aware of the racial and social-emotional dynamics in class when assigning bags. Because some students with blue bags will have few rights, and students with orange bags will have some power over those with red bags later in the simulation, you’ll want to give some thought to which students to assign to which role.)

Orange bags represented Jewish Israelis, who have only one ID card, which endows them with a host of rights and privileges. Palestinians, on the other hand, have four different ID cards, depending on their status, each carrying different rights and restrictions: Palestinians in Gaza (blue bags), Palestinians in the West Bank (red bags), Palestinian citizens of Israel (green bags), and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. For simplicity’s sake in this first iteration of the simulation, I left out Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, though next time I conduct this activity, I plan to include them.

For a class of 30, here is the breakdown:

14 orange (for 7 million Jewish Israelis)

5 green (for 2.5 million Palestinian Israelis)

6 red (for 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank)

4 blue (for 2 million Gazans)

Students do not learn what the bag colors represent until the end of the simulation. 

Segregation

Once students had their colored candy bags, I told students that the zone where they “lived” in the classroom depended on bag color. I shouted “OK, everyone! Please get into your zones based on your bag color!”

The first lesson students needed to understand was that Palestinians are physically segregated from one another under the Israeli apartheid system — forced to live in certain places according to their ID cards, regardless of history or family ties. 

Before students arrived for the day, I had used blue painter’s tape to draw several borders on the classroom floor. Along the left-hand side of the room, I taped a rectangular border encompassing about 18 to 20 percent of the floor space, meant to represent the West Bank. Near the back of the classroom, I taped a much smaller square encompassing about 5 percent of the floor space (just enough space for four students to fit, albeit uncomfortably), representing the tiny area of Gaza. The Palestinian regions of the West Bank and Gaza compose only 22 percent of pre-1948 Palestine, with Israel composing the remaining 78 percent. 

I pulled a red marker out of my pocket and scribbled “RED ZONE” within the rectangular border along the left-hand side of the classroom. 

“If you have a red bag, please move into the Red Zone!” 

Neva, Ryder, Samantha, Josephina, Pierce, and Brennen stepped inside the border, leaning on desks and sitting on the floor.

“If you have a blue bag, please move to the Blue Zone!” I called out, as I scribbled “BLUE ZONE” within the tiny square border taped on the classroom floor. Reese, Madeline, Tristan, and Connor squeezed into the zone, awkwardly adjusting their bodies to fit comfortably.

“Orange and Green, you can’t go into the Blue Zone, but you can go anywhere in the Red Zone and anywhere else you’d like in the classroom,” I called out, as I walked around the roughly 78 percent of the remaining space.

Both Jewish and Palestinian Israelis can visit the West Bank and enjoy much greater freedom of movement than Palestinians living in Gaza or the West Bank. 

Military Service 

“Alright, habibis [my dears]! It’s time to get some candy! I have four Starburst for anyone willing to do military service.”

About 90 percent of the hands in the classroom shot up, waving at me with that desperate “pick me” attitude that only candy can bring out in 9th graders.

“Thank you all so much for wanting to serve your country!” Grabbing my slideshow clicker, I motioned to the projection on the whiteboard. “Let’s see who can do military service . . .”

One at a time, I revealed new rules.

Blue: Barred from military service by law

The students with blue bags dropped their hands in disappointment.

Red: Barred by law

Pierce called out, “Oh, come on!” as he flopped his hand down.

Green: Barred by conscience 

Orange: Mandatory

As they are not citizens of Israel, Palestinians in Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank cannot serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). For Palestinian Israelis, it’s more complicated. They are considered citizens, but not nationals, and, as such, enjoy different and inferior rights in law and practice. Jewish Israelis face mandatory military service once they turn 18, but Palestinian Israelis are exempt from this requirement. Though they can technically become IDF soldiers, many Palestinian Israelis refuse to participate in the military occupation of their fellow Palestinians. This refusal blocks them from the many benefits and privileges tied to military service in Israel. For students in my class, they missed out on candy for not participating in the military. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, they lose substantial economic compensation, housing subsidies, educational grants, job opportunities, and other benefits afforded to Jewish Israelis. This is one example of the institutional discrimination that Palestinian Israelis face. Students do not learn details like this during the simulation, but their experiences with this blue-red-green-orange inequality lays the foundation for later learning through readings, films, and other activities.

Housing and Permits

“Time to earn more candy!” I called out, holding the bag of Starburst in the air. “You all need shelter, so I’ll give some candy to whoever can build a nice house. You can use anything that you find in the classroom to build or draw your home. Of course, we have a few more restrictions . . .” I motioned again to the projection on the whiteboard: 

Blue: You can build only in the Blue Zone

Red: You can build only in the Red Zone

Green: You can build only in the Green Zone

Again, I grabbed a green dry erase marker from my desk and walked over to two small boxes I had taped on the classroom floor and scribbled “GREEN ZONE” in their borders.

Though Palestinian citizens of Israel have freedom of movement throughout the country, about 90 percent of them live in 139 densely populated towns and villages as a result of Israeli government policies to deliberately segregate Palestinian citizens of Israel into enclaves. 

Orange: You can build anywhere except the Blue Zone

The classroom was electric as students ran around collecting supplies to build and draw their houses. Leo grabbed the Jenga blocks from our game counter and began stacking them into the shape of a small house, Felix and Tom piled together Uno decks, and several students grabbed paper and markers, scribbling drawings of houses.

Though kids in the Red Zone couldn’t access the full range of classroom supplies, they got creative, restacking desks and chairs to create their houses. Wanting them to feel involved in this portion of the simulation, I dropped a few pipe cleaners and paper clips into the Blue Zone.

“Ms. Kassouf! I’m done!” Dashiel called out, waving his drawing of a house in the air.

“Nice! Here’s two Starburst for your beautiful home!” I said and dropped them into his bag.

I walked around the room, dropping candy into bags for completed homes. 

“Can we build a second home?” Sofia asked. 

To help students grasp the wealth and income imbalance among Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, I replied “What color bag are you?”

“Orange!” 

“Yeah, sure! You’re an Orange Bagger!”

Sofia and Claire quickly turned my rolling desk chair into a “mobile home” and I plopped a few more Starburst into their candy bags.

To maximize their control of land, the Israeli government gives subsidies to Jewish settlers who buy homes in the West Bank. To illustrate this for students, I called out, “I have four pieces of candy for an Orange Bagger who is willing to build their home in the Red Zone!” The classroom fluttered with waving hands.

In a class of about 30, only one student would represent the roughly 500,000 Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank, while about six kids in the simulation would represent the 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. The Israeli military guards West Bank settlements, which are often behind walls and fortresses, and take up about 60 percent of the land space of the West Bank — land that the international community regards as belonging to Palestinians.

“Cass, bring your house on over,” I said as I directed him to place the drawing of the house he had made in the middle of the Red Zone. “Cass, I know what you’re thinking. It’s not safe to build your home around all of these Red Baggers. But don’t worry,” I reached for two free-standing whiteboards and rolled them into the Red Zone, placing them on either side of Cass’ home, taking up a little more than half of the taped-off area: “We’ve got these walls here to protect you. We’re going to keep you safe!” I divided the red bag students to each side of the wall, squished now into less than a quarter of their original space.

Once all students had the opportunity to build their home and receive their candy, I yelled, “Oh my gosh! I completely forgot that you need a permit to build a house! How silly of me! I’m going to be coming around now and checking your permits.”

As students would learn after the simulation, to interrupt the development of Palestinian communities, Israel has made it almost impossible for Palestinians to acquire building permits for their homes. In 2021, more than 150,000 Palestinians lived under the constant threat of forced eviction and demolition, many of them for the second or third time. In 2020, Israel demolished an average of 18 Palestinian structures every week in the West Bank. The same year, Israel issued 1,094 building permits for Jewish Israelis and only one for a Palestinian.

I grabbed a clipboard and began checking in with students.

“Ah, Felix, beautiful home. Can I see your bag please?” Felix held out his orange bag. “Nice orange bag, Felix!” I pointed to his bag and then down at my clipboard, “I see your permit here. Great!” I made a mark on my clipboard and moved on to approving the homes of students with orange bags.

I peeked into the Blue Zone and said, “Actually, I don’t go into this zone, so for the time being you guys can do your thing here.”

Students with red bags representing Palestinians in the West Bank weren’t so lucky. Though a few got creative, scribbling paper permits for themselves, as I walked into the Red Zone to “check their permits,” I called out “Oh, my god! You have a red bag and built this house without a permit! How dare you?!” I theatrically began tearing down their structures, ripping up drawings of houses, and taking back the candy they had earned from building their house. 

Checkpoints

One of the most visible forms of Israeli apartheid is the “security wall” and checkpoints. Though cars with Israeli license plates are often waved right through, Palestinians must wait for hours at these checkpoints, often separating their homes, workplaces, and the homes of families and friends.

To help students experience a fraction of this frustration, I set up a new candy opportunity: Attend your cousin’s wedding. This wedding was going to take place in one of the red bag divided sections of the Red Zone — symbolizing Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Students from the other red bag section of the Red Zone, now divided by a “security wall” to protect Cass’ house, would need to go through two checkpoints to get to this section of the Red Zone. Students in the Orange/Green Zone would need to get through one. Students with blue bags, representing Gazans, would not be able to attend as they could not leave the Blue Zone.

Before I announced the challenge to students, I told the Orange Baggers in the Red Zone that they should allow people with orange bags to pass through, but that they needed to question those with green and red bags to make sure they actually belonged in this area. I told them to aim for five to 10 questions before they allowed these colors through. Once I announced the challenge, I clicked play on a large three-minute timer on the projector and announced, “Make sure you are back in your own zone by nighttime — when this timer goes off.”

Students lined up at the checkpoints, eager to earn some more candy for their bags.

Andrei, an Orange Bagger, peppered Sam, a Green Bagger, with questions: “Why are you traveling today? Oh, your cousin is getting married? What’s his mother’s name? How long has he been engaged? What’s his wife’s name? I thought you said he was getting married, now you’re saying he already has a wife?” All the while, Andrei was sending students with orange bags through without questioning them. 

By now, students were grasping the fundamental — and complicated — inequality of this system. Life was easier if you had an orange bag. Students in the Blue Zone especially were feeling the raw deal they’d received, unable to step outside of the tiny border taped on the classroom floor. Connor, fed up with his fate as a Blue Bagger, reached out to swipe an orange candy bag from a nearby student.

I confiscated the orange bag candy from the Blue Bagger, along with his candy, reminding him of the activity’s Rule #4 — my right to confiscate candy acquired during the simulation. 

Of course, in real life, consequences can be dire. As students learn, following the activity, between September 2000 and February 2017, Israeli forces killed 4,868 Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories outside of armed conflict, including 1,793 children. Amnesty International is not aware of any case in which an Israeli soldier has been convicted of willfully causing the death of a Palestinian in the Occupied Territories since 1987. In addition, Palestinians are tried in military courts, which have an astronomical 99 percent conviction rate, while Israeli citizens are tried in civil courts.

The Election

Though there are varying levels of autonomy throughout Gaza and the West Bank, in reality, Israel — with its IDF soldiers, tanks, bombs, and guns — controls the entire region. The vast majority of Palestinians under this rule have no say in this authority that rules their daily lives. To demonstrate this, I told students we would have an election and asked who would like to run for office to change how things worked.

I was surprised that in every class I had multiple volunteers from every bag color, including some students who had never volunteered to speak in class before. I am always delighted by the ways simulations and role plays can engage students who often don’t feel served by more conventional teaching strategies.

This time, instead of revealing just the rules on who could run and vote in elections, I asked students one at a time:

“Do you think Blue Baggers can run or vote in elections?”

The class responded in unison, “No!”

“Yes, you’re right.” I clicked the next slide on the projector: Blue Baggers: Can’t vote, can’t run for office. “What about Red Baggers?” I asked.

Again, “No!” 

Red Baggers: Can’t vote, can’t run for office.

“Green Baggers, what do you think? Can they vote? Can they run for office?”

Again, they called out, “No!”

“Ah! They can!” Green Baggers: Can vote, can run for office.

“What do you think about Orange Baggers?”

“Yes!” they called out, with a mix of exuberance and annoyance.

“Yes, of course.” Orange Baggers: Can vote, can run for office.

Several students with green and orange bags lined up to give their impromptu election speeches. Importantly, all those with orange bags offered more rights and privileges only to other Orange Baggers in their speeches, the Green Baggers offering similar rights to both Orange and Green Baggers. All but one, that is. Andrei offered more rights to Blue and Red Baggers as well. He didn’t earn a single vote.

Throughout our unit, we frequently returned to this election. Yes, this simulation was meant to reveal to students the complex system of apartheid in Palestine-Israel, but it also served to help students understand how we, as individuals, are shaped by the systems we live under. Throughout our unit, we returned, again and again, to a quote by Jewish scholar Michael Brooks: “Be ruthless with systems, be kind to people.” In his simulation reflection, Asher wrote, “I think I’m finally beginning to understand this quote.”

I have talked with many teachers who are afraid to teach the truth about Palestine-Israel, fearing that criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. It’s no surprise that so many of us harbor this fear, as Israel — and supporters of Israel, like the Anti-Defamation League — routinely weaponize accusations of antisemitism to shut down criticism or solidarity with the movement for Palestinian liberation and human rights. Though we cannot bow to this dishonesty, it is our responsibility as educators to ensure that we help students separate the Israeli government from being representative of all Jewish people. The unjust actions of the Israeli government have nothing to do with their Jewishishness, and everything to do with the corrupting influence of power.

Reflection

With about 20 minutes left in our 90-minute class period, I called the simulation to a close and asked students to grab their notebooks and find a quiet place to reflect, projecting the following prompts on the whiteboard:

Please take a moment to reflect on the simulation we just did. Share your thoughts and feelings throughout the game. How do you think the students with the other bag colors felt? Be specific. If you’d like, you can make some predictions about what you think the different colors represent.

Once students had time to write and talk in pairs, I asked for a few volunteers to share out.

Lois said, “I had an orange bag and I felt great, because I had all the power. I could basically do anything I wanted — including bullying the blues and reds. I imagine it was pretty boring being one of those colors though, especially blue since they couldn’t go anywhere for the whole game.” 

We would talk more about this later, but for now, I said, “Yeah, when we’re the ones in power, it can feel good, and it can feel hard to want to give that up. Especially when we’re not seeing firsthand the real suffering of the other groups, or when we’ve been brought up to believe they are somehow not as valuable as we are, or are our enemies in some way.”

No doubt, labeling the experience of Blue Baggers — Gazans — in the simulation as “boring” transforms misery into boredom. But a simulation is not “real life”; it is a simulation. I called on a few Blue and Red Baggers who confirmed feelings of boredom and frustration during the activity. In my classes, there was not much resistance from students with blue or red bags, but if students did resist, I would welcome that. While the main point of the simulation is to help students understand the complex web of laws and policies that make up Israeli apartheid, any instances of defiance can help prompt discussion about the rich and varied traditions of Palestinian resistance. 

As we were in the middle of our Palestine-Israel unit, most students guessed that orange represented something to do with Israel and that red and blue represented Palestinians. Green was more of a mystery, as I think most people don’t understand that about 20 percent of the Israeli population are Palestinian Israelis (Palestinians who did not flee in 1948 — when Israel became a state — and are sometimes called ’48 Palestinians). In fact, Israel often points to these Palestinians, and the superior rights they possess compared to their counterparts in Gaza and the West Bank, to defend themselves against the accusations of apartheid. But, as the simulation shows, the complex laws and policies that form this system inherently rely on this fragmentation of the Palestinian population.

The following class, we confirmed the colors of the bags as students watched Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity, the Amnesty International video based on their report. In their reflections, students were able to connect their own experiences during the simulation to what they learned from the video. And students later learned more about the twisted Israeli legal architecture in “The Laws of Israel” (see Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices, p. 130).

Amelia, having grasped an essential lesson from the activity, wrote in her notebook: “This class taught me how it is very important to separate the people from the systems. I was a Jewish Israeli in the simulation. I do not believe that what was happening in the simulation was just, but I found myself being influenced. I wanted to keep my power because it was good for me.” 

Gabe, a Jewish student who had been defensive of Israel throughout the unit, wrote in his reflection: “I learned about the way Israel’s laws benefit Jewish Israelis. This connects to my experience during the simulation because I was blue (Gazan) and it was incredibly frustrating. I wasn’t able to move out of my little zone. I see how this can relate to Palestinians living in these kinds of conditions. I feel very sad for those families who are split apart because they don’t have the same IDs. I think Israel should be a safe place for Jews to go, but that doesn’t mean they should get more rights.”

I was moved reading Gabe’s reflection. I went into this unit knowing that I was gearing up to teach about arguably the most controversial topic of our time, especially for my community. I have many Jewish students with varying perspectives and degrees of knowledge about and connection to the region. During this school year, I had no Arab or Palestinian students, though I myself am Arab American. I felt a strong responsibility to teach this unit from a humanitarian perspective. Gabe’s reflection captures this for me. I think that when most young people understand the reality of what is happening in Palestine-Israel, they want a just solution for all people involved. We can’t turn back the clock, so the question now is what will we do? How can we teach in a way that builds empathy and compassion for all people, while fiercely opposing unjust and oppressive systems? How can we honor the inherent worth and dignity of every human being? Though a path to peace will be complex, one thing is certain: We can only get there by teaching the truth.