This weekend’s heinous terrorist attack in Israel has united the world in grief.
Most of the world.
At Harvard University, 34 student organizations released a coalition letter asserting that “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame.” Not to be outdone by their Ivy League brethren, Columbia University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine stated that the Hamas attack was merely “a counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor.”
Why do so many young adults believe this rhetoric is acceptable — and where did it come from? After all, hatred is not innate, it is learned. Frighteningly, contempt for Jews is being taught in far too many U.S. schools in 2023.
HOW LARGE IS THE FEDERAL DEBT?
Consider “ethnic studies,” the current social studies movement du jour, originating — where else? — on the West Coast. Initially conceived as pedagogy that would foster cross-cultural understanding, the concept has been hijacked in recent years by activists who now exploit lessons to air grievances and shame “oppressors” and “colonialists,” holding the heroes of the past accountable to the enlightened standards of the modern era with little regard for historical context.
Original drafts of California’s state-mandated ethnic studies curriculum had to be revised several times because of flagrant antisemitism; the final version, although far from perfect, removed the most reprehensible elements. Curiously, some districts have still chosen to use the problematic “liberated” model, which contains false tropes like that Israel is an apartheid state that engages in ethnic cleansing. Last month, a coalition of Jewish organizations sued Santa Ana USD over their program, alleging that the school board withheld antisemitic content from the public during the approval process. More lawsuits are likely to be filed in the months ahead.
Groups like the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and Washington Ethnic Studies Now promote this curriculum at the state level; in Washington, groups like the National Education Association have endorsed the concept for years. Like it or not, ethnic studies is currently metastasizing eastward to states like Minnesota, and perhaps coming soon to a school district near you.
This is far from the only time that unions have played footsie with antisemitism. In 2021, teachers union chapters in Seattle and San Francisco passed Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions resolutions, while a similar resolution narrowly failed in Los Angeles. At the National Education Association’s 2022 annual meeting, three resolutions on Palestine were submitted; the resolution that passed stated, “NEA will support members who educate students and other members about the history, geography and current affairs of the Palestinian people. NEA will provide state affiliates with a clear protocol for members doing this work to utilize when they are under attack.”
Predictably, classrooms across the country now mirror a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli worldview. Michigan’s Bloomfield Hills School District hosted political activist Huwaida Arraf, who labeled Israel “an oppressor of Palestine,” while Newark Public Schools assigned sixth graders a book that “explores the human cost of the occupation of Palestinian lands through the eyes of a young boy.” And in Los Angeles, a high school displayed a poster saying, “In 2020, make Israel Palestine again and make Amerikkka Turtle Island again,” only removing the poster and placing the teacher on leave after the incident was covered by national news outlets.
Through both word and deed, school districts send signals to their communities about their priorities — regularly overlooking Israel and Jewish students.
In Massachusetts, a group of families asked Wellesley Public Schools to also fly an Israeli flag to balance messaging, given BLM’s past support for Hamas — and the district refused. Weeks later, after WPS held a racially segregated “healing space” for Asian and BIPOC students, the district declined parents’ request to host a similar space for Jewish students — resulting in a lawsuit against the district because of its clear viewpoint bias.
As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head — and in the education context, programmatic decisions like these are made by elected officials serving on school boards. One such example is Fairfax County Public Schools board member Abrar Omeish, who called for jihad in a graduation speech a month after posting on Facebook, “[h]urts my heart to celebrate while Israel kills Palestinians & desecrates the Holy Land right now. Apartheid & colonization were wrong yesterday and will be today, here and there.”
And finally, given recent national attention about the impact of foreign funding on the American education system, it’s worth pointing out that significant donations have flowed to K-12 schools across the country from Qatar, a nation not historically known for its love of Israel. Six years ago, the Wall Street Journal
noted
that “[t]he Qatar Foundation gave $30.6 million over the past eight years to several dozen schools from New York to Oregon and supporting initiatives to create or encourage the growth of Arabic programs, including paying for teacher training, materials and salaries.” Far too little is known about the scope and impact of these gifts.
Over the past several years, districts have rushed to release public statements condemning violence in Ukraine, court decisions in the Breonna Taylor murder, and even the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. Yet today, there is deafening silence from nearly all of America’s 13,500 school districts on the largest one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Many non-Jews have stayed silent, too, perhaps believing that this is not their fight. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Look no further than districts implementing “land acknowledgment” statements — in districts from
Washington, D.C.
, to North Dakota and
Maine
. If the term “stolen land” sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same rhetoric used by Hamas to justify its murderous rampage. Logic puzzle time: If Israel is stolen land, so an attack on Israel is justified, then what happens if America is also stolen land? That’s right: attacks on the U.S. would be just as justified.
On Sept. 12, 2001, the world stood with America against terrorists. This week — now more than ever — is the time to demand that our schools take steps to eradicate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias from classrooms.
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Nicole Neily is founder and president of Parents Defending Education.
