Report Details How Antisemitic Activists Turned Teacher Unions Against Israel

Report Details How Antisemitic Activists Turned Teacher Unions Against Israel

This report comes from Paul Zimmerman at the Defense of Freedom Institute.

Here’s the executive summary:

The appalling response of teacher-union activists to the atrocities committed by Hamas militants in Israel on October 7, 2023, demonstrates the urgent need for a reevaluation of the role of teacher unions in education. Mere weeks after the attacks, union radicals had already begun blaming the murder of approximately 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds of others on the victims of these attacks and calling for a boycott of and divestment from Israel. Some endorsed stunts like “teach-ins” and “walkouts” that featured anti-Semitic materials and vile slogans and chants, such as “from the river to the sea,” that harassed and intimidated Jewish students, families, and teachers. Unions have endorsed and attempted to insert into curricula from preschool to high school materials that characterize the Jewish people of Israel as bullies guilty of genocide, and they have endorsed cutting ties with Jewish organizations that offer education on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. Organizations that indoctrinate children as young as four in the belief that Israel is an evil project of white “settler colonialists” should have no role in K–12 education.

This move toward anti-Semitic indoctrination (and the related failure to represent the interests of Jewish teachers in the face of this onslaught) is ironic given the crucial role played by Jewish intellectuals in nurturing the labor movement during the twentieth century. Indeed, from the founding of the State of Israel, American labor unions looked to Israeli institutions—including their labor counterparts in that country—as partners and allies for which they offered staunch support. While ugly anti-Semitism bubbled to the surface at times in K–12 schools, as occurred in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville teacher firings that led to the New York City school strikes of 1968, it faced a strong response from teacher unions that offered support for their Jewish members. Over time, however, the radical Left has infected teacher unions with animus toward Israel and its supporters. Today, antiIsrael activists radicalized by American higher education are taking control of teacher unions, wielding the vast resources of these organizations, and influencing what the next generation is taught.

Just as higher education must face a reckoning for the intellectual rot that has allowed anti-Semitism to pervade its institutions, policymakers must use the tools at their disposal to reduce the influence of radical teacher unions over K–12 school policies and teaching materials. Notably, Congress can reshape the federal charter of the nation’s largest teacher union, the National Education Association, with governance reforms that defang the virulent anti-Semitism that has taken hold of that organization. The House Committee on Education and Workforce and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions should consider using their investigative authority to demand that the teacher unions exposed in this report explain how they plan to address rising anti-Semitism in their ranks and hold hearings to consider the best legislative response. Ultimately, teachers should consider whether to support with their time and dues activities that undermine Israel, isolate Jewish institutions, and indoctrinate children in an anti-Semitic agenda.

Read it all here.

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