Battling anti- Israel bias in high schools

By Charles Jacobs

Charles Jacobs

BOSTON — The well-known hostility to supporters of Israel on campus is rapidly expanding into American high school classrooms where anti-Israel and anti-Western “lessons” often morph toward the anti-Semitic. There are increasing reports of Jewish students being silenced, intimidated, or bullied in high schools, which are becoming gateways to campus Jew-hatred.

In 2018, we ramped up our fight against dishonest and dangerous anti-Israel propaganda in the Newton, Massachusetts high schools, and we also initiated a unique approach to teaching about the New anti-Semitism in Florida high schools. Both efforts are producing positive developments.

Newton, Massachusetts high schools — indoctrinating the next generation with anti-Jewish bigotry

It took the Jewish community seven years to get Henry Ford to cease publication of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” We are in year seven of a battle to rid Newton schools of anti-Israel propaganda masquerading as “lessons.”

We began alone, were later joined by CAMERA, and in 2018, Boston’s Jewish community leadership finally got involved. Along with APT, five organizations are now involved, each with its own approach: the Boston JCRC, New England ADL, the Israeli American Council (IAC), CAMERA, and a new grassroots ally, Education Without Indoctrination (EWI).

APT’s strategy in Newton has increasingly relied on using the legal system to force Newton schools to protect the civil rights of Newton’s pro-Israel Jewish students. Our legal requests for information under the Public Records Law produced significant results. A year ago, we discovered that Newton Public Schools lied to the Jewish community about removing anti-Israel materials. More recently, APT discovered blatant anti-Semitic Palestinian propaganda promoted in the schools under the guise of a “Middle East Day” event. Our legal requests have also uncovered significant official malfeasance by Newton teachers and administrators, including admissions of propagandizing children in the classrooms — objectivity could be “the most effective destructive weapon against social justice,” one teacher wrote to another in an APT-discovered email. We also found teacher tolerance for viciously anti-Semitic behavior. We published this information in The Federalist, which led to Fox News coverage. We are making anti-Israel education in Newton Public Schools a nationally-known issue. Our efforts have resulted in a more sensitized and cautious school system.

Florida — educating public high school students about the New anti-Semitism

We have been screening our film, Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus, in the community, on campus, and in some high schools (both Jewish and Catholic). Several months ago we initiated an effort to screen the film in public high schools to educate students about the New anti-Semitism. Holocaust education was successful in teaching students about fascist German Jew hatred. The rise of radical leftist and Islamist anti-Semitism in the U.S, however, especially on campus, requires a different approach. The film exposes how the ideology of “intersectionality” is creating on campus and in our politics a coalition of diverse groups united by their hatred of Israel and its supporters.

We have teamed up with teachers and administrators in a major Florida school district to use our campus film Hate Spaces to teach students about contemporary anti-Semitism. For most of the past year we’ve been working with half a dozen teachers who, with us, have developed a study guide including lesson plans for high school teachers to use with the film. We have completed training 15 outstanding teachers who have agreed to screen the film in their classrooms. Based on the expected feedback we plan to roll it out to more teachers in the district, and we are identifying additional school districts to adopt this program.

Friends, the ideological assault on Jewish peoplehood and Israel is spreading throughout America’s public education due to the radicalization of teachers’ colleges, curriculum mills that are hostile to Israel and the West, and the general anti-Israel drift on the left side of American politics. It is among the most dangerous threats we face.

*
Jacobs is president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance