Community Colleges’ Faculty Union Gives One-Sided Biased View of Mideast Conflict
SAN DIEGO (Press Release) — StandWithUs is deeply disturbed by the bias and misrepresentations in the AFT Guild Local 1931 statement. Simply writing “we’re not antisemites” does not eliminate the antisemitic nature and impact of this statement, which at its core denies Israel’s right to self-defense, and the Jewish peoples’ right to decide what constitutes antisemitism.
As we have seen in recent months, dehumanizing campaigns targeting Israel, are anything but harmless. Anti-Israel narratives fueled a shocking spike in hate crimes against Jewish communities across the United States, including assault, vandalism, and harassment. As a result, too many teachers and students now question if they are safe and welcome in the places where they work, study and live. This statement only adds more fuel to the fire.
Unfortunately, instead of uplifting both Palestinians and Israelis and encouraging a just and peaceful solution, statements like these seek to perpetuate the conflict. Ignoring terrorism by Iran backed Hamas, for example, including the launching of thousands of rockets and missiles towards Israeli schools, playgrounds and hospitals, gives a dangerous free pass to deadly acts of terror that will only serve to sustain the conflict.
One sided narratives do great harm by exacerbating divisions and hatred within unions. Teachers across the United States have spoken up against harmful statements like this, as they undermine efforts to advocate for students, build bridges with parents and communities, and protect public education.
Academic integrity and historical accuracy are crucial to public education and this statement ignores crucial evidence-based historical context. For example, terms like “ethnic cleansing and apartheid” misrepresent and dehumanize Israelis, incite hatred, and have no connection to the facts. While violence between Israelis and Palestinians has caused immense suffering for both peoples, the populations of both groups have increased dramatically since the conflict began and continue to grow.
Moreover, Israel’s founding document as a democracy established a legal system to “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.” In fact, it is one of only two free countries in the Middle East according to the human rights group Freedom House. Israel’s society is made up of people from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. Like all multi-ethnic democracies, Israel’s laws are meant to eradicate—not institutionalize—discrimination and disenfranchisement.
Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza do not constitute apartheid either. Israel has never annexed the West Bank or Gaza, and Palestinians are not Israeli citizens. They have their own governments and leaders: Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Most importantly, most Palestinians do not want to be part of the Jewish state. They want to have their own state which fulfils their legitimate aspirations to nationhood and self-determination. This was made clear after 1967, when Israel offered Palestinians in East Jerusalem full citizenship but nearly all of them refused for political reasons. Subsequently Palestinian leaders have rejected several attempts at peace and self-determination. Thus, Israel is still in the West Bank primarily because Palestinian leaders have rejected peace offers, and not because Israelis seek to maintain any system of oppression.
The Sheikh Jarrah unresolved legal case is another inflammatory mischaracterization. This is echoed in the AFT Local 1931 statement that “the recent forced removal of Palestinian civilians from homes they occupied in Shaikh Jarrah” is part of a pattern of disenfranchising Palestinians. Yet, no home evictions have taken place; the court delayed the decision on numerous occasions; and the Prime Minister has spoken out against the eviction case.
Finally, while Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has the right to voice its opinions, the organization does not speak for the wider Jewish community. Using a tiny minority of Jews to delegitimize the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, adopted by over 30 democratic nations, including the United States, and invalidate the voices of the vast majority is a clear example of tokenization. This tactic is unacceptable when it targets other communities and it should not be acceptable when it targets Jews.
IHRA does not prevent criticism of Israel. It acknowledges that for most Jews, Israel is a fundamental part of their ethnic and ancestral heritage identity and religious practice. Inflammatory hateful speech about Israel harms Jews around the world.
Sadly, the contents of the AFT Local 1931’s statement is a clear example of the definition and real-life forms of antisemitism outlined by IHRA.
If the union is going to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it should bring people together, humanize Israelis and Palestinians, support fact-based education, uplift diversity of perspectives, and promote mutual understanding.
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Preceding provided by StandWithUs.
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Preceding provided by StandWithUs
What is the he Jewish Labor Committee doing about this? Months ago, I wrote the Los Angeles office of the Jewish Labor Committee asking what action they were taking with respect to an antisemitic eruption by the Los Angeles local of the AFT. I received no answer from the JLC.
Years ago, under the leadership of the late Al Shanker, the AFT was one of the most pro-Israel unions in the country. Al was also a proud leader of the JLC.
Now, the AFT under the leadership of radicals both locally, and at the national level by Randi Weingarten, is an extremist union and is openly antisemitic. It seems that the JLC is now led by do-nothings and/or is also now an extremist organization.
This is all very disturbing and sad to see. In the 1970’s, I was the Northern California Director of the Jewish Labor Committee and had a close working relationship with the leader of the San Francisco Local of the AFT, the late Jim Ballard. That local had great leadership and staff at the time.
Of all people, teachers should be aware of the history of anti-semitism and of the Jewish People. Teachers should realize that this new anti-Israel thing is only the latest form of anti-semitism. Please re-think this matter and reconsider your position.
As a past president of Local 1665 of the A.F.T., I condemn the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic stance of the AFT Guild 1931. Israel has been one of the most pro-Union, pro-Labor nations in the world for many years. It’s system of higher education is recognized as being in the top tier world-wide and is inclusive of all of its citizens.
Those of us who have taken the trouble to learn about the history of Apartheid in South Africa cannot equate what went on there with the current realities in Israel.
I look forward to hearing the views of AFT Guild 1931 leadership and its members vis-a-vis the concentration camps in western China, the oppression in Myanmar and other countries where human rights are trampled upon…. but I’m not holding my breath.
would like to send email to Ms weingarten and want get her reason for going along with this.
Actually she took exception to this resolution. See https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2021/09/15/teacher-unions-israel-condemnation-said-to-encourage-antisemitic-violence-in-san-diego/
It is an unfortunate concomitant of the “woke agenda” being pushed by the American Marxist-oriented radical leftists that anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic doctrine have become a staple of their platform. These neo-Marxists’ historical philosophy is and has been patently anti-Semitic, at least since the New Left arose in the early 1960s, with a clearly Marxist socialist agenda as reflected in the Students for a Democratic Society’s initial manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, published in 1962. With the later formation of the Weather Underground, and its manifesto entitled “Prairie Fire,” the New Left patently announced its identification with anti-Israeli sentiment while simultaneously embracing the Palestinian “struggle.”
Thus, anti-Israel platforms, manifested by organized hatred of the Jewish people resulting in deadly attacks on Jews throughout the world, have continuously been a hallmark of the American socialists. One need only look to Reps. Talib and Omar, as well as Cortez and the newest member of that Gang of Four, Ayanna Presley, and their collaborators Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, to evidence the sad fact that virulent anti-Semitism disguised as “criticism of Israel” has metastasized into the top echelons of our government. The anti-Israeli sentiment of this group of neo-socialists, which goes to the very heart of Israel’s right to defend itself and thus to exist, has translated into violent attacks against Jewish Americans, none of which has received the publicity or the remedial action afforded other minority groups who may have been the target of racist activity in the US. This gives us Jews the dubious distinction of being the sole minority in America which is hated and targeted by extremists on both the right and the left of the political spectrum.
As a retired labor lawyer, I can’t even begin to fathom this local union’s need to voice any statement on world affairs that is not within the purview of its duty fairly to represent its members in collective bargaining with their employers. A public school teacher’s role is to teach students the factual truth, not to engage in indoctrination on a political issue. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is historical fact, to be presented in accurate historical objectivism, not a soapbox on which public school teachers may stand to espouse their personal political views. They are, after all, employees of the states or other jurisdictions in which they teach, and they are hired to impart objective knowledge to all American students who are required by law to attend school. Why or how this local public union has the audacity to take such a patently racist stand which will certainly negatively impact Jewish students is beyond imaginable. But unfortunately, in today’s “social equity” oriented political atmosphere, only Jews remain targets of rampant authoritarian bullying which, by their deafening silence, appears to be endorsed, and even tolerated, by federal, state and local governments.
Unions were a response to overtaxing and economically advantaged employers by putting a collective value on the work done by their employees. The US labor laws, the heart of which is leveling the playing field through collective bargaining, are limited to issues which arise from and inure to, the collective bargaining framework. The politicizaton of, and emphasis on, individual identity practiced by today’s neo-Socialist groups gives a green light to the victimization of some groups of Americans by stressing their exclusion and vilification while absolving others of collective responsibility and thus elevating their social standing and importance. This is clearly the embodiment of a modern Jim Crowism in which only the players have changed. Any form of “social justice” must place equal emphasis on the inclusion of all Americans, regardless of identity, into the social system so that we may all reap the benefits of living in a free society. Shame on Local 1931 for pushing an agenda so in conflict with the very ideals which led workers to seek and establish labor unions in the first place!