Four Reasons Palestine Activism Does Not Belong in WA Schools that (Mostly) Don't Have to Do with Anti-Semitism

It's not all about us.

This Saturday, October 26th, the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference will take place at Chief Sealth International High School. Sessions include “Fighting for Trans Lives in Our Schools,” “Teaching Indigenous Enslavement and Decolonizing Primary Research Sources,” and “It's Big Fat Deal: How Schools Teach Contempt for Fat People and What We Can Do About It.”

Central to the conference, too, is how to bring Palestine into the classroom. The afternoon keynote address on “Teach Palestine” and an afternoon session on “Incorporating K-12 Literature about Palestine -- Preparing for False Allegations of Anti-Semitism.” The keynote address is led by well-known figures Jesse Hagopian, Alice Rothchild, and Samia Shoman, along with Portland Public Schools teacher Suzanna Kassouf.

By now, it’s clear that the activist Palestine narrative has been adopted into the pantheon of intersectional activist topics. (It’s always been there, going back to the 1970s, but it has a fresh look.)

A form letter to the Seattle school board and other local leaders calling the sessions discriminatory and for them to be canceled is circulating. While it’s easy to decry this emphasis as biased or anti-Semitic, as we can see from the session topic, this claim is becoming more frequently and more strategically challenged. We need to open our eyes to the bigger picture of what is going on and what we can tangibly do.

Here is a list of reasons why bringing Palestine activism into schools is a bad idea that do not involve “Jewish” concerns.

1. The push for Palestine education is opportunistic

With support for BLM, DEI, and other post-2020 initiatives experiencing inertia and proving, in some cases, to be more harmful than helpful, the activist crowd saw in October 7th an opportunity to revivify its waning movements for change. Like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Garfield High School ethnic studies teacher Jesse Hagopian briefly visited “Palestine/Israel” back in 2011 on an African Heritage trip that left him with the impression that the Palestinian struggle is similar to the African American struggle. Some of the criticism the delegation has of Israel sounds similar to liberal Zionist critique — basically, calls for a Israeli reforms that aren’t all that controversial. But the “Ferguson to Palestine” simplification is a bad take (for one, it puts black Americans on the same moral plane as a culture that glorifies male violence, exactly what we’re trying to get away from) that shuts down real progress in favor of zero-sum politics.

For a deep dive on this topic, please read this piece I wrote last February:

As we are seeing, many DEI initiatives are causing more problems, even leading to more racism, not less. Palestine activism could go the same way if it’s pushed on enough people who take issue with it. Sooner or later, compassion fatigue will set in.

2. The push for Palestine education is an endorsement of violence

Like I’ve written about before, words are slippery little buggers. The Palestine activist movement likes to talk about liberation and resistance but rarely comes forward with what those words mean. (Lately, this has changed in some spaces, such as at Columbia, where the apartheid divestment club rescinded its apology and committed itself to armed resistance.)

But like an amateur magician, they can make that all disappear by calling the war a genocide. This sleight-of-hand flips the blame back on Israel without anyone seeming to notice that, by effectively supporting Hamas, they are endorsing the genocide that Hamas desires. To dodge that, they’ll say, “what choice did the people of Gaza have but to resist oppression?” Which is to say, “we endorse violence.” By coming out with it, the Columbia students are just a step ahead. Others know better than to say it out loud, but when they do, well…but the genocide. Go back to the top of the paragraph and start over.

Activists will also argue that equating Palestinians with Hamas is a false premise, but they rarely offer counter narratives that seem all that interested in peace, and they never mention the rounds of brutal violence unleashed on innocent Israelis. According to a document called “Teaching About the Crisis in Gaza: Guidance for Justice-Minded Educators” put out by the Zinn Project, “Palestinian resistance to colonialism started as far back as the 1930s, even before the establishment of the state of Israel. Palestinians have the right to resist, including with violence, but not against civilians.” Unfortunately, the violent Arab factions that have a penchant for stabbing women and children to death missed this memo from the nice Americans. If activists don’t actually support violence against civilians, they need to hire a better PR agency.

3. The push for Palestine education is a solution searching for a problem

Is there a big bad Israeli studies course in every public school that needs to be countered? Public schools are stretched for time, resources, good teachers, and students who can sit still and pay attention. Why do they need this?

Because, they say, kids are struggling with the conflict and asking questions and we need to be able to answer them. To which I say, no, you don’t. It’s OK to say, we don’t know. It’s OK to say, go to the local library and check out some books. It’s OK to say, this is college-level material and we don’t have the capacity for it here in this underfunded, burnt-out school, in which most of you are below grade level in math and reading.

All these educators seem to be doing is a) injecting politics into classrooms to meet ulterior political motives; b) putting out confusing and bad information; c) shutting down critical thinking, dialogue, and skepticism; and d) causing discrimination complaints from families of students who feel shunned or bullied for their relationship with Israel, which adds to the load of administrative work.

We just don’t need this.

4. The push for Palestine education is an attempt to stand up an enemy

Notice the session title: “Incorporating K-12 Literature about Palestine -- Preparing for False Allegations of Anti-Semitism.”

Peel back the layers to Palestine activism and the anti-Semitism will emerge pretty close to the top: tropes about Jewish control, world domination, money, killing children out of sadistic pleasure, etc. These tropes can be easily traced to Soviet propaganda (“Zionism=racism”), Christian blood libels, and Arab/Muslim anti-Judaism (the Soviet Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf are readily available on the Arab street, not to mention a long history of Jewish subjugation in Arab lands and early PLO efforts and some Jewish efforts to disentangle Judaism from Zionism). They have seeped into the soil like forever chemicals.

But it’s too much to explain this, and it’s too much effort to turn a huge ideological ship. Emboldened by these myths, activists dunk accusations of anti-Semitism straight into the trash, then accuse the accusers of...control, money, power, genocide (ring a bell?). Anti-Semitism becomes a Gordian knot tied to a wicked problem.

Recommendations

We need to pull our heads out of our navels and focus on the larger problems. Palestine education doesn’t belong in schools, because it’s not education, it’s toxic activism.

1. Push back on political activism in schools

Bringing activism into schools seemed like a nice idea in 2020, but it’s running into problems. If BLM is good and BLM supports Hamas, is Hamas good? It’s too much for the principal to think about. Better off closing the door and hoping that obnoxious parent goes away. Easier to issue an anodyne statement about all lives mattering. As we’ve seen, activists don’t seem to get tired of hearing their own call-and-response chants, and so this issue won’t go away unless we collectively make as much noise about the inappropriate role of political activism in the classroom.

2. Hold the unions accountable

The hosts of this conference include the SEA and WEA — Seattle and Washington state teachers unions. SEA is probably a lost cause, but WEA is not. In an email exchange, WEA president Larry Delaney said that WEA, despite being listed as a host on the marketing materials, has “no role in organizing the event or any specific knowledge of content.” Rather, he explained in a followup, “WEA’s only role is that we have provided a nominal grant to NWTSJ annually for the last several years.” So, the unions are subsidizing conferences for teachers to bring radical politics into their classrooms and training them to subvert allegations of discrimination. And they apparently don’t know it. And clock hours are available for this! Hold them accountable.

3. Encourage authentic education

Getting our kids’ math and reading scores up to grade level should be the first priority of Washington’s schools. How is it possible that we’re falling so far behind when we’re the home of some of the most brilliant companies in the world? And don’t tell me it’s about funding.

Moreover, if you feel an absolute need to teach about Israel/Palestine, would it be so hard to bring in balanced materials? You could study news coverage from Al Jazeera through Jerusalem Post and call it “media literacy.” Have students debate the sides, then switch and debate the other side. You could study primary source stories, maps, the global fallout from World War I, art, do virtual museum and library tours — there are so many options. We do not have to rely solely on the Zinn Project for this. Thoughtful discussions and activities will produce engaged citizens, not just robots who get extra history credit for walking out of school to chant slogans derived from anti-Jewish sources they know nothing about.

“All education is political,” they say. In the sense that they are government employees, maybe. But this mantra is a distraction and a distortion, and as long as it goes unchecked, activist education will only shepherd ignorance.

Photo: Debby Hudson/Unsplash