California Parents Say No to Anti-Semitic Ethnic Studies

Advocates — including teacher union officials, public school teachers, and other ideologies — have formed the Liberal National Research Model Curriculum Association, through which they hope will affect the teaching of ethnic studies in the state. The Coalition, which disseminates teaching materials taken directly from radical anti-Israel websites, rejects the idea that all cultures should be studied. It asserts that studies of ethnicity are only about four groups: Native Americans, Black Americans, Chicanos/Latinos, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders. That last group includes Arabs from the Middle East – but not Jews, who have lived in the same region for millennia.

The corporate documents — many of which have been taken offline in recent months — are filled with attacks on Jews and the Jewish state. They deny that the Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and teach that Israel is a “colonial” and “settled state” established through “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing” and “segregation”. race”. They misdefined Judaism, teaching that “Jewism is different from Judaism” and that Zionism is not a Jewish religious belief but an invention of “late century 19”.

Tell it to the millions of Jews who end their Passover with “next year in Jerusalem,” or end every Jewish wedding by breaking a glass to mourn the destruction of the Jewish people. Jerusalem, or pray every day facing Jerusalem — or their bible, prayer book, and calendar. for thousands of years was filled by the Israelites’ longing to return to the sovereignty of the land of Israel.

Consortium documents describe Zionism as a “nationalist colonial ideology” that seeks “the expansion of the Jewish state into historic Palestine by any means necessary”. while also stating that Israel and the United States are “white settlers”, even though Israel’s Jewish population is more than half of “people of color” – including those with ancestors living in Africa and India. India and more than three million Israelis are descendants of Jews who lived in the Middle East before the Babylonian exile 2,600 years ago.

California law requires that government-funded instructional materials be made public, so parents and taxpayers know what’s going on in the schools they use and pay for. But the teacher-directed consortium violates that. Curriculum classes are invited only. The union urges sympathetic teachers to “fly in the crosshairs” and advises that it is best to “close the door” before teaching the “liberal curriculum” — which includes denouncing the Jewish faith and the Jewish state — so that parents can’t find out what’s going on.

The lawsuit has two purposes: to delete teaching materials that denounce the plaintiffs’ sincere religious beliefs, and to publicly disclose all ethnicity research materials in Los Angeles public schools. Angeles. The parents and teachers we represent seek to publicly disclose what is actually taught with public money in public schools and end the use of taxpayer-funded anti-Semitic teaching materials . Jewish teachers have a right to a workplace and Jewish parents go to public schools for their children, where government-paid teachers do not denounce their homeland, describing their people as criminals. commit genocide or disparage their religious beliefs.

If the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Association prevails in California, it is likely to be deployed elsewhere. Israel and the Jews were only the first ideological enemies of the left to be denounced in public. If the curriculum advocates are not stopped, other adversaries — and their accusations — are likely to follow.

Ms. Marcus is the legal director of the Deborah Project and a lead advisor to LA’s Concerned Jewish Parents and Education Foundation v. Association for National Liberation Research Model Curriculum. Fried is a professor at Harvard Law School and chairman of the board of trustees of the Deborah Project.