Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For Public Schools

Major socialist groups have taken aggressive anti-Israel stances, both before and after the October 7, 2023 brutal massacre of people in Israel by Gazans. These socialists are aggressively working their ideology into America’s public schools.

Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) Is Anti-Israeli Jews

The Democratic Socialist of America of New York City demanded that politicians not visit Israel to be considered for its endorsement in 2020, even though the local municipal elections had nothing to do with foreign policy. In July 2023 – months before the October 7 massacre – DSA posted that Israeli Jews could not be considered “civilians,” essentially making all of them legitimate targets for violence, endorsed ethnic cleansing.

The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a radical jihadi group, praised DSA’s stances and called for the group to “discover your humanity and your love in revolution.” The DSA has fallen in line with its jihadi revolutionary comrades, and issued a statement while the slaughter and 1,200 people and raping of women in Israel was ongoing, that the group is “steadfast in expressing our solidarity with Palestine.”

These vile and violent attitudes are being pushed into the public schools.

Infiltration Into Public Schools

The socialist publication Jacobin made the point clearly in January 2024 when it praised the DSA which “passed a resolution encouraging local chapters to run candidates for school boards” during its summer 2023 convention. It noted that school board elections are “small-scale enough that grassroots organizing” can swing elections, and socialists are particularly adept at such activity. It argues that “by connecting with other progressive groups that have been working on education issues in New York for decades, each in their own silos, DSA might be able to cut through the antidemocratic structures and confusing messages” and take over schools to advance their preferred narratives.

The effort is deliberate and focused on public schools. One of the drafters of the DSA resolution to pursue school boards wrote “unlike federal elections, school boards are also races we can have a clear impact in…. By concentrating our efforts on these races, we can have an outsized effect…. By electing socialists into those seats, we can set new model policies.”

The ultimate goal of the DSA is to build its own political party apart from the Democratic Party, and it believes that these school board seats lay the foundation for such long term goal by building communities and indoctrinating the youth.

One can see this happening right now, in races for the head of the teacher’s union and the school board in New Rochelle.

United Federation of Teachers (UFT)

Amy Arundell is currently running to become the president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), a union with about 200,000 members. She was temporarily removed from her post heading UFT in Queens for insisting that the word “terrorist” be dropped from the UFT statement denouncing the October 7 attacks, even though Hamas is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. If raping women and burning families alive is not terrorism, it is unclear if anything is.

The UFT, which represents New York City public school teachers, issued a statement after New York City Department of Education’s chancellor, David Banks, sent an email to district staff stating: “I unequivocally condemn these horrific acts of violence, and I want to offer my deepest condolences and steadfast support to those in our New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) community impacted by the killings and kidnappings.” The UFT statement read “Chancellor Banks’s statement last Tuesday solely centering the needs of Israeli families, and UFT President Mulgrew’s dismissal of Queens Borough Rep Amy Arundell for speaking in support of Palestine are but two examples of the erasure of our Palestinian students, staff, and families.” It recommended educators use a virulently anti-Israel website TeachPalestine as a tool in their classrooms and push the anti-Israel narrative into classrooms.

*Amy Arundell marked “revolutionary liberation” movements as her face to the world*

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) rallied to its socialist-jihadi colleague and issued a statement that “penaliz[ing] their representative for actively seeking an inclusive statement that considers pro-Palestinian narratives is reprehensible.” It is bewildering to imagine how dropping the word “terrorist” from the worst terrorist attack in modern history is a “pro-Palestinian narrative.”

New Rochelle School Board

In the City of New Rochelle in Westchester County, just north of New York City, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen is running for the local school board. She is endorsed by disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman who also wrote a foreword for her book on “radical care.” DSA proudly endorsed Bowman.

Rivera-McCutchen was interviewed in March 2025 on the Progressive News Network by Howard Horowitz, a leader of anti-Israel group WESPAC which supports PYM, part of the DSA socialist-jihadi alliance. WESPAC also supports Students for Justice in Palestine, which has fostered antisemitic environment and attacks on American college campuses.

If socialists win seats on local school boards and elections for union leadership, the situation for American Jewry will likely become stark. Get involved.