School Boards Are the New Battleground: Why the New York Jewish Community Must Vote on May 20

Posted on May 15, 2025 by First.One.Through

If you thought the fight for our values ended with Jamaal Bowman’s defeat in last year’s Congressional Democratic primary, think again. That victory—fueled by a coalition of Jewish voters, moderates, and outraged citizens—was just one front in a much larger war. The next battleground? Our local school boards.

Yes, school boards—those often-overlooked panels of elected volunteers who decide how to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, what our children are taught, and what values our public institutions promote. Voting to approve school budgets and new school boards will take around New York State on May 20. In Westchester County, two city school board races —in New Rochelle and White Plains—are shaping up to be ideological flashpoints, and the Jewish community cannot afford to sit them out.

Because what’s happening in these school districts mirrors the dynamics that led to Bowman’s rise—and fall. And unless we show up, the same extremist playbook will continue to take root, just under a different banner.

From Bowman to the Board: The Same Movement, New Target

In 2020, former public school principal Bowman’s ascent was cheered by radical groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as he defeated Eliot Engel in New York’s 16^th Congressional District, one of several “progressive” victories. The DSA’s 2023 convention called on its members to build on those victories and get people elected not only in Congress but on local school boards.

The strategy was simple: infiltrate local systems—schools, unions, and boards—with activists trained not in pedagogy or finance, but in ideology. These organizations view school boards as soft targets: low-turnout races that are easy to win with grassroots organization, with enormous power over curriculum, staffing, budget and even political culture.

Nowhere is this strategy more visible than in the New Rochelle school board election, where Dr. Rosa Rivera-McCutchen is aligned with the same progressive, anti-Israel networks like WESPAC that propelled Bowman into Congress. Rivera-McCutchen has been outspoken in her support of “radical care” models, a euphemism for politicized curricula that blur the line between education and activism. Her book on “Radical Care” has a foreword by Bowman and he has endorsed her in the race, which should alarm every Jewish and moderate voter.

Remember: Bowman didn’t fall because his opponents suddenly outspent him, despite what radical socialists scream. He fell because our community turned out. In Westchester, especially in places like New Rochelle, Scarsdale, and White Plains, Jewish voters made the difference. And we must do it again on May 20.

The Stakes in New Rochelle

New Rochelle’s school district is large—9,700 students and over $360 million in spending—and politically volatile. While minority student outcomes have improved, the district is on shaky fiscal ground, and ideological activism is increasingly overt.

Two candidates—Elana Jacob and Jessica Klein—are running to restore balance. Both are active members of the Jewish community and parents. Both are running because they believe in education, not indoctrination. They are not interested in scoring political points—they’re interested in ensuring that students can read, write, think critically, and treat others with respect.

They are up against a well-organized, highly motivated bloc that views school boards as the next front in a larger ideological war. If we don’t match that energy, we lose the ground we worked so hard to win when we sent Bowman packing.

What’s Going On in White Plains?

White Plains is not immune. There, a two-seat school board race has drawn four candidates—two incumbents and two challengers. Sheryl Brady and Charlie Norris have each served for over 15 years. They are status quo guardians who toe the superintendent’s line, not particularly concerned about antisemitism indoctrination in the district, favor “age-appropriate” instruction on gender identity to even the youngest students in kindergarten, and are giddy about the city’s capital program that has professional-grade football fields. Their governance has led to skyrocketing costs—over $40,000 per student, among the highest in the state—while academic outcomes for minority students, especially Black and Hispanic students, have remained poor. That astronomical cost is funded 78% with local taxes, also a high in the state where the normal local tax burden for public schools is around 50%.

Enter Julia Oliva, a new candidate who is running on a platform of fiscal discipline, academic excellence, and common sense. She has a child in the public elementary school and believes in redirecting funds from flashy capital projects toward things that actually benefit students: vocational training, classroom instruction, and teacher development.

While it is unclear how she will do in a board setting, Oliva deserves our support. She would bring a fresh, needed voice to a board that desperately needs one.

The fourth candidate, Dr. Mohammed S Chowdhury, has no children in the school, is unfamiliar about the weak performance of minority students and the enormous budget, and not a serious invested candidate.

The Broader Trend: Silence Is Not Neutrality

Some in our community may ask, “Why get involved in school board politics?” Here’s why:

School boards set the tone for everything: what’s taught, how it’s taught, and whether bias—subtle or overt—is allowed to fester. They help set the budget for the public schools and influence whether charter schools or transportation for students at private schools will get funded.
These elections are winnable. Most school board races are decided by just a few hundred votes. In districts like New Rochelle and White Plains, the Jewish vote is not only significant—it is decisive.
The opposition is not sleeping. Progressive networks have identified these races as key footholds. They are training, funding, and running candidates who align with their views. If we stay home, we hand them the keys.

Remember: the same activist energy that got Bowman elected now animates many of these local candidates. They may not use his name—but they are advancing his ideology.

What You Can Do

Vote on May 20. Put it in your calendar. Bring a friend. Tell your synagogue or community group. You do not need to have students in public school to vote. You pay taxes and fund the future.
Support Jacob and Klein in New Rochelle. Support Julia Oliva in White Plains.
Vote on the school budget: Reject the White Plains budget to lower the expenses by $3.4 million.
Prepare to run in 2026: There is an election every year, and all that is needed is 100 signatures from the district.
Speak up: Attend board meetings, write letters, post on social media. White Plains Superintendent is Dr. Joseph Ricca (Josephricca@wpcsd.k12.ny.us 914-422-2019)
Volunteer: Local races are won with word-of-mouth and turning out.

These are low-turnout races. Your vote isn’t one in a million—it might be the one that tips the balance.

Final Word: This Is Where the Fight Is Now

We can’t let down our guard. The battle against Bowman was just the beginning. The activists who filled his rallies are now aiming for school board seats. And they are counting on your apathy.

Don’t give it to them.

Vote on May 20.

Stand up—for our children, our community, and our values.

RESOURCES

If you are out of town or unable to vote on May 20, you can pick up absentee ballots and drop them off before May 20.

White Plains Board of Education election information

New Rochelle Board of Education information

School Board Elections Are Like Rotten Tomatoes Documentaries—Unanimously Approved Because No One Watches

School Board Case Studies: White Plains and New Rochelle

Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For Public Schools

Talking About Local School Boards In New York State

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

CNN And NY Times Call Congressional Hearing On Antisemitism in Public Schools A Fake Issue Concocted By Republicans (May 2024)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

Qatar Buys Influence Everywhere In America

Posted on May 14, 2025 by First.One.Through

Qatar has been buying its way into the heart of American power. Not metaphorically—literally. The small Gulf state has dumped billions of dollars into American universities, co-opted think tanks, and inserted itself into political circles on both sides of the aisle. It’s not just about soft power anymore. This is strategic infiltration.

According to Middle East Forum, Qatar pumped “$33.4 billion into businesses and real estate; $6.25 billion to universities; $72 million to lobbyists. Qatar purchases access to our corridors of power while simultaneously funding Hamas terrorists who seek our destruction. The pattern is clear: Qatar targets critical infrastructure, including our energy grid. It bankrolls academic departments that foment campus unrest, buys Manhattan skyscrapers, and infiltrates Silicon Valley. Its capital flows to Washington insiders who shape Middle East policy.”

And now, in the latest display of quiet power, Qatar gifted the President of the United States a brand-new plane.

This isn’t a gift. It’s a transaction. And we don’t know what was sold.

Experts Sound The Alarm

Jonathan Conricus, a former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson and now senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), has made it clear that Qatar is not neutral. He describes the Gulf emirate as an “active nefarious actor,” using its wealth to export ideological influence and to shield organizations like Hamas. He’s seen what this money funds—from underground terror tunnels in Gaza to misinformation and antisemitic narratives in the West.

Others, like Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute, argue Qatar is just playing defense—just a tiny monarchy with a population of 300,000 surrounded by giants like Saudi Arabia and Iran. But here’s the flaw: Qatar already hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, the Al Udeid Air Base, just outside Doha. With thousands of American troops stationed there, Qatar doesn’t need more protection. What it IS doing is leveraging that partnership as cover for its far-reaching agenda.

Buying The American Narrative And Minds Of The Youth

Qatar’s influence isn’t just in think tanks and campuses—it’s also in your living room.

In 2013, Qatar’s state media arm Al Jazeera bought Al Gore’s cable network, Current TV, for a staggering $500 million. The rebranded Al Jazeera America failed commercially, but its goal wasn’t ratings. It was presence in 40 million American households.

The acquisition gave Qatar the ability to market propaganda under the guise of serious journalism. It continues to do so under the AJ+ brand on social media, pushing anti-Israel, anti-Western, and often antisemitic narratives to audiences across the globe. It doesn’t aim to inform—it aims to manipulate.

The monarchy’s influence extends into elementary public schools.The Qatar Foundation provides materials for New York City’s “Arab Culture Arts” program which has a map of the Middle East with Israel removed. Tova Plaut, a New York City public school instructional coordinator for pre-K through fifth grade classrooms, said “It’s not just that we’re experiencing Jewish hate in NYC public schools, we’re actually experiencing Jewish erasure.”

A report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) uncovered extensive foreign influence and anti-Israel bias infiltrating as many as 8,000 K-12 classrooms, reaching one million students. Qatar is mentioned 48 times in the report.

Congressional Sleepwalking

Disgracefully, few members of Congress have called out Qatar for their support of Hamas and fueling antisemitism in American schools.

Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) did so in November 2023 noting “the influence of foreign governments on tax-exempt college campuses, [specifically] Qatari funding for Northwestern University. It is no coincidence that it now has a campus in the Gulf country and has become a pipeline for reporters for the Qatari state-owned media Al Jazeera and their youth-focused subsidiary, AJ+.”

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), Vice Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said in May 2024, “It’s simple: if Qatar can’t pressure Hamas to make a deal with Israel, they must expel these terrorists so they can be brought to justice and punished for their horrific crimes against humanity. If they won’t do either, then the United States should seriously examine whether Qatar still deserves the privileges of its status as a major non-NATO ally.”

Yet it’s taken the public gift of an airplane to President Trump to finally make everyone in Congress wake up to the evils of Qatari influence.

Conclusion: Start The Audit And Pressure Campaign

President Trump has no qualms bankrupting Iran’s oil business if it continues to pursue a nuclear weapons program. It is time to threaten the Qatari regime to reverse its nefarious connections to state sponsors of terrorism and vicious antisemitism, or face actions similar to those inflicted on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Congress should use the airplane gift as an opportunity to open a wide ranging probe into Qatari influence everywhere in the USA.

Banning Qatar’s Al Jazeera Is Only News Sometimes (December 2024)

Nexus of Terrorism Hypocrisy: UN, Qatar and Hamas (January 2021)

Al Jazeera (Qatar) Evicts Jews and Judaism from Jerusalem. Time to Return the Favor (October 2016)

An Easy Boycott: Al Jazeera (Qatar) (April 2015)

School Board Elections Are Like Rotten Tomatoes Documentaries—Unanimously Approved Because No One Watches

Posted on May 14, 2025 by First.One.Through

If school board elections were Rotten Tomatoes scores, they’d be 97% Fresh—but only because nobody bothered to show up.

White Plains held its 2024 budget approval and school board elections and just over 2,100 voters cast a ballot in a city of more than 60,000 people. That’s less than 4% of the population deciding who controls a school budget north of $250 million. The budget got almost a 90% approval because only the devout show up to vote. You’d get more engagement trying to organize a bocce tournament in a thunderstorm.

This year, four candidates are competing for two open board seats, making the election a contested one – a rarity. Alas, fewer than twenty people showed up to hear them speak and two of them were the timekeepers. And what did the candidates talk about? Diversity, as if that’s a school board issue rather than a census reality. No discussion of education, student performance, budget allocation, or academic results. Just talking points straight out of a DEI seminar.

*Candidates for White Plains School Board Debate in White Plains High School library, May 13, 2025*

No one mentioned that Black and Hispanic students continue to underperform in math and science. No one asked why 14% of the city’s students—those in private schools—get zero dollars from the school budget. And not a peep about the fact that White Plains spends an eye-watering $40,000 per student, one of the highest per-student spends in the entire state.

Local taxpayers are footing 78% of the school bill. That’s not just high—it’s the highest in the state. The state average is 50%. If the board had its way with no one watching the shop, they’d probably approve one-on-one tutoring for every student and throw in a life coach just to round things out.

In a functioning democracy, school board elections should be about education policy, results, and fiscal responsibility. In White Plains – and most school boards – it’s a sleepy backroom handshake and a baked-in majority. The less people show up, the more the insiders run the show. And in 2025, they’re running it like it’s their own personal foundation.

Don’t believe me? The city is now adding a $33 million building to the sprawling high school as part of a $395 million 20-year capital plan, even though demographers predict that enrollment will stay flat for the next decade.

*White Plains High School is adding a $33 million building to be a free vocational school for teenagers*

It is no wonder that the school board panel discussion happened in the fantasy section of the high school library. Everyone in the room imagined that they were directors in a high school musical where education is irrelevant and money grows on trees. Maybe next year, the school board candidate debate should be held in a science lab so people can reorient the discussion towards student success.

Don’t get me wrong – I very much appreciate the volunteer work that the school board does. It’s essential. However, they have seemingly lost the focus on teaching students critical skills and have adopted an orientation that school is really drop-off child care so parents can go to work. The primary function – no, the mission – is to keep kids in elementary and middle school safe and happy. With few basic skills, the high school (read pre-vocational school), will prepare them for jobs in nursing and food services after they change out of their prom dresses.

Vote on May 20 in your local school board election and bring a friend. Trust me, there will be no lines.

School Board Case Studies: White Plains and New Rochelle

Talking About Local School Boards In New York State

Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For Public Schools

Posted on May 9, 2025 by First.One.Through

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.

CUNY’s New Anti-Education Professor Of Intimidation (February 2025)

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

CNN And NY Times Call Congressional Hearing On Antisemitism in Public Schools A Fake Issue Concocted By Republicans (May 2024)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

Talking About Local School Boards In New York State

Posted on May 8, 2025 by First.One.Through

There has been an alarming increase in antisemitism at universities which has prodded the federal government to get involved. A lot of the foundational problem at colleges is set by the failures of kindergarten through high school (K-12) education. Today’s youth is much more likely to be antisemitic than older Americans, who tend to be more racist, setting the stage for many years of university Jew-hatred.

It is therefore critical for people to get involved in local school boards and impact the budget and curricula.

K-12 Anti-Jewish Bias Around The Country

School boards and teachers’ unions around the United States have pushed anti-Israel and anti-Jewish programming since the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, and before then as well. Here is a sampling:

In September 2015, third grade students in Ithaca, NY heard from anti-Israel activists Bassem Tamimi and Ariel Gold about the supposed evils of Israel.
In April 2021, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) which has roughly 1.7 members said that “American Jews are now part of the ownership class,… who want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.”
In October 2023, the Oakland Education Association, a teacher’s union, condemned “apartheid” and “genocidal” Israel. The OEA handed out material from Teach Palestine, with curriculums for educators.
In November 2023, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT 59) union produced a resolution which “condemn the role our government plays in supporting the system of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which lies at the root of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.”
In May 2024, Teachers Unite and a handful of other groups including NYC Educators for Palestine took their high school students out of class to protest Israel at the Department of Education headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
In May 2024, Portland Oregon’s teacher union, the Portland Association of Teachers, had a meeting about how to teach students both inside and outside of the classroom how to be anti-Zionists, complete with a website to disseminate propaganda.
In July 2024, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union and teachers union with around 3 million members held its annual meeting with resolutions to boycott Israel and praise the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel (NBI 8).
In August 2024, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) leaders and Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teachers hosted a panel on how to teach the “struggle for Palestine” to young students and best practices to bring the minors to political protests.
The non-partisan American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a report in December 2024 that “Leaders and activists within the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) have waged an aggressive campaign that has encouraged K-12 teachers to become pro-Palestinian activists and bring anti-Israel propaganda into their classrooms.”
In February 2025, the Santa Ana Unified School District of California settled a lawsuit for using “courses that were developed in secret and infected with anti-Semitism.” Committees at the school said “Jews are the oppressors,” and “racist” and worked with outside groups who decried “Zionist control.”

The bias against Jews and Israel is systemic, and starts well before people enter colleges.

State of New York

The State of New York is a Democratic stronghold in which the party controls the governorship, Senate (41-22) and Assembly with a super-majority (103-47). The Democrats have held this trifecta since 2019 which has enabled the party to advance particular policies without much pushback. Some current bills include:

NY A08053, which deals with transgender students in locker rooms and bathrooms
NY A06415, which examines admission diversity in specialized senior high schools
NY S06901, which teaches all students in K-12 about sexuality, including gender identity
NY S02498, which allows parents to exempt their children from lockdown drills
NY S05700, which eliminates religious exemptions for immunizations

This is a sample of current bills impacting schools. Note that there is an exemption for parents to limit their child’s participation in lock down drills, but no accommodation for religious parents to exempt their children from gender ideology classes or be exempted from immunizations.

The orientation of New York politicians is very much about majority-minority groups of Hispanic, Black and the LGBT+ communities. It is not about the minority-minority Jews, despite pervasive antisemitism.

Consider NY Senate bill S317, which requires anti-bias training for every medical student. The text of the bill refers to “people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community.” Despite threats by nurses and doctors to injure and kill Jewish patients and prevalent antisemitism, Jews were not mentioned.

*Ohio doctor publicly denigrates Jews and threatens them*

Disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman is a textbook example of ingrained bias against Jews in the public sphere, both in politics, education and media. He was a public school principal before going into politics. His anti-Jewish vitriol helped galvanize members in his NY16 district to oust him in a primary in favor of a more moderate politician. He now has a platform on the anti-Israel site Zeteo to continue to demonize the Jewish State.

Every year, seats on local school boards around the state come up for election. This year’s vote in New York State is on Tuesday, May 20. Here is a list for each town and city. The people on these committees will have an impact on the future, locally, in the state and the country.

Some things to evaluate and ask each candidate:

The school budget is $xxx million a year, averaging $xx,000 per student. Student to teach ratios are xx-to-1. Why?
Student enrollment peaked in 20xx and has declined over the years to only xx,xxx. What has caused the decline, beyond COVID?
The school budget is a mix of services, capital projects and administrative overhead. More specifically, it breaks down as XX% for education, XX% for employee benefits, XX% for “general support”, X% for child transportation, X% to repay debt and X% for other. Why?
What is the capital plan for the district and how is it prioritizing things like new buildings and football fields versus services for the students?
How is your school district doing in the absolute and relative to other school districts (rankings here). How is proficiency in math and reading for different groups? How are absentee rates for students? How are graduation rates? How prepared are they for college and how many attend?
Is the high school preparing students for vocational schools in the jobs of the future (like technology) or for professions in the neighborhood (say healthcare)? Is it teaching a class on financial literacy?
How are the schools handling current matters like gender identity classes for young students and banning phones in classes?
Are children with disabilities able to thrive in the district? What steps are being taken to address their situations?
How is the school addressing current events like the Arab-Israeli conflict?
How does the school make sure that all students are able to learn without discrimination, harassment and intimidation?
Are charter schools being allowed and under what framework?

Review the composition of your school board. Is the entire committee there for over 20 years? Are all there for less than five? It usually makes sense to have a balance of people with children who are current students and those with institutional knowledge.

This is a sampling of things everyone should know about their school district. It will not guarantee a great education or prevent swastikas from being drawn on school property, as happened in Weber Middle School in Port Washington, Midwood Elementary, Clarkstown South High School and others. It will not prevent students from rioting against Jewish teachers as happened in Hillcrest. But unattended school boards lead to lax superintendents and distorted lesson plans and school culture. It leads to a systemwide decay in knowledge and values.

*Swastika and “Hail Hitler” in Hillcrest High School in Queens*

New York City has a resource list to help teachers learn and educate students about antisemitism. Other sites have recommendations as well. Have you reviewed the lists to see if there are materials that are omitted or should be removed? Do you have a relationship with the school chancellor, superintendent or people on the school board to effectuate change?

Are you showing up on May 20 to vote?

International actors are contributing to a negative influence at universities but so is the education before students get to college. Get involved in your local school board for the benefit of your community and society, whether or not you have children in the schools.

CUNY’s New Anti-Education Professor Of Intimidation (February 2025)

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

CNN And NY Times Call Congressional Hearing On Antisemitism in Public Schools A Fake Issue Concocted By Republicans (May 2024)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

Intifada The Universities

Posted on April 24, 2025 by First.One.Through

Liberal media has rallied to liberal universities.

Newspapers like The New York Times call the Trump administration’s investigations into campus antisemitism as a targeted attack on institutions of higher learning, with over-sensitive Jews acting as useful pawns. The Times reporting actively omits and whitewashes the calls for violence against Jews to frame the discussion as impinging on minority rights for its remaining readers.

Consider the story of Kehlani, an anti-Israel singer who called “Long live the Intifada” in one of her music videos. She was invited and then disinvited to sing at Cornell when Jewish students found out about her coming to a campus-wide event. Under the banner “Campus Crackdown,” the Times headline was that her “support for Palestinians” and “her stance on the war in Gaza” led to her cancellation, leading to students being disappointed.

The article did not shy away from her call for intifada, and provided context that while some Jews might infer it as a call for violence, pro-Palestinian voices “regard it as a cry for liberation and freedom from oppression.”

At no point in the article did the Times discuss the 1,000 Jews slaughtered in the Second “Intifada,” including babies blown apart in pizza stores by Jew-haters like “journalist” Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi who lives freely in Jordan.

At no point did the Times describe the environment at Cornell, where a professor celebrated the slaughter and rape of people in Israel on October 7, 2023, saying he has “exhilarated” because “Hamas has punctured the [Israel’s] illusion of invincibility” during a student-led protest a week later off-campus. Russell Rickford was invited back to campus to teach this 2024/5 academic year according to Insider Higher Ed, because his comments were made “in his free time.”

The Times did not write about student Patrick Dai who threatened to kill Jews (in his free time), who was sentenced to 21-months in jail in August 2024.

Instead, the article highlighted “a queer person of color” who was “disappointed” at the cancellation of Kehlani’s performance. It listed a “Gambian-British citizen” who left the country, fearing “possible deportation.”

Why omit the targeting of Jews in the story about antisemitism?

Because the media wants to define antisemitism by its own distorted lexicon, and to shield the systemic Jew-hatred on campus from the Trump administration. If Jews are intimidated, harassed or unable to enjoy campus life, that’s too bad because any modifications might strip fun and opportunities from victims of preference.

According to the ADL, antisemitic attacks in the US reached record levels in 2024. Campus antisemitism jumped 84% from 2023 to 2024, accounting for 18% of all incidents, also an all-time high.

The Times would not write about that either.

Americans are fed distorted media which sanitizes institutions rife with Jew-hatred. The Times raises alarms about “campus crackdowns” because Trump is shattering universities’ “illusion of invincibility,” of tramping Jewish rights with billions of taxpayer dollars.

There really may be only one solution: a revolution to intifada the universities.

Protest outside of AIPAC conference in Washington, DC in June 2023, months before the October 7, 2023 massacre

Context For “Intifada” (March 2025)

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities (March 2025)

Intifada The Intifada (October 2024)

The Diaspora Intifada (September 2024)

Globalize The Intifada With Socialists (May 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

The Rising Generation Discusses Universities (October 2023)

The Campus Inquisition (April 2022)

Courageous Jews On Hostile Campuses (December 2021)

The Global Intifada (July 2021)

On “Accountability and Justice:” Fifteen Democratic Senators And The UN Human Rights Council

Posted on April 6, 2025 by First.One.Through

Nothing sounds so lofty as the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), a global organization that should theoretically be at the vanguard of protecting civilians around the world. Alas, it made itself into a highly biased joke by having ten standing items during each session to cover broad matters, with an exception for a single region – Item 7 – being dedicated to the “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.”

On April 5, 2024, amid the Gazan-initiated war on Israel, the UNHRC went to town on Israel, passing the outrageously biased Resolution 55/28 with a vote of 28 in favor, 6 opposed, and 13 abstentions. The Global South was joined in voting for the resolution by Belgium, Finland and Luxembourg from Europe. The chickens which abstained were: Albania, Benin, Cameron, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, France, Georgia, India, Japan, Lithuania, Montenegro, Netherlands, and Romania.

The eight pages of vitriol went well beyond actions during the war. It went beyond settlements. It went beyond withholding taxes.

It implicitly backed Gazans’ genocidal war against Israel stating that the council “reaffirm[s] the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation in accordance with international law.” This statement labeled the State of Israel as a “colonial” power, stripping it of rights of defense and designating it a rightful target for attacks.

The antisemitic text even decried Jews living in their holiest and capital city of Jerusalem. It criticized Israel for archeological excavations near the Temple Mount.

Only in three spots (marked in light blue) in the long list condemning Israel was there any expression that Gazans were doing anything wrong. Each related to the immediate situation of war and none condemned the thousands of Gazans who initiated the war killing 1,200 people, raping women and abducting 251 people, nor the Gazan leaders who threatened to commit the barbaric attacks again and again.

In multiple locations (highlighted in orange), the UNHRC demanded that countries withhold supplying arms to Israel and not take any actions against groups around the world which support the Hamas-led war against Israel. It urged countries to not supply Israel with “dual use” items like jet fuel or facial recognition software which could have both civilian and military purposes.

The text is a sickening farce, especially considering the heading of the resolution which highlighted “the obligation to ensure accountability and justice.” The text of the resolution clearly showed the HRC’s belief that only Israel should be held accountable, while Gazans should be absolved of their actions under the UN’s ode for the Stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs)‘ “legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence.”

In April 2025, one year after this shameful resolution passed, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) tried to pass two resolutions in the U.S. Senate to block America’s sale of arms to Israel. His introduction to the vote lambasted AIPAC as a nefarious organization, and then called the Israeli government “racist and extremist” engaged in a “barbaric war against the Palestinian people,” even though the Israeli military constantly warns civilians to move out of battlefields and has the lowest civilian-to-combatant death toll of any modern urban war.

Fourteen senators joined Sanders in voting to block the arms sale to Israel in the middle of the multi-front war, including Sens. Richard Durbin (D-IL), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Peter Welch (D-VT).

The fact that all fifteen senators voting against supplying Israel weapons during the war were Democrats should not be a surprise. According to a March 2025 Gallup poll, Republicans favor Israel over SAPs by 75% to 10%, while Democrats favor SAPs over Israelis by 59% to 21%. This is a continuation of a trend that started BEFORE Gazans’ October 7 atrocities, as highlighted in Gallups’ February 2023 poll.

It begs us to answer the framework of “the obligation to ensure accountability and justice” in general, even before applied to war. What is the baseline that the UNHRC and Democrats (HRC & D) see the Arab-Israeli conflict?

The HRC&D seemingly believe that Israel is a colonial power and SAPs have a legitimate fight for “liberation.” In such framework, even leaders of Hamas’ “political bureau” are regular “civilians entitled to protection,” (as stated by HRC). HRC&D prioritize imposing sanctions on Israeli Jewish “settlers” in the immediate aftermath of October 7 (as urged by Sen. Van Hollen in November 2023).

The HRC&D baseline for considering “accountability and justice” is that Arabs are justified in fighting Israel, while Israeli Jews are wrong for just living.

Anyone and everyone should be upset with the loss of so much civilian life in the war which started eighteen months ago. But the number of dead on each side obscures the fundamental issue in the conflict is the competing views that Israel is a legitimate sovereign state or a colonial outpost which should be combated by “any means necessary.”

*Masked anti-Israel agitators at Columbia University call for the destruction of Israel*

While the UN Human Rights Council and fifteen Democratic senators have not gone so far to endorse a genocide of Jews in Israel, they are actively seeking to shield Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups and their supporters which seek the destruction of Israel from proper measures of justice.

The Deep Flaws In The UN’s “Peace” Coordinator (August 2024)

The Only Way The Conflict Can End (November 2023)

Hamas Should Face ‘Maximum Justice’ (October 2023)

The Collective Punishment Of Terrorism (June 2023)

Terrifying Trifecta Of Anti-Zionism (April 2023)

The Noxious Anti-Semitism Of “European Settler Colonialism” (September 2022)

Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave (February 2021)

The United Nations’ Adoption of Palestinians, Enables It to Only Find Fault With Israel (March 2016)

The Al Aqsa-fication Of Federal Research Grants

Posted on April 2, 2025 by First.One.Through

Amid the rampant antisemitism at universities and claims of suppression of free speech, another troubling dynamic is emerging: the “al Aqsa-fication” of federal research grants to universities.

For background, the al Aqsa Mosque sits in the Old City of Jerusalem atop the Jewish Temple Mount. It is considered by Muslims to be its third most holy site. Muslims – and the United Nations – insist that the site is purely Islamic and prayer is only permissible to Muslims, despite the fact that it is the holiest site for Jews. The site’s religious matters are managed by a Jordanian Islamic waqf which insists that the “status quo” of barring non-Muslims from praying be maintained. They warn of violence and death should the status quo be altered.

*Thousands of Jews praying at the Western Wall Plaza on Passover, beneath the Temple Mount which has a ban on Jewish prayer*

And so it has begun for university federal grants, amid Hamas’s genocidal war which it named the “al Aqsa Flood.”

Americans are being schooled by liberals and scientists about the absolutely critical nature of the research work that universities perform. People are learning from the elite that people will die if their essential work stops due to a lack of funding. The academics bemoan any oversight that is not purely from within the academy, despite being funded by taxpayers.

Both al Aqsa (for Muslims) and federal research grants (for universities) see the root of the threat coming from Jews.

When Jews visit their holiest site on the Temple Mount, Islamic radicals claim they are desecrating it with “filthy feet.” University officials similarly think the government should be banned from any involvement in their work under the banner of “academic freedom.”

“Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They [Jews] have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, September 2015

When Islamic radicals promote violence at the Temple Mount to block any non-Islamic presence, their leaders shout “we welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.” We are now witnessing professors rallying around universities, ripping up diplomas, locking arms with anti-Israel protestors and demanding that the universities not give an inch to the government’s demands to protect Jewish students.

University research is the academy’s al Aqsa Mosque. The liberal administrations are the waqf which demand absolute control. They are warning everyone that should the status quo change because Jewish human rights and dignity are trampled with impunity, people will die.

Universities are bemoaning the “Judaization” of their research, as they feel under assault by unholy people in their sacred domain. When Israel introduced metal detectors onto the Temple Mount after Islamic radicals started to stockpile weapons on the site, the faithful rioted and managed to get Israel to remove the protective measures. The universities are now engaged in similar protests seeking the same goal: purity without oversight and guardrails.

Liberals see the Trump administration seizing grants like Jews moving into homes in Jerusalem’s Old City. A governmental audit of the purpose of research is vilified like archeological excavations near the Temple Mount. All are condemned as acts of sabotage which threaten the very stability of society.

The discussion of the government’s oversight and control of billions of dollars of research grants is inflaming passions. Like the Islamic faithful who rally when they see Jewish presence near al Aqsa, the global academy is outraged at the challenge to the “status quo” of unfiltered money. The Mourabitoun (men) and Mourabitat (women) on university campuses have taken up positions both physical and ideological.

University of Illinois professors protesting cuts to federal funding, February 2024

As the world watches Jews being routed from universities without basic protections, we are witnessing the emergence of a new blood libel, that Jews will be the root cause of millions of deaths as medical research is cut.

There is the holy and profane. The world is normalizing and entrenching antisemitism by placing the Islamic waqf and elite universities on the side of the angels, while simultaneously accusing Jews of being aligned with the underworld for the audacity of demanding basic human rights.

The Disappearing Jew (July 2024)

The Big Lie About Al Aqsa Mosque Access Is Really About Jews (March 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

Oh Abdullah, Jordan is Not So Special (August 2017)

Tolerance at the Temple Mount (November 2014)

The Americanization Of The Zayed International Center

Posted on March 30, 2025 by First.One.Through

In the year 2000, the United Arab Emirates president Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Nahayan announced a $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School to endow a professorship of Islamic studies “to promote a better understanding of Islam among the non-Muslim people of the world.” In 2003, after students at Harvard flagged the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZICCF) long list of anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish speakers and articles, Harvard felt compelled to return the gift. The Sheik announced closing the center with a press release that acknowledged that ZICCF “had engaged in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance.”

MEMRI noted that its work and translation of Arabic into English helped shed light on the centres conspiracy theories including that America and Israel committed the attacks of 9/11, that the Protocol of the Elders of Zion is true, as well as Holocaust deniers.

The Arab world was apoplectic at the closing of the centre and Harvard’s return of the gift. Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in London wrote that ZICCF had “an educational mission that allows the exploration of various points of view on issues of international significance. But it was accused of radicalism when the Americans and Zionists did not like the opinions expressed in it… The Centre was obliterated in order to silence it and to make an example to others. And the astonishing thing about all this is that it happened amidst calls to democratize the Arab world… to allow freedom of expression and to fight despotic regimes… [It] shows that the fierce influence that Zionism has on the American decision-making has extended outside the U.S.”

Twenty years later, the fountain of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism under the cloak of free speech is home-grown and widespread.

*Columbia University student holding sign with arrow at fellow students holding Israeli and American flags to be targets of Hamas rockets*

The faculty is anti-Western values. The teachers’ unions and lesson plans are antisemitic and anti-Israel. The student body and groups are infused with Jew hatred and anti-American venom.

This is not a problem that can be cancelled with a returned check. It is now an ingrained feature of the American educational system.

President Donald Trump announced his intention to root out the problem. He announced plans to close the Department of Education, to revoke visas and expel foreign students who promote terrorist groups and ideologies, and to withhold U.S. government grants to institutions that have essentially Americanized the Zayed International Centre.

*US President Donald Trump holds an executive order to start dismantling the Department of Education (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)*

It will not be enough.

Advancing Holocaust education in the schools will not be enough.

Providing transparency of foreign donations to schools through the DETERRENT Act will not be enough.

Increasing the tax rate on university endowments will not be enough.

Passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act will not be enough.

They are needed and helpful but systemic changes should be implemented throughout America’s schools.

Teacher unions – and all municipal unions – must be barred from contributing to any politician and making statements on any political races.
Tenure should be abolished in all schools.
Charter schools and private schools should receive funding proportionate with the number of students in the district attending those schools.
Schools that fail to teach minimum skills in critical subjects like math should be defunded and/or closed.
Teachers and administrators that vilify a segment of the population should be terminated and lose their pensions.

Other steps are also needed as people get their information from toxic sources outside of school. TikTok and any other foreign-owned media companies should be banned, based on a scale of level of concern of the country and content. Phones should be banned from classrooms so students can focus on learning skills and not lured by fake news and vortex of peer dynamics.

People may believe that the Trump administration’s actions to reverse both the decline of skills and increase in antisemitism in schools are draconian. In truth, a systemwide overhaul is needed.

Racism In The Old and Antisemitism In The Youth (February 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

Brown University Discussion of “New Antisemitism” Slams Zionism (November 2023)

The Problem With Antisemitism On College Campuses Stems From Where Jews And Arabs Focused Their Donations (October 2023)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

The Wide Scope of Foreign Interference (November 2020)

On Accepting and Rejecting Donations (September 2019)

Two Democratic Senators Gaslight Jewish Attorney During Confirmation Hearing

Posted on March 28, 2025 by First.One.Through

Reed Rubinstein is a Senior Vice President of America First Legal and a former Deputy Associate Attorney General, U.S. Department of Education General Counsel (acting and delegated), and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He was nominated to be a Legal Advisor to the State Department by President Trump and had a confirmation hearing on March 25, 2025 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

During the hearing, only a handful of Democratic senators asked Rubinstein any questions, preferring to spend their time on Mike Huckabee who is nominated to be the US ambassador to Israel. Astonishingly, TWO of those senators – Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) accused Rubinstein of believing in and promoting false anti-Israel and antisemitic conspiracy theories about the State Department and public school education.

Sheehan On Obama Administration Funding Group To Oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “Conspiracy Theory”

At 49:30 of the hearings, Sen. Shaheen said to Rubinstein “I’ve heard these conspiracy theories before. But I have been here through the Obama administration, the first Trump administration, through the Biden administration, and I can tell you that I never heard anybody at any of those administrations talking about a multi-front war trying to overthrow the Israeli government. I don’t believe it and I hear you saying that and try to justify that as a conspiracy theory.”

*Sen. Shaheen gaslighting Reed Rubinstein during confirmation hearing, March 2025*

One would hope that Shaheen, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has heard about the Obama administrations efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through a group called OneVoice Israel (OVI), as there was a formal investigation.

The Senate performed a review of almost $350,000 which were granted by the State Department to OVI in 2014. The grant was quite large for an international NGO, as most State Department overseas grants average around $15,000. OneVoice built a large database of Israeli voters and then “absorbed and funded an Israeli group named Victory15 or “V15” and launched a multimillion-dollar grassroots campaign in Israel. The campaign’s goal was to elect “anybody but Bibi [Netanyahu]” by mobilizing center-left voters,” according to the report.

OVI originally got its State Department grant in September 2013 to “execute a grassroots campaign in conjunction with Secretary of State John Kerry’s effort to sustain negotiations
between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.” The outreach effort was to run from October 15, 2013 to July 15, 2014, and the State Department made its final payment of grant funds to OVI on August 25, 2014, with the grant period ending on November 30, 2014. In addition to the $350,000 handed to OVI, the State Department gave the group $40,000 for outside consultants and another $115,000 to OneVoice Palestine, a sister NGO. It is estimated that over 1.3 million Israelis were exposed to OVI’s campaign, about 16% of the population.

By the end of the targeted grant period in July 2014, the Kerry Israeli-Palestinian peace plans were in shambles. By August, OVI leadership decided to use its now large infrastructure for direct political purposes, to “SHIFT SUPPORT WITHIN THE KNESSET AWAY FROM LIKUD/RIGHT WING COALITION BY ADVOCATING TO ‘SWING’ CENTRIST VOTER’S [sic] POLICIES AND SUPPORT POLITICAL CANDIDATES WHO EMBRACE AN EXPEDITED NEGOTIATION TOWARD A [TWO-STATE SOLUTION] AND THE END OF SETTLEMENT EXPANSION.” When Netanyahu announced new elections in December 2014, OVI quickly absorbed the “anybody but Bibi” V15 into its organization to oust Netanyahu.

The Senate initiated an inquiry into this funding matter in February 2015. It found that “OneVoice did inform at least two State Department officials of its political plans, and it did so during the grant period. The Department took no action in response.”

To summarize the facts in Sheehan’s dismissal of the “conspiracy theory,” the State Department handed roughly $500,000 in total to organizations which built up a large infrastructure inside Israel which was used to try to replace Netanyahu in the 2015 elections. It is unclear whether this was directly at the behest of the Obama Administration or was simply a byproduct of the anti-Netanyahu left-wing US State Department’s animus towards Netanyahu, engaging in election tampering against an American ally.

To put that $0.5 million in perspective, the entire Israeli budget for the 2015 election was $62 million.

Kaine On K-12 Public School Anti-Israel, Antisemitic, Woke Education “Conspiracy Theory”

At 1:24:45 of the hearing, Sen. Kaine took aim at a post that Rubinstein made on LinkedIn saying “‘K-12 teachers are almost all products of extreme left teachers’ training programs in the colleges, then the same leftist antisemite professors provide training on MENA [Middle East and North America] and other issues. The system is not fixable.'” Kaine continued “A lot of us on the committee have parents, spouses, kids who are K-12 teachers who work in education programs, training K-12 teachers. A lot of us like me were governors appointing boards of universities with intimate knowledge of teacher training programs. There can be a bad apple in any organization but I got to say I read a comment like that – and it strikes me along the lines of what Senator Shaheen was asking – a kind of political fantasy or conspiracy that doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing that a careful lawyer offering narrow advice would say.”

*Sen. Kaine gaslighting Reed Rubinstein during confirmation hearing, March 2025*

Perhaps Kaine is ignorant or has put on blinders about the hatred being instilled by public school teachers into the next generation of students. Here are just a few:

The non-partisan American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a report in December 2024 that “Leaders and activists within the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) have waged an aggressive campaign that has encouraged K-12 teachers to become pro-Palestinian activists and bring anti-Israel propaganda into their classrooms.” The documented MTA initiatives included “promoting multiple one-sided anti-Israel resolutions,… Sponsoring programming, including a webinar that purported to address “anti-Palestinian racism” which was dedicated to attacking the legitimacy of the world’s only Jewish state,” and “curating and promoting on its website anti-Israel educational resources that it encourages members to bring back to their schools.”

In October 2023, right after the Hamas October 7 massacre in Israel, the Oakland Education Association, a teacher’s union, condemned “apartheid” and “genocidal” Israel. The OEA handed out material from Teach Palestine, with curriculums for educators. It suggested that in situations that get “pushback from Zionist parents,” to pivot the conversation to “compare youth incarceration in the U.S. and Palestine.”

In November 2023, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT 59) union produced a resolution which “condemn the role our government plays in supporting the system of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which lies at the root of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.”

*Teacher union in Minnesota calling Israel an “apartheid” country and at fault for the Hamas-initiated war*

In February 2025, the Santa Ana Unified School District of California settled a lawsuit for using “courses that were developed in secret and infected with anti-Semitism.” Committees at the school said “Jews are the oppressors,” and “racist” and worked with outside groups who decried “Zionist control.”

There is a new group called The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (founded mostly by professors of the University of Santa Ana) which is trying to decouple the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies program in universities, and place it in “settler colonial studies” and put it in the context of “repressive work and solidarities” since “Zionism’s project extends beyond the borders of Palestine.” These efforts are being pushed in the University of California school systems and at New York University. The organization markets a “toolkit” for use by anti-Israel protestors.

In May 2024, Teachers Unite and a handful of other groups including NYC Educators for Palestine took their high school students out of class to protest Israel at the Department of Education headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

Also in May 2024, Portland Oregon’s teacher union, the Portland Association of Teachers, had a meeting about how to teach students both inside and outside of the classroom how to be anti-Zionists, complete with a website to disseminate propaganda.

In August 2024, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) leaders and Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teachers hosted a panel on how to teach the “struggle for Palestine” to young students and best practices to bring the minors to political protests.

In September 2015, third grade students in Ithaca, NY heard from anti-Israel activists Bassem Tamimi and Ariel Gold about the supposed evils of Israel.

Professors all over the country have given “extra credit” to students who participate in anti-Israel protests. Students for Justice in Palestine are encouraging it on social media.

There are cases all around the country. In addition to Teach Palestine, teachers are encouraged to use materials from “Decolonize Palestine,” which is designed with animation for young students. It vilifies Israel as a racist colonial endeavor always designed to oppress local Arabs.

In July 2024, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union and teachers union with around 3 million members held its annual meeting. It included resolutions to boycott Israel and praise the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel (NBI 8). NBI 9 urged the NEA and other trade unions to “pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the US, to stop funding it.” NBI 74 sought to publish a list of government officials who accept money from groups supporting Israel.

In April 2021, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) which has roughly 1.7 members said that “American Jews are now part of the ownership class,… who want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.” Herself a Jew, her large base got the message that Jews are the 1% who are coming to steal opportunities from the 99%. In AFT’s July 2024 annual convention, there were seven anti-Israel resolutions.

If Senator Kaine doesn’t understand the deeply antisemitic nature of teachers unions, he should be removed from the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

While Jews are suffering a horrible spike of antisemitism in the United States in the aftermath of the worst slaughter of Jews in Israel in 1,000 years, two Democratic senators took public aim at a Jew for supposedly promoting “conspiracy theories” about anti-Israel and antisemitic activity. It was gaslighting at the highest level, an affront to Jews everywhere.

ACTION ITEMS

Contact Sen. Shaheen and Sen. Kaine about your extreme disappointment with their public gaslighting of Jews about antisemitism and anti-Israel activities in the United States today.