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
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.
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.
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 multipleone-sidedanti-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.
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.
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.
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.
President Donald Trump applied the woke-standard of absolutism like “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” to begin the process of eliminating the federal Department of Education and move control of schools to the states. He orchestrated a photo op with signing an executive order in front of school children which bemoaned the DOE’s spending over $3 trillion since its creation in 1979, without improving student knowledge.
US President Donald Trump holds an executive order in the East Room of the White house in Washington, DC, March 20, 2025 to start dismantling the Department of Education, in front of young students. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)
The photo session included a young Orthodox Jewish student in the background. It was perhaps not surprising, as Trump was the only president to invite an Orthodox rabbi to speak at his inaugurations – both times.
When Trump held the signed EO aloft and the other students similarly did so, the Orthodox boy in large blue kippah continued to write. People speculated whether he had OCD and was compulsively checking his spelling. Perhaps he was correcting grammar in the EO or adding footnotes like the biblical commentator Rashi (1040-1105).
Three administrators were “permanently removed” from their positions at Columbia University due to their private text exchanges during a hearing on antisemitism on campus, according to the Columbia Spectator. The three administrators were Vice Dean and Chief Administrative Officer Susan Chang-Kim, Dean of Undergraduate Student Life Cristen Kromm, and Associate Dean for Student and Family Support Matthew Patashnick. Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, who participated in the text exchange was not removed from his position.
All will remain employed by the university.
Columbia’s Vice Dean and Chief Administrative Officer Susan Chang-Kim was dismissive of Jewish students complaints saying it “comes from such a place of privilege… hard to hear the ‘woe is me.'”
The Congressional Education and the Workforce Committee chaired by Rep Virginia Foxx (R-NC) had released a report on the texts last week. Foxx said “Jewish students deserve better than to have harassment and threats against them dismissed as ‘privilege,’ and Jewish faculty members deserve better than to be mocked by their colleagues. These text messages once again confirm the need for serious accountability across Columbia’s campus.”
The issue goes much deeper than a private text exchange on a panel meant to deal with the issue of antisemitism. The institution itself TEACHES antisemitism, fosters Jew-hatred and whitewashes antisemitism as part of its updated curriculum.
Columbia professor Joseph Massad celebrated the barbaric October 7 massacre of people in Israel in an article on October 8th as “an innovative Palestinian resistance” as a “start of the Palestinian War of Liberation.” He called the destroyed Israeli towns where families were burned alive “Israeli settler-colonies near the Gaza boundary,” as he believes and teaches his students that ALL OF ISRAEL is illegitimate.
Massad doesn’t even believe that Jews are connected to the Jews in the Bible, as he refers to the descendants of the Biblical Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as “Palestinian Hebrews.”
Imagine a university granting tenure to someone who teaches that Black people were never slaves in America, denying their history, or that they are invaders who should be denied self-determination. They would be dismissed the second students report the grave insults.
But not when Jewish students complain.
In September 2019, Columbia invited Malaysian Prime Minster Mahathir Mohamad to speak on campus, even though he is a known Holocaust denier and declared he is a “proud antisemite.” Columbia had no need to invite this Jew-hater to come onto campus to insult the Jewish students but went out of its way to do so.
This is because the university thinks that Jews are part of the “ownership class“, to quote president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, who “want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it,” meaning deserving under-privileged minorities.
The educational system in America has been deliberately corrupted to demand that the beleaguered minority-minority Jews be sidelined and ridiculed in favor of victims of preference, the majority-minorities of Blacks and Hispanics who deserve to have their narratives elevated.
It is the center of intersectionality – under-educated, liberal, Black women – who are consistently shown in polls to be the least knowledgeable about Jewish history such as the Holocaust. Their views and history are now educational priorities while Jewish history and basic rights are being trampled upon. By design.
The issue at Columbia University and the current state of education in America is not a few disparaging texts from some administrators, but a systemic denigration of Jews.
The willful ignorance and denial of Jewish history is systemic in virtually all countries. It very much includes the United States, and the Black community in particular.
Pew Research did a study of Holocaust knowledge in February 2019. The study showed that Black Christian Americans were woefully ignorant about the Holocaust, getting fewer than half as many responses correct as White Americans. No other group was remotely as uninformed.
It was therefore no surprise when television personality Whoopi Goldberg thought that the Holocaust of European Jewry was simply a matter of White-on-White violence, as so many Blacks know so little about the subject, and consider Jews as simply “White”.
The State of California made an attempt to improve its education for grades K-12 by instituting an ethnic studies curriculum that highlight some minority groups: Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian American. Jews, who experience the most hate crimes per capita in the Unites States every year, were described in the 2019 curriculum as “sometimes have experienced conditional whiteness and privilege.” A letter of protest from the California Jewish Caucus pushed the state to make some significant changes to the 2021 draft, but it is readily apparent as to how the liberal state prioritizes and thinks about Jews and anti-Semitism.
So as Israel commemorates Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, perhaps a more controversial approach should be considered. Use the day to deny and belittle Black slavery. Pretend it never happened, or only impacted a few Black people. Maybe describe how just as many Asians were slaves at that time, or that life wasn’t really so bad for the African workers.
It should get the attention of people most ignorant about the genocide of European Jewry, much more than the far-left crafters of today’s K-12 curricula are willing and capable of doing.
Three teenagers contemplate the Holocaust after visiting Yad VaShem in Jerusalem, Israel (photo: First One Through)
The Whoopi Goldberg incident regarding her comments about Jews in the Holocaust took another turn as she was suspended from her show ,”The View,” for two weeks. Instead of being a teaching moment for everyone, it turned into another incident of ‘cancel culture.’
Whoopi is not a boldfaced anti-Semite who wants to see Jews harmed; she is ignorant about the Holocaust – and anti-Semitism – as are many uneducated, liberal, Black women.
The Pew Research Center conducted a poll of Americans in January 2020, about their knowledge of the Holocaust. The results were pretty stark.
Black Americans know much less about the Holocaust than other groups.
Four questions were posed to people – when did the Holocaust happen; how were ghettos used for Jews; that 6 million Jews were killed; and that Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. On average, Blacks got 1.2 questions right out of 4, compared to 2.5 for Whites and 1.7 for Hispanics.
Women are also less informed about the Holocaust, especially, adult women who knew much less than adult men.
The general level of education also correlates to an understanding of the Holocaust. While 84 percent of college graduates knew that the Holocaust happened between 1930 and 1950, only 55 percent of those without any college knew such fact. Only 29 percent of those without any college knew that Hitler was democratically elected.
Lastly, liberals are marginally more ignorant than conservatives regarding the Holocaust, according to the Pew study.
So consider Whoopi Goldberg, a liberal Black adult female who dropped out of high school. She falls into the intersectionality of ignorance as it relates to the Holocaust. In all probability, she knows remarkably little about the genocide of European Jewry, and her “views” on the subject are probably similar to other Black women without any college education.
Society should focus on the glaring failure of our schools and which people are given coveted platforms. Today, the ignoramuses we churn out are given soap boxes on mass media, and can do severe damage in spreading disinformation with “views” which are seemingly blessed and fact-checked by the major networks.
First One Through 