“Antisemitism is hatred, discrimination, fear, and prejudice against Jews based on stereotypes and myths that target their ethnicity, culture, religion, traditions, right to self-determination, or connection to the State of Israel.”
This is the definition of antisemitism included in proposed revisions to California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC). It equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism—and will have a chilling impact on Palestinian, other Arab and Muslim children, and on teachers across the state. Despite CA Governor Gavin Newsom’s and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond’s self-promotion as leaders of anti-racist education, this is essentially the Zionist definition of antisemitism that Trump has been pushing. Instead of targeting the real source of antisemitism in the United States—white supremacy—it targets Palestinian children and their families.
How did this definition, which basically forbids teachers to include Palestine in their curriculum, become part of ethnic studies, which is explicitly designed to uplift the voices and struggles of racialized communities?
The original ESMC was created last year by an advisory committee of ethnic studies scholars and K-12 teachers in response to CA Assembly Bill 2016, which mandated the California Department of Education (CDE) to develop an ethnic studies curriculum to be used across high schools in California. The curriculum they developed was focused on how Native American, Black, Latinx, and Asian—including Arab—communities have fought for justice. It was designed to empower all children and give them the tools to understand US history so they can be confident, critical thinkers and activists for change.
Pro-Israel and other right-wing forces were furious at the inclusion of Arab American studies and specifically lessons that included Palestine. The CDE has been backpedaling ever since. Friday, November 6, after refusing for months to meet with members of the original advisory committee or Arab American scholars and community leaders, Thurmond released the latest round of revisions. In addition to the extremely problematic definition of antisemitism, the revision relegates a problematic, watered-down Arab American lesson to the appendix. It eliminates all reference to Palestine and Palestinian Americans. It excludes all discussion of how US and Israeli policies have resulted in the forced migration of people from the Arab and Muslim worlds. And the values, principles and pedagogy of ethnic studies have been jettisoned in exchange for a vague multiculturalism.
“Ethnic Studies is not an ‘all lives matter’ discipline,” explains Theresa Montaño, professor in Chicana and Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge and a member of the original ESMC advisory committee. “Nor is it about placing significant racialized communities in the appendix!”
A 2020 report by the Arab youth program of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Teaching Understanding and Representing Arabs Throughout History, illustrates the need for Arab American studies. When they asked Bay Area teenagers where they heard information about Arabs or Muslims, 2.3 percent said school, while almost 60 percent said either television or the internet. And nearly 30 percent of teachers admitted that they don’t feel comfortable or confident teaching about Arabs or Muslims.
“One of the most shocking and racist experiences that I had to overcome and learn from was from junior year in high school,” wrote Hedaia in the report. “My classmates and I were discussing the FBI watchlist, and suddenly my science teacher approached our lab table and asked me, ‘Are you on the list?’ I stood there speechless. I said no. Then she laughed and walked away. I left that day questioning whether or not I look like a terrorist. These types of racist interactions made me resort to attempting to assimilate to white culture. I altered my image by straightening my curls. I didn’t want to be identified as a terrorist.”
“Our children deserve better than this,” says Lara Kiswani, executive director of AROC. “They are invisible in the curriculum and then targeted by Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism. This is why we need meaningful Arab American curriculum, developed by Arab American educators. And why this racist definition of antisemitism is so dangerous.
“If teachers can’t talk about Palestine in their classrooms, where does that leave Hedaia? Are we telling her that her identity is a problem?”
Save Arab American Studies, a coalition of ethnic studies educators, members of the Arab American community and allies, including Jewish Voice for Peace, are organizing to demand that the CDE: include the Arab American lesson plan submitted by members of the original ESMC advisory committee; re-insert Arab American studies in its rightful place—within Asian American studies; align all lesson plans to the guiding principles of ethnic studies; and reject debunked definitions of antisemitism that equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
The CDE’s Instructional Quality Commission meets November 18 and 19 to discuss the current revisions to the ESMC. For more information about submitting public comment before or during the meeting, see the Save Arab American Studies website.
Rep. Ilhan Omar was demonized for stating a fact. It is ALL about the Benjamins, and basically politicians pleasing Israel’s lobbies, to win elections. Add words like “Tropes” and reference to past history, and the victim card gets played.
It has gone from:
Definition of anti-Semitism
: hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group
Merriam-Webster
To:
How about some self determination for Israel’s victims, the occupied? Or is that only for the chosen?
Zionists continue successfully:
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To denigrate or criticize Jews because they are are of the Jewish faith is clearly anti-Semitic. However, to criticize Jews for being Zionists is not anti-Semitic. Indeed, it is entirely appropriate given the litany of well documented monstrous crimes Zionists of foreign origin have committed for over 72 years against the essentially defenseless indigenous Palestinians, including force of arms, intimidation, several massacres and mass rape (see Israeli historian, Benny Morris), resulting in the oppression, dispossession and expulsion of about 1,200,000 Palestinians between late 1947 and 1967. Those Palestinians who managed to remain in their native land have since been forced to endure an illegal, continuous, accelerating brutal occupation, including dispossession.
Words of wisdom:
Letter to the editor in response to Bari Weiss’ article “Anti-Semites with PhDs are harder to fight” (Sept 13, 2019), Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada:
“I say poppycock!
“Just because she says anti-Zionism is antisemitism doesn’t make it so. The Jewish student on campus who feels uncomfortable supporting Zionism among others who oppose it is not a victim of antisemitism.
“That Weiss approvingly quotes Ben Hecht is telling. Hecht was a supporter of the Zionist terror group, Irgun. He once wrote:
“’Every time [the Irgun] blows up a British arsenal, or wrecks a British jail, or sends a British railroad train sky high, or robs a British bank, or lets go with your guns and bombs at the British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.’
“Many people reviled Hecht and the Irgun, among them many Jews, including Albert Einstein who called them fascists and compared them to Nazis. They reviled Hecht not because he was Jewish, but because he supported Zionists who who had proudly declared ‘all of Palestine is ours’ and engaging in the murder and expulsion of Palestinian civilians in order to achieve that end.
“The successors of the Irgun now run the Israeli government. (Benjamin Netanyahu’s father was an Irgun polemicist.) To oppose their supporters is not antisemitism.”
Sydney Nestel, Feb. 25/20, Independent Jewish Voices, Toronto, Canada (cont’d.)
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Henry Morgenthau Sr., former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, nailed it in 1919: “Zionism is the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish history…. The very fervor of my feeling for the oppressed of every race and every land, especially for the Jews, those of my own blood and faith, to whom I am bound by every tender tie, impels me to fight with all the greater force against this scheme, which my intelligence tells me can only lead them deeper into the mire of the past, while it professes to be leading them to the heights. Zionism is… a retrogression into the blackest error, and not progress toward the light.” (Quoted by Frank Epp, Whose Land is Palestine? p. 261)
From Canada:
https://theconversation.com/criticizing-israel-is-not-antisemitic-its-academic-freedom-148864
The Conversation, Nov. 15/20,
“Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic — it’s academic freedom”
EXCERPT:
“This summer controversy arose around the hiring of Valentina Azarova as the director of the University of Toronto faculty of law’s international human rights program.
“Some faculty accused the dean of rescinding a job offer because public figures were uncomfortable with her scholarly criticism of Israel’s human rights record.
“This incident is particularly concerning to scholars who conduct research on Palestine and Israel. Many see it as part of a growing trend to equate criticism of Israeli state policies with antisemitism.”