The Shift: Pro-Israel lawmakers angry over Regents exam question

You often hear concerns about Palestinian textbooks. Just last week the Jerusalem Post ran an op-ed on the subject, which was really an attack on UNRWA. “It’s a wonder that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians raised in this system never carry out attacks,” the authors proclaim, “The rising violence in the West Bank demonstrates that those foreign bodies that fund Palestinian textbooks must demand accountability.”

In the House Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) is peddling something called the Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act, which would require the State Department to produce reports on the state of curriculum in Palestine. This would give congress “the information and tools it needs to finally fully reform” the educational system. One of Sherman’s big issues with these textbooks is that they “erase Israel from maps.”

Back in New York pro-Israel activists and lawmakers are up in arms about some questions on the state Regents exam for high school students. One acknowledges that Israel illegally annexed the Golan Heights and another asserts that Zionists benefited from the country being formed. They also claim that the test identifies the Holocaust as the sole reason that Israel exists.

On Twitter Lara Friedman makes quick work of these complaints in a recent Twitter thread.

“The NY Regents exam is under fire for alleged anti-Israel/antisemitic bias over this graphic and these two questions included on a recent test. Let’s take a look! Pro-Israel critics say they offer a ‘dishonest’ picture of Israel’s expansion. I agree! The 3rd map inaccurately describes the West Bank as ‘controlled partly by Israel, partly by Palestinians.’ That’s like saying a jail is partly controlled by guards, partly by prisoners. They also take issue with the 3rd map stating Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 — a fact they argue should be erased by Trump’s recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel in 2019 (historical facts on a history test? NO WAY). Also the map is dated…2017.  Next is their OUTRAGE at the test suggesting the Holocaust is the SOLE REASON for Israel’s existence! Except, the test doesn’t do that. Q1 does suggest the Holocaust, more than some other events, influenced the development of the 1947 partition plan. Which is a 100% true. Then there is the kicker: their rage at the question: which people benefited most from the changes on the historically/factually accurate] maps shown? Because the answer is, indeed, Zionists (who were there in 1948, pre-state) and Jewish immigrants (who came post-1948). This is the kind of thing that Israelis and Zionists CELEBRATE! But apparently these facts, presented in a way that is not triumphant, is….anti-Israel and antisemitic. Get it?

Former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind and Brooklyn Councilwoman Inna Vernikov are calling on New York State Commissioner of Education Betty Rosa “to swiftly remove the disingenuous questions and conduct a thorough audit to ensure such egregious distortions of history that invariably lead to animosity for the sole Jewish state aren’t being inadvertently fed to our children.”

If the name Inna Vernikov sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because she pulled money earmarked for CUNY Law School last year in response to the faculty endorsing a BDS resolution. The Ukrainian-American attorney says she jumped to the Republican party over these issues. While running for office in 2021 Vernikov told the Jewish News Syndicate, “I’m running as a Republican on principle because I can’t support the Democratic Party, which is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton. Jews coming from the former Soviet Union are very familiar with communism and socialism, and many of us feel strongly that what today’s Democratic Party is promoting is exactly what we ran from—a place where speech was censored, where we were not allowed to practice religion, where we didn’t have freedom or economic opportunity.”

This issue has even permeated congress with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) writing the New York State Board of Regents Chancellor a letter expressing his concerns. He claims that the questions constitute “miseducation” and are “ahistorical and offensive.”

Maybe he can draft some legislation about it with Brad Sherman.

Biden administration asked for settlement “pause”

At Axios Barak Ravid reports that Secretary of State Blinken asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a temporary “pause” on certain actions while he was visiting the Middle East. This included settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Here’s Ravid:

The U.S. wants the “pause” to last several months, and include an Israeli commitment to postpone settlement activity, the demolitions of Palestinian homes and evictions of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the officials said...Israeli officials told the Biden administration they are willing to take steps to significantly reduce the activities the U.S. opposes, but stressed they won’t be able to halt them completely.

This is pretty cynical stuff as the U.S. is simply asking Israel to briefly halt its destruction of Palestinian homes in the name of optics while continuing to supply the country with billions in military aid. The suggestion was offered with no strings attached of course. We know that the Biden administration will never threaten to cut into the $3.8 billion no matter the crimes Israel commits.

Unsurprisingly this move did not work at all, and the Israeli government has seemingly rejected it entirely. “There will be no construction freeze in Judea and Samaria period,” declared Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party this week. Netanyahu also reportedly intervened to delay the demolition of an illegally constructed building in Jerusalem. In reference to the West Bank the Prime Minister also announced that “there is no substitute in any future scenario for our security control over the territory.”

This is diplomacy at work I guess.

At a State Department briefing on Monday Ned Price was asked if the administration was disappointed that the Blinken trip didn’t seem to change Israel’s behavior in any way and he did his usual thing:

On the trip, and before and since, the Secretary, we, have consistently made the point that it is incumbent on the parties themselves to take steps to de-escalate what is a dangerous situation, what is an increasingly combustible situation as well.  On the trip, the Secretary underscored the urgent need for all parties to de-escalate to prevent the loss of further civilian life, and for both sides to work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank.  We believe that Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live in safety and security, and a key element of that is stemming this tide of violence.

After the trip, we continue to work closely with both Israelis and Palestinians to support their efforts to end this cycle of violence, and our overarching goal beyond the very near term, this immediate goal, is to support the de-escalation of tensions and to work with the parties to take action to lessen the violence, which has already taken far too many lives just at the beginning of this year as we look to advance the longer-term prospects of a negotiated two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians.

The “action” to lessen violence on Israel’s part is apparently just saying “please stop” in a very polite voice.

Odds & Ends

☪️ Sana Qutubuddin on what Rep. Ilhan Omar’s removal from the  House Foreign Affairs Committee means for American Muslims.

???????? Mitchell Plitnick on the recent Blinken trip. “Blinken’s approach here reflects the Biden administration’s decision to focus on the question of Israeli ‘democracy.’ The administration has chosen to focus its attention there because if Israel cannot be portrayed as a democracy, it makes covering for its crimes harder and generally complicates efforts by Democrats to maintain their blind support for it. This is in keeping with the Biden agenda of ignoring the Palestinians as much as possible, while trying to maintain the customary flow of economic, military, intelligence, and other cooperation.”

???????? Nikki Haley will reportedly announce that she’s running for president later this month. Haley was the first Governor to pass anti-BDS legislation, and has criticized AIPAC for being insufficiently loyal to Israel. As Trump’s ambassador to the UN she helped cut funding to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), led the effort to withdraw the United States from the UN Human Rights Council, and defended Israel killing more than 50 Palestinians at the Gaza border in 2018. Haley even threw a party for countries that refused to condemn the Trump administration for officially recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

???? Julia Bacha’s 2021 film Boycott will be available to stream on March 1. I reviewed the movie at the site last year.

???????? Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau has suspended institutional relations with Israel until the country puts an “end to the system of violations of Palestinian human rights and fully comply with the obligations imposed on them by international law and the various United Nations resolutions.”

???????? Good profile of Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American woman who was recently elected to Georgia’s House.

???? Great piece from Alex Kane at Jewish Currents on J Street’s balancing act:

The limits of J Street’s leftward shift were also on display at the conference in December. When the crowd filed out of the hall after Blinken’s speech, some attendees encountered a small group of students affiliated with J Street’s student wing, J Street U. The students handed out red flyers addressed to Blinken, demanding that the State Department “support an investigation into the murder” of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who Israeli soldiers shot and killed in May. While some of the messaging on the flyers echoed J Street’s own advocacy—the organization has also demanded an independent US investigation into the killing—other aspects departed from the official line. J Street has not used the word “murder” because they don’t see it as “particularly helpful,” according to Logan Bayroff, J Street’s vice president of communications. Aharon Dardik, a member of Columbia University’s J Street U chapter and one of the students who passed out the flyers, said that “while J Street is not in a position to push this more leftward message, J Street U very much can.” Still, the small action was not welcome at the conference. “Hotel security escorted them out, and they were reprimanded by J Street staff and told not to be disruptive at national events again, or they would face repercussions,” the junior J Street staffer said.

???? From a Rashida Tlaib fundraising email:

In January 2023 alone, Israeli soldiers killed at least 35 Palestinians, including 7 children, while invading Palestinian cities and refugee camps.

The United States is not only complicit in these war crimes. The soldiers are using U.S.-made weapons and our government keeps sending billions of our tax dollars to fund Israel’s human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

U.S. law requires all countries receiving U.S. military aid to meet human rights standards. And our government has enforced this, ending or reducing military aid to countries violating human rights—except for Israel.

In fact, U.S. political leaders have fought for years against the UN’s efforts to hold Israel accountable for its human rights violations. We must hold Israel to the same standards as other countries.

???? Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) promised “to work with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s new government to jointly address our shared challenges, including the threat from Iran.”

Stay safe out there,

Michael