A new lesson on the Civil Rights Movement in the US has been designed with Palestine in mind. According to one of its designers, the lesson is to be used in American History curriculum, World History curriculum and African American History curriculum.
Most worrying, the lesson designers are close pals with the Director of Social Studies Curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia.
Before looking at the ‘substance’ of the lesson plan, let’s look at the authors involved:
Adam Sanchez is a former School District of Philadelphia History teacher. He is also a managing editor for Rethinking Schools and a teacher leader for the Zinn Education Project.
Here is Sanchez giving testimony at a Philadelphia School Board Meeting back in May 2024. In his testimony he presents Hamas figures to accuse Israel, with US complicity, of committing genocide. He argues that these are indisputable facts. He says:
“…if the people pretending to care about antisemitism actually did, they would delink Judaism from the Israel..Israeli government’s horrific crimes. But that isn’t what these people want. They want to silence the movement that has erupted against US complicity and they are weaponizing antisemitism to go after the best anti-racist educators in Philadelphia. They are using an over broad definition of antisemitism in the same way racists use an over broad definition of critical race theory to shut down classroom discussion.”
Next up: Nick Palazzolo. Palazzolo teaches Social Studies at Central High School (Sanchez’s former school). Palazzolo had been a Prentiss Charney Fellow for Zinn Education Project - “The fellowship offers support for a cohort of people’s history educator leaders to study, learn, and organize together for one year.”
For Zinn Education Project - curriculum is an “act of resistance”…
In 2020, Palazzolo appeared before the Board of Education to demand a Director of Equity and Inclusion position at Central High School along with the following demands:
eliminate the use of standardized test scores for admissions to magnet schools,
reinstitute the use of race in the school selection process,
increase recruitment efforts from predominantly Black and Brown schools that are underrepresented,
abolish the use of testing as a barrier to entry to AP courses, and
create a Department of Equity and Inclusion at 440 instead of relying on unpaid, volunteer labor through the Equity Coalition.
Palazzolo also signed onto the Philadelphia Educators for Palestine list of demands:
Next: Hannah Gann, previously covered in this substack.
From Canary Mission:
“SDP history teacher Hannah Gann expressed support for Hamas terrorists in multiple 2024 Instagram posts.
One of Gann’s 2024 Instagram posts featured a graphic with an inverted red triangle (which has become a symbol of support for Hamas) with text that read: “you can’t support / palestinian liberation / without supporting / palestinian resistance.”
(“Resistance” is used as a euphemism for violence and terrorism.)
The statement continued: “reject normalization / support the resistance.” The post featured an image of men with keffiyehs covering their faces.
Another one of Gann’s 2024 Instagram posts featured a pro-Hamas graphic titled: “DECOLONIZATION / IS A FORCE OF NATURE.” The graphic showed a hand emerging from underground while holding a weapon in a raised first, alluding to Hamas terror tunnels. The graphic also showed paragliders descending from the air, alluding to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023.”
“On October 9, 2023, two days after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, Ridgeway shared [slide 31] on her Instagram Story highlights a statement from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) titled, “THE ROOT OF VIOLENCE IS OPPRESSION” that justified Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel.
The JVP statement referred [slide 3] to Hamas terrorists as “Palestinian fighters” and claimed [slide 4] “Israeli apartheid and occupation - and the United States complicity in that oppression - are the source of all this violence.”
Social media post from Philly teacher Keziah Ridgeway
In September 2024, the National Postreported that Ridgeway threatened the parents of Jewish students, according to a legal complaint lodged by the Deborah Project, a public interest law firm, on behalf of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.
In an August 31, 2024 post, Ridgeway posted [p. 7] a graphic that read, “Ain’t no fun when the 🐇 got the 🤫,” referring to a gun.
In a September 3, 2024 post, Ridgeway wrote [p. 8], “Black owned 🔫shops in or near Philly? Asking for a friend.”
Social media post from Philly teacher Keziah Ridgeway
The complaint also took issue with Ridgeway naming previously anonymous SDP Jewish Family Association leaders on social media. In one post, Ridgeway wrote (p.6): “Part 1. I asked y’all nicely to leave me alone. I asked y’all nicely to keep my name out y’all mouth. Now I’m taking my gloves off…”
At the beginning of September 2024, Ridgeway was reportedly “reassigned offsite” while on investigation into her conduct is taking place.”
According to Canary Mission, Ridgeway is a co-creator of the group “Philadelphia Educators for Palestine.”
Here’s a photo of Jimenez, Ridgeway and Gann together
So now that we have the ideological background of the curriculum’s authors and their ties to the Director of Social Studies Curriculum for the Philadelphia School District - let’s have a look at the curriculum they’ve designed.
The Zinn Education Project makes it very clear that curriculum materials should not be shared on social media (I wonder why…) so instead I’ll provide a summary of what I’ve read:
The course is called “Teaching Palestine-Israel from the Perspective of Civil Rights and Black Power Activists.”
You know you’re in for a balanced view of the Israel-Palestine conflict when the material opens with Mariam Barghouti…
The introduction to the class material goes on to say that while there had been a collaboration between black and Jewish activists in the civil rights movement, the
“Black freedom struggle took a decisive anti-imperialist turn in the late 1960s…Israel’s preemptive strikes against its Arab neighbors in the June 1967 (“Six-Day”) War and its subsequent occupation of Palestinian territories encouraged many to speak out for the first time.”
The framing is clear already.
“Black Power activists increasingly saw the Palestinians as allies in a common struggle against a global U.S. empire driven by and for racial capitalism. They attempted to build solidarity to highlight what they viewed as the racism inherent in the occupation of Palestine and the colonialism inherent in the subjugation of Black Americans.”
“After exploring Black views on Palestine-Israel in the 1960s and 1970s, students join this complex conversation through role play, imagining the positions that they would take if they were leading an organization fighting for racial equality in the United States in 1975, when the United Nations considered Resolution 3379, declaring that Zionism is a form of racism.”
“There have been powerful expressions of solidarity with Palestinians from Black intellectual and political leaders such as Michelle Alexander, Angela Davis, Ilhan Omar, Alice Walker, and Cornel West as well as organizations like the Movement for Black Lives. At the same time, other Black leaders, like those in the Congressional Black Caucus who visited Israel on a delegation organized by the lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, continue to support what they call “Israel’s right to self-defense.””
The lesson should take up to 2 - 4 class periods. Materials needed for the class include:
- Copies of “Civil Rights, Black Power and Palestine-Israel” for every student. Enough copies of the six Palestine-Israel perspectives . For the Extension Activity: Copies of “UN Resolution 3379 — Timeline and Justification” for every student.
The six Palestine-Israel perspectives referred to are : Malcolm X, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Martin Luther King Jr, Bayard Rustin, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, The Black Panther Party.
Of those perspectives, only Rustin is decidedly pro-Israel and his support is characterized as out of necessity for maintaining Jewish support and jettisoning his pacifist principles.
According to the lesson plan, the NAACP also initially supported Israel because of Jewish financial support (and a mention that Jews had been founding members of NAACP) however they “moderated” their position in the 1970s when they called for the US to negotiate with the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Here is how the lesson authors characterized the Executive Director of the NAACP’s never published statement on Israel in 1948 - “Seemingly unwilling to recognize Arab grievances as anything other than a hatred of Jews, Wilkins continued, deploying Islamophobic rhetoric, “Never again must it be possible for 14 nations, united only in a common and fanatic hatred of a people and its religion, to surround, militarily, another nation and announce brazenly to a stunned world that their concerted mission is one of extermination.”
The lead-up to the lesson includes providing “context” of the conflict, including the “Nakba” and key terms - including imperialism, antisemitism, islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism (check-points are characterized as racist).
The goal of the lesson is to look at how different black leaders and movements views the Israel-Palestine conflict, why they thought their position was advantageous to their own movement and how it connects to the Black freedom struggle.
In the extra lesson on the UN declaration of Zionism as Racism, students are asked to consider :
“Would calling Zionism “racism” help fight racism in the United States? If so, how? Is there a risk in doing so?”
and:
“How do debates about Palestine-Israel amongst Black leaders and organizations in the 1960s and 1970s relate to what’s going on today?”
This lesson is freely available for teachers to use (according to Rethinking Schools, over 100 000 educators have signed up for free teacher resources from Zinn Education Project) and will soon be part of the “Teach Palestine” book being put out by Rethinking Schools.
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Here’s my summary:
Arabs, who love enslaving black Africans and converting them by force to Islam have contempt and hate for black people.
Jews welcome their Ethiopian brothers as a part of the same people
The end.
Sick hypocrisy.