Teachers Associations Ramp Up Anti-Israel Activism in 2025 - Example: Oregon Educators for Palestine bully the Portland Public School Board to recognize Anti-Palestinian Racism,
Seems like their new year's resolution is to focus even more on activism and even less on our children's education in 2025.
First up, the Oregon Educators for Palestine are calling on activists to push Anti-Palestinian Racism in schools.
They want activists to attend the Portland Public School Meeting today, January 7th - they encourage teachers, students and parents to wear masks, keffiyahs and bring signs to show their opposition to “Zionist repression” and “censorship.”
This is another attempt to get schools to recognize Anti-Palestinian Racism - following the Massachusetts Teachers Association webinar on Anti-Palestinian Racism, training on APR at Balboa High School and complaints to the Dept of Education - Office of Civil Rights to get APR recognized and implemented in schools.
The definition of APR censors any discussion of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that does not stick to one particular pro-Palestine narrative: The Nakba cannot be debated, Israel must be recognized as a settler-colonial state; violence against Palestinians can never be justified and Palestinian violence should only be understood as the “oppressed’s” response to its “oppressor.” In other words, while railing against “Zionist repression” - these activists seek to limit what is acceptable to teach and discuss in the classroom and to forward a narrative which demonizes and delegitimizes Israel and Jewish history in Israel.
Next, Oakland Educators for Palestine, part of the Oakland Educators Association, is holding a “Teaching Palestine in 2025: Know your Rights” workshop on January 16th.
Notably - this meeting will be held at the OEA office. It has the endorsement of the association.
On the agenda: The ongoing “genocide” in Gaza; activism for divestment; and the Oakland Unified School District’s “repression of Palestinian solidarity.”
And bolstered by the American Historical Association’s laughable resolution to recognize “scholasticide” in Gaza -without mentioning Hamas and the attacks on Israeli schools and universities, the MTA Rank and File for Palestine and NYC Educators for Palestine see an opening to pressure schools to recognize the same and to “stop disciplining teachers” who have “recognized and condemned genocide.”
The idea of overwhelming support for the resolution is, thus far, a mischaracterization. The AHA has 10,500 members - the vote on this resolution was 428 for and 88 opposed. The resolution may still be struck down if the AHA council vetoes it, refuses it or passes it on to the entire AHA membership for a vote.
The American Historical Association includes K-12 teachers. Indeed, its recent conference, at which this resolution was proposed, included many programs dedicated to K-12 teaching. For the full convention program, see here (as far as I can see, there were no sessions on any aspect of Israeli history besides the “Nakba”)
You might recognize Ismael Jimenez’s name. He is the Director of Social Studies Curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia. As covered in this substack, he has a history of anti-Israel activism, has justified October 7th, and supported extreme anti-Israel teacher Keziah Ridgeway.
The takeaway - activists in Oakland have the support of their teachers association, activists in Philadelphia have the support of administrators in their district, and activists are hijacking the agendas of not only teachers associations but also those like the AHA - all to the detriment of K-12 education.
Linguistic inversion is the main tool used (it is the identifier of post modernism in action for those who recognize it). In the case of education, it only takes a few activists in accreditation or a position of Board authority to then pollute the entire profession over time to get any linguistic fiction taught as fact. And that's how institutional capture happens.
The activism hides behind highly negative terms like discrimination, colonialism, racism, bigotry, misogyny, '-phobia' and so, which is then used by the activists to forward the idea of getting Good People together to fight against them, usually with the term 'combatting'. Why, it's the New Civil Rights movement, you see. That's where the 'warrior' part of social 'justice' emerges. And who doesn't want to be a goo person fighting injustice... especially when it is made so easy by the activists.
Whatever follows the negative term is the promotion of exactly what the term means, while the inversion is getting these Good People to then become the frontline soldiers to promote it in the name of fighting it. It's brilliant. Combatting discrimination, for example, means promoting very real discrimination in order to be considered a Good Person (an 'ally' on the 'right side of history'), for example.
This is how its done. We see the same playbook for every aspect of social 'justice' activism. It works. It fools the majority of people... especially good people. And all of it is deeply socially malignant.