by Richard L. Cravatts
Getting them while they’re young.
The cognitive war against Israel, a campaign on college campuses for
well over a decade, has helped in positioning the Jewish state as an
alleged racist, colonial oppressor of an innocent indigenous people, an
illegal regime that exists on land wrongly confiscated from
Palestinians.
Zionism, it is alleged, is a corrosive political ideology that
inspires both the creation of an apartheid nation and the undiminished
lust for more Palestinian land for a Greater Israel.
In this narrative, the Palestinians are cast as perennial victims
whose human and civil rights are deprived for them due to white
supremacy, racism, and the predations of an Israeli military that
brutally enforces this unjust, illegal state of affairs.
Activists, both on and off campus, have been successful in promoting
this flawed and factually inaccurate narrative, but the perceived
injustices being done to the ever-aggrieved Palestinians resonates with
young liberal minds who have an understandable affinity for the underdog
and victim—especially if that bias and hatred are characterized by
racism and oppression—exactly how Israel is now mistakenly perceived by
many of its ideological foes.
Now, the same slanders, lies, and contortions of history and facts
about the Israeli/Palestinian debate are being introduced to younger
audiences with impressionable minds: school children.
A recent example of this troubling trend was revealed when critics
became aware that the Newark, New Jersey school board had included an
anti-Israel book on its mandatory reading list. The book, A Little Piece of Ground by
Elizabeth Laird, found its way into the sixth-grade English curriculum
for the 2022-23 school year, and, according to the description on
Amazon, “explores the human cost of the occupation of Palestinian lands
through the eyes of a young boy.”
Of course, the same premise that campus activists chant about when
they scream, “Free, free Palestine,” the factually false assertion that
the land allegedly occupied by Israel is or ever was Palestinian land,
is taken as truth, so Israel is already guilty in this narrative of
having stolen others’ land.
Moreover, the book depicts Israelis as a malign, brutal, militaristic
force that constrains the life of the young protagonist of this book in
a capricious and cruel way for which there is, of course, no context or
justification of why Israel had to occupy the land in the first place
or maintain barriers and checkpoints to deter terrorism.
Karim, the 12 year-old through whose eyes the book unfolds, complains
that his father is “humiliated” by having to go through Israeli
checkpoints, but young readers would have no way of knowing that the
reason such checkpoints exist is not because the IDF is sadistic and
wishes to inflict pain on the Palestinians, but because Israeli citizens
have seen decades during which psychopathic terrorists tried to kill
them with knives, suicide vests, rockets, mortars, and even vehicles in
discos, pizza parlors, cafes, and even in their homes as they slept.
Israelis are not even described in the book in ways that would make
them human. They are embodied in their military machinery, heartless,
sadistic, and deadly. “The Israeli tank that had been squatting at the
crossroads just below the apartment block for days now had moved a few
metres [sic] closer,” the reader is told. “He could imagine the great
armoured [sic] machines lying down there, like a row of green scaly
monsters, crouched waiting to crawl back up the hill and pin the people
of Ramallah down in their houses again . . . .”
When Israelis are not depicted as being mere extensions of war
machines, they are dehumanized in language which would justify terror
against them for their immoral, inhuman behavior. “Human?” Karim says.
“You call those settlers human?”
“In their eyes, we’re nothing — inferior, barely human,” Karim’s uncle says. “We’re not
bad,” Karim answers. “They are. Look how many Palestinian kids they’ve
murdered. We throw stones at them. They shoot bullets at us, to kill.”
Young Palestinian boys do throw rocks at Israeli soldiers and passing
cars, it is true. But omitted here is the inconvenient fact, for
instance, that, in addition to rock throwing, since Israel disengaged
from Gaza in 2005, Hamas terrorists have launched over 25,000 rockets
and mortars into southern Israeli towns with the express purpose of
murdering Jews, not to mention the random terror attacks against Israeli
civilians by individual terrorists with guns, knives, and explosives
within Israel proper and in the West Bank.
In justifying the inclusion of this book on a school reading list, a
spokesperson for the district commented that the book’s addition to the
curriculum was appropriate because it “elevates historically marginalized voices,
strengthens and sustains a focus on the instructional core and provides
opportunities to learn about perspectives beyond one’s own scope.
[emphasis added]” Of course, critical race theory (CRT), which has also
been popularized in public schools, elevates historically marginalized
voices in the same way, except in the case of CRT it is white people,
not Jews, who are the oppressors and people of color, not Arabs, who are
the perennial victims of this racist oppression.
In a letter to Newark’s superintendent of schools criticizing the
adoption of this book, Morton Klein and Susan Tuchman of the Zionist
Organization of America (ZOA) pointed out that students will form a
false and negative perception of Israel and Jews after reading this
book. Why? Because, as they pointed out in their letter, the author was
“clever, repeatedly sending the false and outrageous message to her
young readers that Israelis are heartless and cruel, that their goal is
to humiliate Palestinian Arabs and make their lives a misery, and that
Jews are stealing other people’s land.”
They pointed to such inflammatory and biased passages as, “[T]he
Israelis won’t be happy until they’ve driven us all out and grabbed
every inch of Palestine for themselves.” “Israeli soldiers,” they
wrote, are ‘playing with us. They’re the cats and we’re the mice.’
Israelis are described as ‘the enemy,’ as ‘occupiers,’ and as
‘animals.’” “Students will also come away thinking that terrorism and
violence against innocent Jews and Israelis are legitimate and even
desirable,” they pointed out. “Laird repeatedly refers to terrorists who
have harmed and murdered Jews and Israelis as heroes and martyrs.”
Given that this may be the only account sixth graders ever read about
the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it is more than likely that students
will absorb this malignant picture of Israel, Zionism, and Jews and
carry it forward to high school and college.
In Los Angeles, a school system that serves some 664,000 students, a
similar troubling process is taking place in which an ethnic studies
curriculum also positions Zionism in a negative light; accuses Israel of
embodying a white supremacist, racist, colonial regime; and draws
parallels between the system of apartheid allegedly inflicted on the
Palestinians at the hands of Jews with the apartheid that actually took
place in South Africa.
In fact, the perfidious ethnic studies curriculum being proposed for
California’s public schools was so outrageous and one-sided against
Israel and Jews themselves, that a lawsuit
has been filed on behalf of the plaintiffs by the Deborah Project to
enjoin those responsible for conceiving of this mendacious, even
malicious curriculum.
The case, Concerned Jewish Parents and Teachers of Los Angeles,
et al Plaintiffs, v. Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum
Consortium; United Teachers of Los Angeles; et al, denounces the
sections of the curriculum related to the Jewish state, claiming that,
“It falsely and libelously makes the accusation and teaches and attempts
to teach California’s public school teachers and children that the
Jewish state commits unspeakable crimes including genocide, ethnic
cleansing, land theft, and the imposition of apartheid, all of which
accusations are false.”
The progressive activism is suggested in the very name of the primary
Defendant, the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium
(LESMC). It is a group of radical educators pushing its own narrative
instead of facts, which includes, as one of the Complaint’s exhibits
revealed, an ideology that involves the language of Marxist radicalism,
to “Critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism,
patriarchy, and heteropatriarchy” while “Challeng[ing]
imperialist/colonial hegemonic beliefs and practices on the ideological,
institutional, interpersonal, and internalized levels.”
And the purpose of this liberated curriculum? To transform educators
and students into activists for progressive change, to “connect
ourselves to past and contemporary resistance movements that struggle
for social justice on the global and local levels.” Since when is it
appropriate for students to be recruited into a resistance movement by
radical teachers?
In the struggle for social justice, Jews and Israel, of course, are
cast as oppressors of “people of color,” “brown” Palestinians, so among
its other defects, the curriculum, the Complaint contended, “. . .
falsely and libelously makes the accusation and teaches and attempts to
teach California’s public school teachers and children that the Jewish
state commits unspeakable crimes including genocide, ethnic cleansing,
land theft, and the imposition of apartheid, all of which accusations
are false.”
Defendants nonetheless assert in the LESMC that “the Jews of Israel .
. . are ‘white’ and that their presence there is solely a function of
the ‘fact’ that they are ‘colonialists.’” As they frequently are on
college campuses now, Jews are said to enjoy “white privilege” and
therefore, especially if they support Israel, are not considered a
victim group worthy of or needing protection. In LESMC’s
oppressor/oppressed narrative, Jews are part of the racist oppressor
group and, according to the Complaint, “Defendants call these people
‘white’ because in the eyes of the Defendants they are oppressors and
they are oppressors only because they are Jews.”
The danger of superimposing activism and radical ideology on a
curriculum is that it teaches feelings rather than facts, narratives
rather than history. “Defendants are injecting their views into the
LAUSD curriculum—views which are, by design, racist—with the intention
of driving Zionist ideas out of the public square, and to make it
impossible for people committed to Zionism to manifest that commitment
publicly,” the Complaint contended. LESMCC’s “ultimate goal is, as they
proclaim, to transform all public school students into ‘social justice
warriors’ who will espouse, and act on, the political opinions held by
the individual Defendants in this case and espoused by all Defendants.”
Typical of other anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activists, the
Defendants focus their opprobrium on the Jewish state alone, ignoring
human rights abuses by authoritarian regimes around the world with far
worse records than Israel’s. Working definitions of anti-Semitism have
designated that holding Israel to a standard different than behavior
expected of other countries, that is, selectively criticizing Israel
alone, is, in fact, anti-Semitic. The Complaint noted that “Defendants
and the LESMC vilify and demonize no other foreign state in the world . .
. Ignoring, and thereby tacitly condoning the worst human rights
abusing nations in the world, the LESMC instructs Los Angeles public
schoolchildren only to revile and reject Israel.”
Even Zionism—Jewish self-determination—is attacked in this
curriculum. “The LESMC,” the Complaint notes, “also explicitly denounces
the Jewish religious principle of Zionism, proclaiming falsely both
that Zionism is morally wrong and that it is not actually a tenet of the
Jewish religion.” As other critics of Israel do, Zionism is falsely
framed as a political ideology alone, one that is based on the illegal
acquisition of territory and the subjugation of the indigenous
Palestinian people through occupation and control. Just as Jew-haters
are quick to define what does and does not constitute anti-Semitism,
activists also feel free to define what Zionism is, although never in a
positive way.
The Complaint confirmed as much when it observed that the curriculum
“denounces as morally reprehensible an idea, a form of ethnic identity,
and a religious commitment, that is, and has for millennia been,
central to Jewish belief, Jewish practice, and Jewish identity: the
commitment to Zion and to the return of the Jewish people to the land of
Israel, their ancestral homeland, and the reconstitution and the
defense of a sovereign Jewish state in that homeland.”
Teaching children tolerance for historically marginalized or
mistreated ethnic groups is certainly a worthwhile and valuable goal for
educators. Unfortunately, when teachers see themselves as agents of
social change and feel entitled to promote radical, progressive ideology
to young minds then students are not being taught tolerance and
acceptance, they are being indoctrinated.
And in an era that has seen a frightening spike in the number of
anti-Jewish hate crimes—far in excess of those against any other ethnic
group—curricula that vilify, slander, and malign Israel, Zionism, and
Jews themselves will likely see a new generation of students schooled in
hate and made to absorb the bias and hatreds of their teachers.
Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and
President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the
author of the forthcoming book, The Slow Death of the University: How
Radicalism, Israel Hatred, and Race Obsession are Destroying Academia.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/indoctrinating-school-children-to-hate-israel-and-jews/
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It
seems the Democrats cannot tell the truth. While Republicans have their
share of liars, they have not made lying the strongest plank of their
agenda. When Republicans lose, they blame themselves, or when elections
are tainted, they rightly blame the election apparatus. But Democrats
lie as their agenda. They must. Their agenda is so repressive, so
unjust, so repulsive, that they must disguise it to be palatable to
their voters. Lying is essential to the Democrat politician and media
sources so that no truth regarding their aspirations to totalitarianism
will be revealed. It is necessary for Democrats to lie and obfuscate. It
is the only way they can win.
