Introduction

Previous CAMERA reports have documented how anti-Israel activists, through teacher-training sessions, have sought to enlist teachers in the promotion of anti-Israel propaganda in the classroom, including by erroneously casting Israel as an aggressor state while reframing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement aimed at eradicating the State of Israel as a positive social movement. This troubling development has become more evident in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre of Israelis and an explosion of antisemitic incidents in the United States in recent years. The ADL reported a total of 8,873 such incidents in 2023, the highest number of incidents recorded by the ADL since the organization started tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979. These antisemitic incidents have occurred not only on university campuses, but also in primary and secondary schools. According to the ADL, the number of antisemitic incidents in K-12 schools increased nationally by 135% from 495 incidents in 2022 to 1,162 incidents in 2023. California has experienced the greatest number of antisemitic incidents of any state in the country (1,266 incidents in 2023). Based on documents received as a result of a FOIA request filed by Zachor Legal that were subsequently shared with CAMERA, this report documents how anti-Israel propaganda has infiltrated classrooms in two California school districts: Dublin Unified and New Haven Unified. This propaganda includes the following:

• Inaccurately depicting Israel as an expansionist power stealing Palestinian land.
• Falsely accusing the State of Israel of indiscriminately killing and ethnically cleansing Palestinian civilians.
• Promoting books, documentaries, and organizations that are biased against the State of Israel.
• Whitewashing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement aimed at eradicating the State of Israel.
• Omitting contemporary manifestations of antisemitism.

Dublin Unified School District

Inaccurate Depiction of Israel

Slide 7 of a PowerPoint presentation, “Week 11: October 16-20: Ethnic Studies,” taught by a “Mx. Tombs” features the following series of maps frequently utilized in one form or another by anti-Israel detractors falsely alleging an expansionist Israel is illegitimately gobbling up stolen Palestinian land:

These maps are problematic for a number of reasons:

Map #1

The first map

• dishonestly uses an outdated map seemingly based on land purchases from the 1920s by the Jewish National Fund to suggest that such purchases represent the totality of the Jewish presence in the land.
• conflates private property with political control, since pre-1948 Palestine was controlled by neither Jews nor Arabs, but rather by the British Mandatory government.
• falsely suggests Arabs held much more private property in the land when a realistic map of private property in the land at this time should show only small patches of private Jewish land and private Arab land.

Map #2

The second map shows the UN Partition Plan of UN Resolution 181 adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1947 calling for the formation of an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state, but omits Palestinian Arab leadership’s rejection of UN Resolution 181 and Arab attacks on Jewish civilians as well as the decision by Arab states to launch an invasion of the nascent State of Israel.

Map #3

The third map is problematic in that it purports to show Israel further encroaching on “Palestinian land” in 1967, failing to note that this land had been occupied by Arab armies since 1949 following their invasion of the territory. While the territory came under Israel’s control following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel withdrew from 90% of the land it occupied following this war, leaving the Sinai in order to make peace with Egypt, belying the false portrait of Israel as an expansionist aggressor.

Map #4

The fourth map is problematic in that it suggests Israel is growing its control over Palestinian territory when, in fact, the part of the West Bank labeled “Palestinian” are areas designated to be controlled by the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s mostly as part of the 1995 Oslo II agreement. This situation was intended to be a temporary arrangement until a final status agreement could be reached, but this final status has not been achieved due in large part to Palestinian leaders’ rejection of a state on the Gaza Strip and the vast majority of the West Bank and decision to support a suicide bombing campaign against Israelis. This map further obscures the fact that following an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Palestinian political leadership divided between the internationally-recognized terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Fatah-controlled regime in the West Bank.

As Shany Mor has remarked,

Taken together, what we have is not four maps in a chronological series, but four different categories of territorial control presented with varying degrees of inaccuracy. Those categories are private property, political control, and international partition plans. They are presented in a fashion that is either tendentiously inaccurate, essentially mendacious, or radically untrue.[1]

False Accusations

Slide 9 of the same PowerPoint presentation includes an Al Jazeera report that falsely claims, “Israel said it has dropped 6,000 bombs weighing 4,000 tonnes on Gaza in the past six days. That is nearly the number of bombs the US dropped on Afghanistan in an entire year.”

The United States actually dropped 17,500 munitions in approximately 76 days of war.[2]

Slide 11 features an article referencing Francesca Albanese, who “warns of new instance of [Israeli] mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

However, the slide fails to provide any substantiation for this charge, which is addressed further below, while simultaneously overlooking Albanese’s many problematic activities documented by CAMERA. For example, Albanese tweeted Holocaust denier, Sarah Wilkinson.

Albanese has also described antisemitic remarks made by UN commissioner Miloon Kothari as “fully and disingenuously mischaracterized.”

Promoting Biased Materials and Organizations

Dublin Unified School District has also promoted curricular materials that are biased against the State of Israel, including documentaries and an organization.

Documentaries

Slide 13 of the same PowerPoint presentation discussed above recommends the documentaries 5 Broken Cameras and Occupation 101, which CAMERA has reviewed here[3] and here.[4]

The former documentary deceptively edits scenes to falsely portray Israeli soldiers as responding brutally to peaceful Palestinian protesters. In fact, soldiers warned protesters in advance against engaging in violence and informed protesters in advance about what such violence would entail. The documentary also one-sidedly depicts the separation barrier Israel constructed as only an imposition on Palestinian lives, failing to inform viewers that Israel constructed the separation barrier to prevent further infiltration of Palestinian suicide bombers into Israel. The latter documentary presents a one-sided perspective depicting Palestinians solely as victims and Israelis as completely responsible for violent Palestinian behavior. In addition, it misinforms viewers by relating falsehoods, like the claim that the aforementioned separation barrier has involved Israel’s grabbing 42% of the West Bank, when the actual percentage is closer to 6%-8% of the territory.

Organization

Dublin Unified School District has also promoted organizations that are biased against Israel, like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which promotes the organization as a resource in the following graphic featured on Slide 14 of the aforementioned PowerPoint presentation urging students to “Contact Congress” in order to “urge them to take a stand against the United States’ military funding and supplying of weapons” to the State of Israel:

JVP has frequently expressed anti-Zionist views by using antisemitic tropes, defending purveyors of contemporary blood libels and claiming Jewish dual loyalty. Moreover, JVP has platformed terrorists and worked with individuals with links to violent extremism, such as Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) supermarket bomber Rasmea Odeh, whose 1969 bombing killed two Hebrew University students.[5] Examples of JVP’s extremism have been documented here.[6] JVP has also supported divestment and boycott campaigns targeting Israel.[7]

Omissions

Slides 28 and 29 of a PowerPoint presentation, “Week 17: December 4-8: Ethnic Studies,” taught by “Mx. Tombs” features the following description of Refaat Alareer, in which Alareer is described in glowing terms as “a lifelong advocate for Gaza”:

This glowing description of Alareer omits many of his problematic statements documented by CAMERA, including the following:

Slide 33, “Independent Work Time,” includes action items, like “Make Art for Gaza Solidarity and Peace (optional)” and “Contact representatives for Ceasefire (optional)” (seen below), but does not feature any action items that call to make art for Israel solidarity in the aftermath of the brutal massacre, rape, rocketing, and kidnapping of Israelis on October 7 nor does the slide feature any call for the return of Israeli hostages:

New Haven Unified School District

Inaccurate Depiction of Israel

The document, “Copy of Copy of Palestine Resources,” features the following map that misrepresents the geography of the region in a manner similar to the map featured in the Dublin Unified School District PowerPoint presentation discussed earlier:

False Accusations

Slide 49 of the PowerPoint presentation, “Ethnic Studies: Slide Deck 1: Spring Semester 2k22,” features a map similar to these along with the false suggestion that Israel has been engaged in an “indigenous Holocaust” against the Palestinians:

In fact, as of 2013, the Palestinian Central Bureau indicated that the Palestinian population has grown eightfold following the State of Israel’s establishment. Similarly, the United States Census Bureau International Database indicates that since 1960, the population of the Gaza Strip has increased 600 percent.

Promoting Biased Materials and Organizations

Books

Slides 9 and 10 of the PowerPoint presentation, “My Father Dreams of His Homeland: Humanizing Palestinians through children’s literature,” recommend books that are biased against Israel, such as Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine and Baba, What Does My Name Mean? A Journey to Palestine. CAMERA has reviewed these books here and here, respectively. These books erase Israel and Hebrew from their texts and illustrations.

The author of Homeland, Hannah Moushabeck, has also shared posts on social media evincing an anti-Israel bias, including a post expressing “solidarity” with Ahed Tamimi, who was convicted of the crimes of incitement, obstructing a soldier, and aiding the attack of a soldier and who issued the following threat to Jews: “[W]e will slaughter you, and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke […] [W]e will drink your blood and eat your skull. Come on, we’re waiting for you.”

The “Middle East” section of the document, “Pagtakhan’s Top 10 books,” includes additional books that are biased against Israel, such as Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat and Habibi by Naomi Shihab-Nye. CAMERA has reviewed these books here and here, respectively. Tasting the Sky falsely suggests Israel aimed to dispossess Palestinians, but Barakat’s family was allowed to return to their home in Ramallah after four months and thirteen days, which would seem to belie that purported goal. Habibi distorts the historical meaning of the term “antisemitism.”

Organizations

Jewish Voice for Peace

In the document, “Resources for Educators to Support a Free Palestine,” Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is listed as a resource for educators to learn from. However, as mentioned above, JVP has used antisemitic tropes while defending others who do so and has platformed terrorists while partnering with violent extremists.

Rethinking Schools

The same document as well as an “Education Guide” also list as a resource for educators a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization, Rethinking Schools, purportedly dedicated to “strengthening public education through social justice teaching and education activism” and “promot[ing] equity and racial justice.” However, in the immediate days following the brutal massacring, torturing, raping, and kidnapping of Israeli citizens on October 7, Rethinking Schools published a post blaming Israel for the terrorist attacks committed on October 7 while failing to mention Hamas and other Palestinian perpetrators of the terrorist attacks against Israelis. In addition, Rethinking Schools references JVP while failing to acknowledge the problematic nature of the organization while also promoting problematic material from Samia Shoman and Jody Sokolower that has been critiqued by CAMERA. Shoman’s presentations have included the false claim that Israel forces Palestinians to buy provisions from Israeli stores and the erasure of Israel from a map of the Middle East. Sokolower’s problematic book, Determined to Stay, has been promoted by Teach Palestine as a curricular resource for teachers. Determined to Stay includes a number of false claims, including that “[For the Israelis,] there is no room for Canaanite, Palestinian, Phoenician, Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Arab, Muslim, and Christian names.” This claim is belied by the fact that Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum features Egyptian, Canaanite, and Babylonian artifacts, while Tel Aviv’s Eretz Israel Museum features a pre-Israelite era reconstructed house. Moreover, as CAMERA has already noted regarding the post by Rethinking Schools,

The post also obscures the fact that Israel aims to eliminate the terrorist organization Hamas, not kill innocent Palestinians civilians. It is precisely due to the Israeli government’s desire to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties that Israel is urging, not forcing, Palestinian civilians to leave northern Gaza, where Israel’s invasion will be focused, a warning intended to spare innocent Palestinian lives, which stands in marked contrast with the longstanding practice of Hamas of using its own civilians as human shields. While Rethinking School decries rhetoric by Israelis they deem dehumanizing of Palestinians (without providing any examples of such rhetoric), they fail to mention how Hamas has long dehumanized Israelis both through their rhetoric and behavior, including Hamas terrorists’ brutal butchering of Israeli civilians on October 7, burning alive and decapitating both young and old Israelis.[8]

Council on American-Islamic Relations

Slide 23 of the “Intro to Islamophobia PowerPoint” presentation references the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an authority without providing any context for the problematic nature of the organization.

Examples of the organization’s extremism, which have been documented by CAMERA,[9] include the organization’s opposition to legislation to “prohibit antisemitism in public schools and institutions of higher education”[10] and its executive director’s expressed support for the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023. This support was articulated in the following terms:

The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on October 7, and yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in, and yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense […] The Gazans were victorious.[11]

In response to these remarks, House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates stated, “We condemn these shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest terms.”[12]

Whitewashing the BDS Movement

In addition to promoting organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting the State of Israel, like JVP, a “Liberated Ethnic Studies Model C” document includes the following definition of BDS that whitewashes how BDS from the outset had as its aim the destruction of the Jewish state:

a global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions. Inspired by tactics employed during the South African anti-apartheid movement, the Palestinian-led movement calls for the boycott, divestment, and sanctioning of the Israeli government until it complies with International law. BDS proponents and organizers have called for the global community to boycott or withdraw support from Israel and companies associated with it. The second component of BDS calls for governments, banks, universities, and other institutions to withdraw monetary support (divestment) from Israel and its companies. And finally, the third component—sanctions—asks international governments to hold Israel accountable for its actions through legislation, trade and military agreements, among other measures.

Omissions

“Chapter Eleven: The Jews are Pushed from Russia” of the workbook, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, includes manifestations of anti-Judaism/antisemitism historically, but omits anti-Zionist antisemitism.

A PowerPoint presentation dated November 8, 2023 that was included as part of a “Teaching Through Fear: Educators Meeting the Moment on Palestine & Israel Teach-In Series” has a whole slide (16) with details pertaining to “Documenting anti-Palestinian, etc. Discrimination in schools,” but no comparable slide is provided on “Documenting antisemitic, etc. Discrimination in schools.”

Conclusion

As demonstrated by the above examples, anti-Israel propaganda has infiltrated classrooms in two California school districts: Dublin Unified and New Haven Unified. This propaganda

• misrepresents Israel as an expansionist power stealing Palestinian land.
• maligns Israel by claiming the IDF intentionally targets civilians.
• promotes books, documentaries, and organizations with an anti-Israel bias.
• whitewashes the BDS movement.
• omits contemporary examples of antisemitism.

With recent data indicating that only 31% of eighth-grade students in California are proficient in reading and only 26% are proficient in math, school districts would do well to focus on teaching, not propagandizing, students. Given the rise in antisemitism throughout the country, including in primary and secondary schools, teachers should ensure they are teaching facts, not falsehoods, about Jews and Israel while also ensuring that students are educated about antisemitism, including contemporary anti-Zionist manifestations.

[1] Shany Mor, “The Mendacious Maps of Palestinian ‘Loss,’” The Tower, Jan. 2015, https://www.thetower.org/article/the-mendacious-maps-of-palestinian-loss/.

[2] Gilead Ini, “With Additional WSJ Distortions, List of Manipulated Statistics Grows,” CAMERA, 19 April 2024, https://www.camera.org/article/with-additional-wsj-distortions-list-of-manipulated-statistics-grows/.

[3] Steven Stotsky, “Five Broken Cameras (2011),” CAMERA, 12 Nov. 2013, https://www.camera.org/article/film-review-5-broken-cameras/.

[4] Steven Stotsky, “Occupation 101 (2007),” CAMERA, 5 Jan. 2008, https://www.camera.org/article/film-review-occupation-101/.

[5] “Antisemitism and the Radical Anti-Israel Movement on U.S. Campuses, 2019,” Anti-Defamation League, 20 May 2020, https://www.adl.org/resources/report/antisemitism-and-radical-anti-israel-movement-us-campuses-2019.

[6] Ricki Hollander, “Updated: ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ (JVP): What the Media is Concealing,’” CAMERA, 30 Oct. 2023, https://www.camera.org/article/jewish-voice-for-peace-jvp-what-the-media-is-concealing/.

[7] Andrea Levin, “Munich and the Kushner Connection,” CAMERA, 4 Jan. 2006, https://www.camera.org/article/munich-and-the-kushner-connection/.

[8] “Rethinking Schools Needs a Rethink on Israel,” CAMERA, 24 Oct. 2023, https://www.camera.org/article/rethinking-schools-needs-a-rethink-on-israel/.

[9] Sean Durns, “The Washington Post Covers for CAIR, Again,” CAMERA, 15 Dec. 2023, https://www.camera.org/article/the-washington-post-covers-for-cair-again/.

[10] Ibrahim Hooper, “CAIR-NJ Action Alert: Tell NJ State Senate That Campus Opposition to Israel’s Human Rights Abuses Is Not Anti-Semitic,” Council on American-Islamic Relations, 8 July 2019, https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-nj-action-alert-tell-nj-state-senate-that-campus-opposition-to-israels-human-rights-abuses-is-not-anti-semitic/.

[11] “CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad at American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) Convention: I Was Happy to See the People of Gaza Break the Siege on October 7; They Were Victorious; The People of Gaza Have the Right to Self-Defense – Israel Does Not,” The Middle East Media Research Institute, https://www.memri.org/reports/cair-executive-director-nihad-awad-american-muslims-palestine-amp-convention-i-was-happy-see.

[12] Gabby Deutch, “White House Distances Itself from CAIR, Condemns Director’s ‘Antisemitic Statements,’” Jewish Insider, 7 Dec. 2023, https://jewishinsider.com/2023/12/white-house-distances-itself-from-cair-condemns-directors-antisemitic-statements/.