Just two months after the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) voted in favor of a ceasefire resolution labeling Israel’s defensive war against Hamas as “a genocidal war on the Palestinian people,” the union has once again engaged in the demonization and delegitimization of Israel.
On March 21st, the MTA hosted a two-hour webinar titled “Context and Connection: Palestinian Struggle Against Anti-Palestinian Racism.” Merrie Najimy, a Concord Public Schools educator and former MTA president, facilitated the webinar featuring presenters Leila Farsakh, Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UMass Boston; Heike Schotten, Professor of Political Science, Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UMass Boston and founding member of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism; and Elsa Auerbach, professor emerita at UMass Boston and Jewish Voice for Peace Boston.
Najimy claimed to provide a “framework” for understanding anti-Palestinian racism. In fact, the one-sided panel of radical speakers offered a recitation of crude anti-Israel propaganda. Racism, in their view, is any attempt by the Jewish people to fulfill their right to self-determination and the state of Israel to defend itself from attack by Arab countries and terrorist organizations. Not surprisingly, the Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7th was mentioned just three times, all to make false claims about the history of the conflict and of the massacre itself.
Farsakh spoke of the supposed “rise in violence against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” downplaying the October 7th terrorist attack by referring to it as the “event of October 7th” while calling Israel’s defensive actions “the massacre that followed,” diminishing the terrorist attack while calling Israel’s defensive war the massacre. Najimy called for a ceasefire, an end to what she termed genocide, and the release of both Israeli and Palestinian captives, equating Israeli hostages to Palestinian prisoners.
The panelists emphasized the idea that Israel and, as Schotten put it, the “so-called United States,” are settler colonial states and argued that anti-Zionism should not be equated with anti-Semitism. Intentionally disregarding major events in the Hamas-Israeli conflict and manufacturing absurd historical claims, the panelists promoted a narrative of Palestinian victimhood at the hands of Israeli oppression. Presenters falsely claimed the people living in the mandate during the 1920s were “Jewish Arabs, Muslim Arabs, and Christian Arabs.”
The panel never mentions the ancient, indigenous, and continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel—where only the Jewish people have ever established an enduring sovereignty—and the vast archeological and historical evidence attesting to the Israel-Jewish connection. The speakers misleadingly stated that the many wars launched by Israel’s Arab neighbors “erupted” as if they came out of nowhere. They even redefined the Jewish people as only consisting of a religion, ignoring Jewish ethnic and national identities.
When an audience member asked whether Israel had a right to exist, Schotten was silent, seemingly unable to say yes; so Farsakh injected that Oslo conferred the right and diverted her response to insisting that Zionism is “exclusionary,” ignoring the equal rights enjoyed by all its citizens, Jewish and Arab. She then stated it is necessary to “separate the Israelis from the state.”
Trafficking in antisemitic tropes, Schotten showed a slide of Jewish organization logos and stated that the criticism of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism is made by “boatloads of pseudo-grassroots organizations” and “billionaires with lots of money to influence presidential elections.”
MTA Union President Max Page stated that the association would also provide a webinar on “the rising tide of antisemitism” in the future. This is risible.
In promoting anti-Semitic propaganda, the MTA is in no position to explain anti-Semitism to anyone. Worse, it has encouraged teachers to spread falsehoods and lies demonizing Israel and Jews in their classrooms and has proven itself to be an extremist, divisive organization fostering anti-Jewish prejudice in schools rather than providing historical and factual accuracy for understanding an ongoing conflict or reducing bigotry.
MTA needs to issue a full and factual retraction of the material falsehoods and defamation of the Jewish people disseminated to the public in its March 21st webinar and promptly provide a date—with equal time and prominence—for a public webinar comprised of knowledgeable speakers on the subject of Israel and the Hamas-Israeli conflict to help repair the harm done to public understanding by the MTA.
Teachers, parents, students, and all citizens of Massachusetts have reason to be profoundly alarmed by the MTA’s influence on the Commonwealth’s public schools and the wider community. Swift action is needed to signal the rejection of the MTA’s bigoted messages and ensure measures prevent such messages from entering classrooms.
