"The California Department of Education is currently reviewing a new proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) that is not just anti-Israel but downright anti-Semitic by any meaningful definition. This includes the standard definition used by the federal government; the 31 governments that are members of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance; all 50 countries, except Russia, that comprise the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; and the governments of the United Kingdom, Romania, Austria, Germany, and Bulgaria. The proposed curriculum, which was allegedly designed to "aid in the eradication of bigotry, hate, and racism," instead signals that some forms of bigotry are to be accepted without question.
I cannot believe I have to say this, but, regardless of one's politics, anti-Semitism is wrong, and it should not be tolerated, let alone taught.
Here are the facts:
The ESMC is rightly concerned with the importance of studying hate crimes, bias, prejudice, and discrimination, but astonishingly, it completely omits the concept of anti-Semitism. For the record, according to a recent FBI report, the majority of religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States are committed against Jewish people. In fact, since the FBI began reporting these statistics in 1993, there has not been a single year in which Jewish people were not the victims of the majority of religiously motivated hate crimes. And, yet, Jews make up only roughly 2% of the US population.
Far from teaching about the evils of anti-Semitism, the curriculum actually singles out Jews and the lone Jewish state for special condemnation. Among many other things, it refers to Israel as an apartheid regime without even attempting to give any evidence, support, or context for that vicious slander. It refers to the creation of Israel by the Arabic term nakba (disaster) without mentioning that there might be another side to that story. It promotes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, an international effort whose ultimate goal is to delegitimize and destabilize the State of Israel. It should be noted that BDS has been a significant factor in the recent trend of anti-Semitic incidents both globally and domestically, and has been repeatedly and demonstrably linked to radical terror groups...
The fight against anti-Semitism has nothing to do with any notion of Jewish exceptionality, and everything to do with good old-fashioned American equality as well as the pursuit of justice and fair play for all people. Hatred and discrimination, including subtle forms of hatred that masquerade as school curricula, ultimately lead to violence, just like it did in Poway, California, this past April. Let us pray that the state learns that lesson and corrects this noxious mistake before it is too late."