Jewish leaders and concerned parents in Portland, Oregon are accusing the local teachers’ union of indoctrinating students with anti-Israel messages and engaging in one-sided, pro-Palestinian activism as the war in Gaza continues to rage.
Last week, the Portland Association of Teachers held a pro-Palestinian advocacy meeting where members were urged to display Palestinian flags in their classrooms, according to a report in the Oregonian newspaper. Union members were also urged to wear T-shirts that read “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – an antisemitic slogan the refers to the elimination of Israel, which is home to nearly half of the world’s Jews.
The meeting comes after the union recently released a guide that instructed teachers on how to get involved in Pro-Palestinian organizing and how to inject their lessons for children as young as preschool with anti-Israel messages.
The 32-page guide, “Know Your Rights! Teaching & Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools,” was published last month by the Oregon Educators for Palestine in collaboration with the teachers’ union. It offers legal advice to educators “teaching about the genocide in Palestine,” and advice on how to teach about the ongoing conflict.
At one point, it recommends teaching students that “Palestinian resistance is a political struggle for self-determination against colonial and apartheid rule.”
The teaching guide does not mention that Gaza is governed by Hamas, which the U.S. designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. And critics note that while it focuses on the plight of Palestinians, it makes no mention of Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7, which killed about 1,200 innocent people, mostly Israeli civilians, and led to the war.
The guide accuses Israel of engaging in “settler colonialism” and says that the “Zionist settler colonization of Palestine has been widely compared to settler colonialism in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere.”
It defines “anti-Zionism” as the “rejection of Jewish separatism and nationalism — specifically through the colonial creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine — as a solution to the problem of antisemitism.”
The guide urges English language arts teachers to utilize pro-Palestinian texts in class. A supplemental guide offers lesson plans for students from preschool through high school.
For younger students, the guide recommends lessons, books, and videos from various far-left education outfits, including Woke Kindergarten, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Social Justice Books. It includes a visual guide titled “So You Made it to a Protest!” and “Lil Comrade Convos,” which urges young kids to discuss “power.”
Older students are directed to lessons on “Renewable Energy in occupied Palestine,” “Unions,” “Genocide of Palestinians,” “Queer Voices From the Fight For Palestine Liberation,” and “No Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom for Palestinian Women.”
A lesson titled “Whose Terrorism?” aims to allow students to “critically analyze the way the word ‘terrorism’ affects the lives of individuals by asking who is being terrorized and why.”
The guide claims that district leaders have been censoring and harassing teachers, including by deeming the “From the river to the sea” slogan as hate speech, and allowing “Zionist parents and community members to harass, watch, and record Pro-Palestinian student activities on PPS school property.”
While targeted at Portland teachers, the guide notes that it may be relevant to “educators all across Oregon.”
David Kosak, a Portland rabbi, told the Oregonian that the guide and lesson plans seek to “inculcate and indoctrinate” students into one set of views, and they are “laying the groundwork for every increasing amounts of hatred of Jews.”
Angela Bonilla, the teachers’ union president, told the paper that the guide is designed to support the rights of educators who want to teach the Palestinian perspective, which is often disregarded. She denied that the messages in it are antisemitic.
“We are vehemently against any forms of bigotry, including antisemitism,” she told the paper.