Monday marks the first anniversary of the Hamas slaughter of 1,300 innocent civilians in Israel. Yet as shocking as that attack was to the human conscience, the subsequent reaction to the massacre may be a more widespread and terrifying legacy.
The victim-blaming began almost immediately, as student groups at elite universities published florid diatribes downplaying the attack while the tortured bodies of women, children and the elderly were still being identified.
Columbia University students trumpeted “a counter-offensive” against Israel, the Palestinians’ “settler-colonial oppressor.” At Harvard, a consortium of 31 student groups said they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
Campus protests metastasized rapidly nationwide, with pro-Hamas demonstrators regularly invoking blood libel, the Holocaust and the elimination of the Jewish state.
But how did this prejudice go from zero to 60 seemingly overnight? Is there something about the American college experience that transforms students into antisemites when they move into their freshman dorms?
Radical professors and social media have played a role in fomenting this hatred. But in truth, the ideological seeds of extremism were planted long before freshman orientation — and usually paid for with public tax dollars.
Bigotry is not innate; it is learned.
And what has unfolded in higher education is the culmination of lessons taught during our students’ K-12 years, by elementary and high-school educators who have allowed antisemitism to flourish under the banner of progressive ideals.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives and ethnic studies curricula bear much of the blame. These programs teach children to categorize people as either “oppressed” or “oppressor,” assigning moral value based on characteristics like race, religion, immigration status and sexual preference.
They have conditioned our students to view society through the lens of constant conflict and subjugation, as they push harmful stereotypes of collective guilt and innocence.
Under the warped nature of this framework, Jews are coded as “privileged” because they are considered “white” — ignoring thousands of years of violent persecution as well as basic facts (almost 30% of the global Jewish population is non-white).
Race should not matter at all, of course, but it seems cruelty is appropriate when directed at deserving targets.
Examples abound of antisemitic rhetoric being not only tolerated in K-12 classrooms, but encouraged.
In New Jersey, the Passaic County Education Association held a “summer series” designed to arm teachers with pro-Palestinian propaganda for the classroom. One lesson glorified “heroic resistance to Zionism” — the very language terrorists use as they slaughter Israeli innocents.
Ethnic studies consultants advising school districts in California and Arizona have promoted “Preparing to Teach Palestine” toolkits, which instruct that Jews stole Israel from Palestinians, while the Qatar Foundation has provided teachers with maps that omit Israel from the Middle East altogether.
Last year teachers in Oakland, Calif. held an unsanctioned “teach-in” to create a publicly available teaching guide on “the liberation of Palestine” that my group, Parents Defending Education, has since uncovered in other districts nationwide.
In Oregon this spring, the Portland teachers’ union was caught promoting pro-Palestinian material intended for students as young as kindergarteners that describes Israelis as “colonial settlers” and labels their government as an “apartheid regime.” Other pamphlets in the collection go even further, referring to Hamas — a designated terrorist group — as a “Palestinian Resistance Force.”
In New York City, a teacher pushed anti-Israel propaganda on children as young as 4 with lessons on “land theft, displacement, and ethnic cleansing,” while in Maryland, a middle school teacher celebrated as a “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team leader” was suspended (though later reinstated) for posting online that the Oct. 7 attack was a hoax and accusing Israelis of harvesting Palestinians’ organs.
The hateful response from American youth to the Oct. 7 massacre is gut-wrenching, but — considering what impressionable students are absorbing from trusted authority figures — perhaps unsurprising.
It is clearer than ever that far too many school administrators and teachers have twisted their privilege as educators into a tool for indoctrinating kids into an ideological agenda that fuels hate, rather than combats it.
After a year of once-unthinkable displays of Jew hatred and terror glorification, it is past time for elected officials at the local, state and federal levels to treat these incidents with the same gravity they do other forms of discrimination — and to attack the problem at its true source.
Nicole Neily is president and founder of Parents Defending Education.