The most powerful teachers’ union in the country, the National Education Association, is taking it upon themselves to chastise Israel, by claiming its “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians. Two proposals are being set forth to debate this week to express the group’s public support for Palestinian statehood.
The proposals are two of over thirty measures to be debated at the Association’s annual conference running from June 30 to July 3. The first resolution would call on the United States to cut material support and funding to Israel. The second proposes that the union spend roughly $71,500 to promote Palestinian causes through various programs.
New Business item 29 was co-sponsored by over 50 members, and calls to “publicize” the union’s support for the Palestinian authority.” Item 29 reads, “The Arab population of Palestine has again risen up in a heroic struggle against military repression and ‘ethnic cleansing’ by the Israeli state and extreme nationalist forces in Israel today.”
New Business Item 51 calls for the union to “recognize the existence and sovereignty of Palestine and Palestinian children and families and their human right to access a quality education and live freely as outlined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.”
Sadly, the NEA is not alone in its quest to condemn Israel. National Review reports:
Yet the NEA’s proposals are not an anomaly: teachers’ unions nationwide have issued statements against Israel in recent months.
Three local unions affiliated with the country’s second-largest teachers’ union, the American Federation of Teachers, issued statements condemning Israel as an apartheid state this month. AFT president Randi Weingarten claimed in an interview earlier this year that Jews are “part of the ownership class” that works to deny opportunities to others.
During the conference this week the NEA is also set to debate measures on “decolonizing curriculum,” creating a racial justice task force and opposing police unions, according to the report. The union will also discuss sending a letter to the University of North Carolina to urge the school to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times journalist who developed the magazine’s controversial “1619 Project.”
