By Morton A. Klein, ZOA National President & Susan B. Tuchman, Esq., Director of ZOA’s Center for Law and Justice
(August 24, 2021 / JNS) California’s Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to vote this week on AB 101, a bill that would require the state’s students to take a one-semester course in ethnic studies in order to receive their high school diplomas. The bill may sound benign and even beneficial. But in fact, it’s dangerous. If enacted, AB 101 would permit local school districts to use the ethnic studies curriculum of their choosing. The ones developed in California so far have been anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. If any of them are used, high-schoolers will be encouraged to hate Israel and Jews based on lies—something that should be intolerable to us all, including the appropriations committee.
Take the first draft of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) that was under consideration in California in 2019. Jews were barely acknowledged as an ethnic group. According to the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, which opposed the draft, excluding Jews was purposeful and reflected the prejudice of the drafters.
Among its many failings, the draft included a glossary defining seemingly every “phobia” and “ism” under the sun, including terms we had never heard of. But it excluded “anti-Semitism,” which is a glaring and unacceptable omission in a state that year after year has one of the highest reported numbers of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.
The draft also promoted the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel BDS movement, as well as misrepresented its goal—namely, of eradicating the State of Israel. The draft’s glossary defined BDS as “a social global movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions.”
Encouraging students to believe that Israel is imposing apartheid conditions on Palestinian Arabs is outrageous and offensive. There are approximately 2 million Arabs who are citizens of Israel, with full and equal rights. They serve in the Knesset and on the judiciary, and work alongside Jews and others in Israeli hospitals, universities, and businesses. The Arab political party Ra’am recently became part of Israel’s coalition government. Any notion that Israel embraces an apartheid system of discrimination and segregation against Arabs is ridiculous, and a curriculum that encourages students to believe such a lie is irresponsible.
