The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States. With approximately three million members and affiliate organizations in more than 14,000 scholastic communities across the country, the NEA functions as a lobbying group and significantly influences education policy on both national and state levels.
While the NEA primarily lobbies on topics that one might expect of an education-focused labor union, such as increasing funding for public schools and raising starting salaries for teachers, in recent years the organization has sought to promote an anti-Israel agenda in American public schools. Members have proposed several New Business Items (NBIs), motions that influence what the union will focus on each year, which have taken a decidedly anti-Israel stance.
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By contrast, The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the country’s second-largest labor union, has a history of support for the Jewish state. AFT President Randi Weingarten is a self-proclaimed Zionist who is married to a rabbi, and the union she leads has promoted a progressive Zionist message over the years.
But the NEA has moved in the opposite direction, increasingly promoting a pro-Palestinian agenda that seeks to ostracize and demonize Israel. For example, just this month at the NEA’s annual conference, three anti-Israel NBIs were proposed and voted on by union members, resulting in the approval of one item that calls for the education of students in “Palestinian history and affairs.”
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the NEA’s animus toward Israel. The union has proposed numerous NBIs that seek to radically shape how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is discussed in public schools across the United States. As a result, the Middle East’s only democracy is regularly vilified.
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2019: NBI 26 and the Condemnation of United States Aid to Israel
Three years ago, NBI 26 was proposed and subsequently rejected at the NEA’s annual conference. The item called to “educate members and the general public on the apartheid, atrocities, and gross violations of human rights of Palestinian children and families by the State of Israel, funded directly by the United States.” This proposal came as a follow-up to 2018’s NBI 92 which also singled out Israel for condemnation and scrutinized the country’s relationship with the United States.
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2021: BDS Rhetoric and Ties to Terror
In 2021, the anti-Israel movement within the NEA resurfaced with the proposal of two controversial NBIs that garnered media attention in several Jewish news outlets but nowhere else. NBI 29 sought to “publicize” the NEA’s “support for the Palestinian struggle for justice and call on the United States government to stop arming and supporting Israel and Saudi Arabia.” The proposal also stated that “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 Israeli society.”
The terminology used in the proposal and the accusation of ethnic cleansing directly reflects the rhetoric of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, whose co-founder Omar Barghouti has stated his clear opposition to the existence of a Jewish state in any capacity. Barghoutti he has called for “armed resistance” and has stated that there should never be “a Jewish state in any part of [British Mandatory] Palestine.”
Additionally, the conference saw the proposal of NBI 51, which called upon the NEA to partner with the No Way to Treat a Child campaign.
No Way to Treat a Child claims that its goal is to “challenge and end Israel’s military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system.” In reality, the initiative is a project of Defense for Children International – Palestine, an NGO that includes several officials and board members with direct ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, European Union and Israel.
These two proposals were not approved, with NBI 29 being rejected by 77 percent of the voters. Meanwhile, a separate NBI proposing mandatory genocide and Holocaust education did not receive a vote.
Related Reading: Media Fail to Connect Dots Between Palestinian NGOs and PFLP Terrorist Group
2022: NBI 13 Gets Approved by the NEA
A few weeks ago, NEA proponents of an anti-Israel curriculum finally broke through. Three NBIs on the topic were proposed and one was approved. NBI 1, which called for NEA members to teach students about the “Palestinian situation” by utilizing deeply flawed resources such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, was rejected. NBI 9, which was defeated narrowly by less than thirty votes, called for the NEA to highlight the stories of Palestinian students and members.
However, a third proposal, NBI 13, was approved and calls upon NEA members to educate students on “the history, geography and current affairs of the Palestinian people.” It also states that the “NEA will provide state affiliates with a clear protocol for members doing this work to utilize when they are under attack.”
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Analysis
The activity and proposals of some educators and NEA board members in recent years are emblematic of the anti-Israel movement at large. Specifically, after fair-minded individuals rejected the incendiary language that was used to demonize Israel, activists subtly repackaged their ideas to sound less vitriolic, while maintaining the same general sentiment.
And once the inflammatory language of previous failed NBIs was watered down, a proposal got approved. The contents of NBI 13 may sound less threatening toward Israel than those that came before, but its motive is clear: to whip up hatred toward the world’s only Jewish state.
The very fact that Israel is repeatedly a point of conversation at NEA annual conferences is a cause for concern. Some members of the largest labor union in the United States are pushing for a lopsided view in American public schools on a conflict between two groups of people thousands of miles away from where the relevant curriculum is taught. This fixation is consistent with a trend that has seen Israel repeatedly singled out for criticism, while issues in other countries are largely ignored.
Despite the fact that the majority of proposed items regarding Israel have been rejected by the NEA, the recent approval of NBI 13 signals an alarming shift. The normalization of anti-Israel policy in a union as powerful as the NEA can have a tremendous impact.
How future generations of Americans feel about the Jewish state is potentially at stake.
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