When UTLA Educators Decided to Go After a Foreign Country, Guess Which One They Picked?

My father is a retired surgeon. Whenever he would hear about a fellow doctor opening a restaurant or other non health-care related business, he’d offer up these words of caution: “Son,” he’d tell me, “it’s important in life to ‘stay in your lane,’ to focus on your area of expertise and experience.”

I thought of my dad‘s wise advice when I read that the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) will be voting on a resolution in September calling for the suspension of home evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, the cessation of United States aid to Israel, and an endorsement of “the international campaign for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against apartheid in Israel.”

The resolution includes a “rationale” that is riddled with inaccuracies and logical fallacies. It claims that the IDF initiated the violence this past May in Gaza, ignoring the fact that the most recent conflict was begun by the Hamas terror regime as a cynical ploy following tensions in Jerusalem. The authors do not address how they would suggest Israel respond to thousands of indiscriminate attacks on its citizens, attacks that killed a dozen people among them two children, injured many more, and traumatized an entire nation, including Israel’s Arab citizens and visitors from all over the world.

The resolution includes a “rationale” that is riddled with inaccuracies and logical fallacies.

The resolution attempts to demonstrate that Israel is an apartheid state by cherry-picking two human rights organizations that support this claim, without bringing in the analysis of any one of the many legal experts, historians, and political scientists who demonstrate why this comparison is so flawed. While the possibility of the eviction of some families in Sheikh Jarrah might be troubling to many (the case is still in the Israeli court system), myself included, to label such potential actions as apartheid or “a regime of legalized racial discrimination,” as the resolution claims, is simply ludicrous.

Israel’s new government, which is slated to be sworn in this coming Sunday, includes an Arab Islamist party, Ra’am, as well as Arab representatives from other parties. Every Knesset since the founding of the State in 1948 has had Arab members among its 120 elected officials. The resolution also mis-characterizes the recent altercations at the Temple Mount, ignoring the often violent protests by Palestinians that are in fact designed to precipitate a police response.

While criticism of Israeli police, military, and government policies and actions is fair game and sometimes warranted, this resolution crosses red lines that must be noted and called out.

First, one can’t help but wonder why, given the myriad challenges facing public school education in Los Angeles, the teachers’ union is spending social capital and time addressing international issues that are far beyond its purview or expertise.

Second, one would expect a group of educators to do its homework. It is shocking that a resolution so biased and inaccurate would be drafted by a local chapter, approved, and then sent to the general membership for a vote. Disturbingly, several other teachers’ organizations across the state have passed similar resolutions in recent weeks.

Third, actions such as these from a California-based teachers union beg the question: why is Israel, among all the nations in the world—including known human rights abusers like China, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—being singled out for repudiation? Holding Israel to standards to which one doesn’t hold other nations is a form of antisemitism.

The closing line of the resolution notes that as public-school educators in America, these teachers feel a special responsibility to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people because of the $3.8 billion given annually by the US government to Israel, “thus directly using our tax dollars to fund apartheid and war crimes.” The resolution fails to note that billions of dollars in aid are sent by the United States to Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Gaza each year. It also fails to indicate the considerable corruption that is endemic to the Palestinian Authority or the terrorist activities of Hamas. It seems that the UTLA’s concern around these issues stops at the Green Line.

I would also note as a taxpayer who helps to fund the Los Angeles Unified School District, that the LAUSD budget for 2020-2021 was $8.55 billion dollars. LAUSD administrators and UTLA educators have tragically failed their students over the past 15 months of the pandemic. The LAUSD budget increased 75% in the five years preceding the pandemic. Despite this enormous influx of dollars, only 23% of 4th graders, as an example, tested proficient in math last year. Studies indicate that LAUSD is failing students of color even more dramatically.

LAUSD administrators and UTLA educators have tragically failed their students over the past 15 months of the pandemic.

Here is my plea to the UTLA: focus on educating our children, focus on getting the facts right, and focus on modelling how to craft arguments around sensitive matters with care and a sense of proportionality, balance, and nuance. You owe this to your students who look to you for guidance as they attempt to navigate a complex, dynamic world. Dear teachers, more than anything else, your students need you in the classroom modeling an objective, analytical approach to complicated situations. As a former classroom teacher and Head of School, I know first-hand how deeply enriching such work is and I know how time consuming it can be as well, leaving precious few moments for matters that are far, far outside of one’s area of expertise. UTLA, kindly heed my father’s wise advice and please stay in your lane.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.