“Anti-Palestinian Racism” Is Coming Soon to a School Near You

If you thought that the adoption of “liberated” ethnic studies in California was bad for Jews, the latest mutation of this ideology coming out of Canada, “anti-Palestinian racism,” should have you worried. Like a virus, these radical pedagogies know no boundaries. What began in Canada is spreading throughout the United States. First stop, I predict: the Golden State.

On June 20th, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) incorporated the term “anti-Palestinian racism” in its “Combating Hate and Racism Student Learning Strategy” as well as professional development seminars for school administrators and educators.

What is “anti-Palestinian racism?” Well, the TDSB did not bother to define it. However, the framework of “anti-Palestinian racism (APR)” has been most fully expressed by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA), which originally promulgated the curriculum.

According to ACLA, APR “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.” This may be done by denying the “Nakba” (the supposed catastrophe of Israel’s creation), “justifying violence against Palestinians,” “defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values,” and denying Palestinian indigeneity to “occupied and historic Palestine.”

ACLA is careful to state that the definition they provide is not exhaustive. In other words, APR is a broad tent under which every possible grievance might find a home.

Yet even this “non-exhaustive” list has horrifying implications. Take, for example, “Nakba Denial.” For ACLA, “Nakba Denial” includes “claims that there are no such people called Palestinians or no state of Palestine exists … denial that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed (along with accompanying crimes) to create the state of Israel; rejecting the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees including the right of return.”

Under such a framework, teachers will be obligated to ignore the multi-causal factors that led to Arabs leaving Israel before and during 1948. Teachers will be obliged to recognize the “right of return”—the right of all Palestinians to immigrate to Israel even though the “right of return” has never been included in any contemplated peace deal, as it would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. It will prevent teachers from talking about the failed peace initiatives between Israel and the Palestinians. And it will preclude Jewish students from expressing their views about the right of Jewish self-determination in our ancestral homeland.

And it will preclude Jewish students from expressing their views about the right of Jewish self-determination in our ancestral homeland.

ACLA argues that “equating the oppressed with the oppressors or blaming the oppressed for the actions of the oppressor or rationalizing the use of violence against Palestinians”  is APR. This understanding of APR minimizes, legitimizes and rationalizes the history of Palestinian terrorism while viewing any response to Palestinian terror and violence as illegitimate. How might a teacher lead a discussion on the Israel-Hamas war, for example, and how might students feel free to craft arguments or express themselves if the fear of accusations of racism loom over them?

Like so much radical ideology in schools, the framework of “anti-Palestinian racism” is something that activists sneak in through the back door by first normalizing the term and then insisting that everyone must agree with the entire framework. And as with so much of the radical ideology, claims of “anti-Palestinian racism” will be used as yet another weapon in the arsenal to influence curriculums across the country.

And normalization of APR has begun. Rashida Tlaib accused Donald Trump of engaging in “anti-Palestinian racism” for his comments about Joe Biden in the debate. This year alone, the San Diego State University Senate passed a resolution condemning instances of APR, the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations used the term in its press release on the Department of Education investigation into the Berkeley Unified School District, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, through their anti-racism taskforce, held a webinar on “anti-Palestinian racism.”

The implications for the Jewish community, freedom of expression and the quality of education are staggering.

What happened in Toronto was just the trailer—it’s coming soon to a theater near you. We’ve seen this film, and we don’t want to sit through it again. Push back hard now or we’ll be stuck with “Liberated Ethnic Studies: The Sequel.”

Mika Hackner is the Senior Research Associate at The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values.