The Campaign to Get ‘Anti-Palestinian Racism’ Into K-12 Has Begun

Back in July, we at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values warned that efforts to include “Anti-Palestinian Racism,” a toxic mix of anti-Israel rhetoric and “anti-racist” teachings, in staff, teacher and student training and curriculum, would be “coming soon to a school near you.” Within weeks it began showing up in U.S. institutions. And now, five months later, anti-Israel ideologues have mounted a full court press to spread this noxious ideology.

Anti-Palestinian Racism (APR), its proponents claim, is the erasure, silencing, defaming or stereotyping of Palestinians and their allies. This is done in various ways – the definition of APR is incredibly, and purposefully, broad. One can commit an APR offence, for example, by denying the “Nakba” (the “catastrophe” of Palestinian exodus after Israel’s creation). If one wishes to acknowledge the multiple reasons Palestinians left Israel in 1948 and challenge claims of ethnic cleansing, that would be considered Anti-Palestinian Racism. 

One can commit such an offense by “justifying violence against Palestinians” or by “rationalizing the use of violence against Palestinians” (by, say, arguing that Israel has a right to self-defense or that military operations to rescue hostages are warranted) and by “equating the oppressed with the oppressors” (by criticizing Hamas and the strategic use of terror and violence within the Palestinian national movement). 

And such an offense can be committed by denying Palestinian indigeneity to the land and rejecting the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees. 

In short, any narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that is not presented completely in line with these anti-Israel claims is APR. Any narrative which recognizes Jewish indigeneity, the legitimacy of Israel’s creation, and its right to self-defense, is APR. Any narrative of the conflict that deviates from the idea that Israel is a racist, settler-colonial state, is APR. Indeed, “denying the settler-colonization of Palestine” qualifies as APR. 

And proponents of APR don’t just stop at advancing a broad definition; the victims of APR are defined broadly too. One does not need to be Palestinian to be a victim of APR, merely an “ally.” In fact, surveys of those who say they have been impacted by APR show that the majority of respondents are not Palestinians.

How did such a dogmatic formulation of APR gain so much traction so quickly?

The first step was to make the term “Anti-Palestinian Racism” kosher, so that it would appeal to activists and administrators sensitive to claims of systemic racism and devoted to “anti-racist” training. In fact, the Arab-Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA), which developed the “Anti-Palestinian Racism” framework, is  explicit that this was the rationale behind naming the term APR.

Dania Majid, president and founder of ACLA, said that the term “Anti-Palestinian Racism” was chosen because “the oppression of Palestinians is one of settler colonialism and manifests itself in the crimes of apartheid which are both racist systems that privileges one group over another … there is much work, learning and solidarity happening with our allies resisting anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism as well as other forms of discrimination and we need to be working together.”

Majid stated “We decided to use ‘Anti-Palestinian Racism’ as a term because we knew … that people would understand what racism meant” and that “when you put a charge of racism to an institution … those institutions already have policies in place or some sort of mechanism where they have to respond and engage with an affected party who is claiming racism in their institutions.”

In other words, APR is designed to hit all the right buzzwords to attract antiracism activists and to ensure that APR is included among the litany of racisms society should fight. By using the term “racism,” even though “Palestinian” is not a race, proponents of APR can ensure that activists support the effort and that institutions will take their claims of racism seriously.

The second step was to activate those institutional mechanisms by claiming APR in K-12 schools. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has brought Title VI complaints of Anti-Palestinian Racism against the Berkeley Unified School District and the Santa Clara Unified School District. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights must now investigate these claims. Along with the investigations are demands that K-12 schools incorporate trainings for school faculty and staff, as stated in CAIR’s Title VI Complaint Letter: “The training can be included as a section to the professional development training staff attends a few times a year. The training should also include coverage of tactics commonly used against pro-Palestine movements” and “adopt educational materials on Palestine by reputable groups such as Teach for Palestine and remove anti-Palestine resources from school websites and curricula.” 

In practice, this means removing resources that present anything that deviates from their anti-Israel narrative.

The third step was to galvanize activist groups to amplify the claim that APR is a problem in K-12 schools and demand schools implement curricula changes and training sessions. Leading the charge is the newly formed Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism (IUAPR), dedicated to “researching, educating and advocating on the impact of Anti-Palestinian racism on individuals and communities across all sectors of society.”

The individuals behind IUAPR include Merrie Najimy, past president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and founder of MTA Rank and File for Palestine, a group that has claimed that “Israel is committing a Palestinian holocaust.” Najimy has claimed that Israel’s military action in Gaza is “beyond genocide” and at an IUAPR webinar in August, Najimy had the following to say: “We have people from all different classes and backgrounds seeing their own struggles within Palestine. We’re talking about collective liberation, solidarity. While people who are aligned with the Israeli narrative are talking about their own narrative, their own struggle, in isolation with the rest of the struggle.”  

Najimy also took part in the MTA webinar on “anti-Palestinian racism” which drew criticism for its participants’ engagement in antisemitic tropes — for example, a speaker argued that Jewish organizations wield money, power and influence to stifle criticism of Israel and purposefully use manufactured claims of antisemitism to stop people teaching about Palestine. Another founder of IUAPR is Dr. Jess Ghannam who had been an executive committee member of “Al-Awda: The Palestinian Right of Return Coalition.”

Al-Awda believes that “the Palestinian Arab people, regardless of their religious affiliation, are indigenous to Palestine. Therefore, they are entitled to live anywhere in Palestine which encompasses present-day “Israel,” the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” It believes in “the fundamental, inalienable, historical, legal, individual and collective rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their original towns, villages and lands anywhere in Palestine from which they were expelled.”

APR is created and broadly defined so that it can apply to many situations and people other than Palestinians, and the solution in each case just so happens to be to train educators and students to adopt an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist narrative. The conclusion that IUAPR itself draws is predictable:

“We recommend institutions raise awareness of anti-Palestinian racism and include it in their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and anti-racist efforts. To effectively counter the targeting of Palestinian civil rights, institutions should implement Title VI and investigate claims of anti-Palestinian racism (APR) without bias, ensuring accountability for any discrimination or denial of civil rights.”

IUAPR’s goal is to incorporate APR trainings into all sectors of civil society but its primary target for the moment seems to be K-12 schools. IUAPR is planning another study to look at the impact of APR on children and young adults. In recent weeks, there appears to be a coordinated campaign from activists within education publicizing the issue of APR in K-12 schools. The call to address the “problem” of APR in schools has been taken up by more K-12 activists who see education as a conduit for their own political objectives.

Back in July, we at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values warned that efforts to include “Anti-Palestinian Racism,” a toxic mix of anti-Israel rhetoric and “anti-racist” teachings, in staff, teacher and student training and curriculum, would be “coming soon to a school near you.”

And it just might work. People shy away from being labeled “racist” and want to fight problems of racism where they see them. This is why Majid’s strategy of naming arguments against a particular Palestinian narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict racism is so clever — it makes it hard to argue against. But we must. If adopted, APR will make genuine debate, discussion and education of the Israel-Palestinian conflict untenable. It will serve to only further isolate Jews from the public square. We need to ignore the benign-sounding name and push back against the mendacious framing of “Anti-Palestinian Racism.”

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