San Francisco Unified School District administrators instructed high-school teachers to engage in classroom discussions about the Israel-Hamas war using an educational resource that argues, “Israeli terrorism has been significantly worse than that of the Palestinians,” according to memos obtained by a parental-rights watchdog group and shared exclusively with with National Review.
In memos to social-studies and ethnic-studies departments, discovered by Parents Defending Education, the district provided teachers with a host of resources to help lead classroom discussions on “war, terrorism, colonization, and seeking peace.” The first of the listed resources, Teach Mideast, promotes multiple anti-Zionist articles and viewpoints, including an article published by Jerome Slater at the Middle East Policy Council. In the article, Slater blames Israel for Hamas violence and speculates that failed Palestinian resistance efforts have made Palestinian terrorism a last resort.
“While all terrorism is morally wrong, it is still possible and perhaps necessary to make some distinctions. There can be degrees of moral wrong; we commonly make such distinctions and consider mitigating circumstances, especially between moral wrongs committed in pursuit of just causes and the double moral wrong of injustices done for unjust causes,” Slater wrote in the resource provided to teachers. “For several reasons, Israeli terrorism has been morally worse than that of the Palestinians.”
SFUSD also asked teachers to consider how they might “educate in hopes of a truly just and lasting peace in Israel-Palestine” and to ask students “how has the decades long conflict between Israel and Palestine taken shape over time to this current conflagration?”
Teach Mideast is run by the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington, D.C., think-tank that in 2007 accepted funding from Saudi Arabia.
Another teaching resource is a video titled, “Challenging Antisemitism from a Framework of Collective Liberation,” that seeks to “disentangle the false conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.”
“The need for educational resources on antisemitism within a pedagogic framework of collective liberation is particularly important for this moment–as rising white nationalist violence targets many of our communities, including Jews, Muslims, Black people, immigrant communities, trans and queer people, among others, and as false charges of antisemitism are directed at seekers of Palestinian justice,” the video’s description reads.
At the bottom of the memo to ethnic-studies teachers, the department’s supervisor, Nikhil Laud notified teachers of an event that would offer a “space for healing and reflection, specifically for Ethnic Studies teachers,” that was held after school on October 18. Also on October 18, SFUSD students staged a walk-out in support of Palestinian “resistance” and called for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hillary Ronen, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, supported students’ pro-Palestinian protest and said she would not stay quiet as she “watches the Israeli military commit genocide in our name.”
Laud was quoted in a 2021 local news article about SFUSD’s curriculum changes following the death of George Floyd.
“We’re trying to highlight for our students that young people are at the center of those movements and we want to lift that up so young people feel a sense of power to make things better in the present and future,” Laud said, adding that anti-racist courses increase a student’s “sense of belonging, it promotes a positive academic and cultural identity which makes them feel like school is a place for them.”
SFUSD officials discovered a swastika at a public high school in November. The city’s board of supervisors voted 8-3 in support of a cease-fire resolution on Tuesday.
The school district did not respond to a request for comment.