Anti-Israel foreign actors, activists ‘infiltrated’ New York schools: report

Activists and foreign actors have infiltrated the city’s public schools with anti-Israel material, fueling bias and hatred of Jews, according to a new report by a nonprofit think tank.

Teacher groups such as NYC Educators for Palestine have partnered with extremist organizations, some allegedly linked to hostile foreign governments and terrorist groups, to bring “radical, anti-American ideologies” into schools, said the Network Contagion Research Instituteor NCRI, and the advocacy group New York City Public School Alliance, which co-wrote the report.

“The report exposes how the Department of Education’s vetted resources allow radical sympathizers to shape young minds with biased information,” said Tova Plaut, DOE pre-K coordinator and founder of the NYCPS Alliance, a group of Jewish teachers who contributed to the project .

Set to be released this week, the report cites DOE documents, school events and staff social media posts as evidence of its findings.

It calls on the DOE to immediately conduct a curriculum review; enforcement of the Chancellor’s anti-discrimination policies; adopt a definition of anti-Semitism and impose training on it; and increasing oversight of external financing.

“If these ideas are left unchecked, they will be internalized by a new generation of students, who will graduate, go to university, vote, enter the workforce and raise their own families, further integrating anti-Semitic beliefs into society wider American”. said NCRI and the NYC Public Schools Alliance.

Among the findings:

DOE recommended resources for teachers include The Zinn Education Projectwhich offers lectures, workshops and articles highly critical of Israel and the US.

The DOE staff resource list links to the Zinn website, which presents a section on “Learning about Palestine-Israel and the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza” which claims: “Israel has turned Gaza into a ‘children’s graveyard.’

Beacon High School in Midtown used Zinn lessons and articles, along with videos from the Arabic news network Al Jazeera, for a 10th-grade social studies class on the Israel-Palestine conflict, emails reviewed by The Post show.

The content “demonized Jews” while referring to Hamas as “a political party and a militant group,” not terrorists, the parents said.

Other resources available for New York teachers to use at their “discretion” include those from the Teach Palestine project, which offers materials that emphasize “Palestinian victimhood” and frame Zionism as a “colonialist” movement.

Teach Palestine is financially supported by the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), a California-based nonprofit with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a US-designated terrorist organization.

In May, the principal of Ella Baker, a public elementary school on the Upper West Side, hosted a “Teach Palestine” webinar, sponsored by Rethinking Schoolsthe report says.

The materials covered topics such as “anti-Zionism is not automatically anti-Semitism” and “Israel’s attacks on children, schools and historical memory in Palestine”.

They may violate Chancellor’s Regulation A-830according to the report.

The report cites two groups, NYC Educators For Palestine, an offshoot of the UFT MORE caucus, and Teaching While Muslim, which hosted a virtual “curriculum quota” for 80 teachers in February.

The seminar was promoted by Terri Grey, interim principal of Virtual Innovators Academy, a remote high school in the Bronx, The Post reported.

A DOE spokesperson said the agency had nothing to do with the event and that it wasn’t Grey’s “the intention to promote it”.

The CNRI report cites an alleged case of foreign influence at PS 261 in Brooklyn. In January, news broke that teacher Rita Lahoud had created an ‘Arab world’ map that excluded Israel on her classroom wall as part of a The Arts of Arab Culture program funded by QFI, the American wing of the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit organization owned by the country’s ruling family.

DOE took down the map after a spokesperson first defended her.

QFI donated more than $1 million to the DOE for dual-language Arabic programs at PS 261 and PS 30 in Brooklyn, records show.

Teachers Unite, a group of public school educators funded by George Soros’ Tides Foundation and NYC Educators for Palestine, partnered with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) on the controversial issue. dropout campaignsaccording to the documents cited in the report.

The far-left PSL has documented ties to China and entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

The New York school walkouts were also part of the Shut it Down for Palestine coalition, which the report alleges has ties to hostile foreign actors.

In July, US Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsay Graham marked 18 entities to Attorney General Merrick Garland for potential violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Acts, including the People’s ForumShut it Down for Palestine and the Palestinian Youth Movement – ​​which social media posts showed was another co-sponsor of the New York walkouts.

Jewish advocacy groups urged public school parents to email new school chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos urging her to take action.

The city’s schools are “unsafe for the Jewish people, or indeed for anyone who identifies as a Zionist or supports Israel’s right to exist,” the email said.

New York public schools should consider the word “Zionist” as a proxy for offensive “Jew” and grounds for potential disciplinary action, it says.

The parents are also calling on Aviles-Ramos to eliminate the system of “anti-Jewish employees who continue to make being Jewish in our schools uncomfortable at best and unsafe at worst.”

DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer said Friday officials “welcome the opportunity to review” the NCRI report when it is released this week, but defended the department’s programs to combat hate in schools.

“Our ‘Meeting the Moment’ plan to fight antisemitism, islamophobia, and all forms of hate were extremely encompassing,” Styer said. “It includes proven training materials and professional development on how to best teach about the Middle East crisis and other complex current events. We have also engaged extensively and continuously in the community on this topic.”

Styer did not comment on the controversy The Zinn Education Project which the DOE recommends as a resource for teachers.

Activist groups NYC Educators for Palestine and Teachers Unite are not “sanctioned or sponsored” by the DOE, officials said.

Activist groups could not immediately be reached for comment.

Additional reporting by Jennifer Gould