Why the teacher union’s butting into Hamas war
When it meets this week at its annual convention, the American Federation of Teachers will not be focusing on the need to improve teaching in American schools. Instead, the AFT is weighing in on Israel and its war with Hamas.
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre and given Israel’s need to defend its citizens, I find myself shaking my head in disbelief more frequently than ever before. Pro-Hamas college students rioting and making life difficult for Jewish students on campuses, Jews being harassed and attacked on American city streets, the vandalizing of synagogues and Jewish schools, and hostage posters being torn down make my head spin. Now comes the AFT.
Those attending the convention in Houston will be treated to several anti-Israel resolutions, such as “Opposing the Weaponization of Antisemitism,” “For an End to the War in Gaza and Lasting Peace, Security and Self-Determination for Israel and Palestine,” “AFT Divestment from State of Israel Bonds” and “Stop Enabling Genocide: Halt US Military Aid to Israel.”
The resolutions make no mention of the corruption of Palestinian schools that use children’s education as a weapon against Israel, and there’s no condemnation of the Palestinian school system’s glorification of terrorism and martyrdom.
According to Palestinian Media Watch, it’s the Palestinian Authority and Hamas who are “pulling the strings” and “putting the content in the schoolbooks” glorifying terrorists and inculcating students in Jew-hatred.
Among the AFT resolutions, you won’t find a condemnation of UNRWA, which permits its school buildings to be used by Hamas for weapons storage or as launching pads for missiles, rockets and mortars aimed at Israeli civilians. Nowhere in the list of resolutions will you find any criticism of the PA’s treatment of teachers, including mass arrests of teachers on strike. Nor will there be any mention of the PA’s decision to spend money on salaries for convicted terrorists and stipends to their families rather than education.
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Instead of targeting the PA and Hamas with its resolutions, the AFT calls for US aid to Israel to “be used only for purposes that conform with American and international law: American military aid cannot be used in ways that facilitate the seizure of Palestinian land, the violent dispossession of Palestinian communities and the annexation of occupied Palestinian territory. Nor can US military aid be used to harm civilian populations.”
While it puts a modicum of blame on Hamas, which the AFT admits “has demonstrated a readiness to sacrifice Palestinian life on a massive scale when it thinks it will serve its ends,” the union nonetheless goes on to claim, “Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his far-right government are an obstacle to achieving lasting peace, freedom and security.”
America’s schoolteachers have, at a minimum, a bachelor’s degree. Many have master’s degrees and Ph.D.s. They’re educated. We expect them to be rational and enlightened. That’s why we entrust our children’s education to them. We also expect them to know when they’ve crossed the line between areas of their expertise and international politics.
I’m not saying that these terrorist-defending teachers are typical of the entire public education community. I’m certainly not suggesting they should be deprived of their legal right to adopt immoral positions.
But parents have rights too — including the right to ensure their children get a first-rate public school education from teachers who focus on education, not politics.
