On Monday, the California board of education announced that it was withdrawing its proposed model of an ethnic-studies curriculum, which, besides being rife with such gobbledygook as “cisheteropatriarchy,” “hxrstory,” and “misogynoir,” also contained its share of anti-Semitism. Karin Klein writes:

The number of hate crimes against Jews in California increased more than those against any other group in 2018, according to the state attorney general’s office. That, of course, doesn’t include the gunman’s attack on a synagogue in Poway on the last day of Passover this last April. In fact, the only group that experienced more hate crimes last year were Latinos, whose population in the state is much higher. The number of hate crimes against Muslims was less than half that of those against Jews. . . .

But don’t expect to find this or similar information about anti-Semitism in the draft of a “model curriculum” for teaching ethnic studies in public high schools in California. There’s a long list of the kinds of hatred that have oppressed minority groups in California, including bigotry against Muslims and transsexual people. All of the items on the list belong there, but anti-Semitism is curiously missing. . . .

[Moreover], the curriculum encourages students to study the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement (BDS) as one of various worthy “social movements.” It defines BDS as “a global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions.” . . . Israel [alone] is singled out [for this sort of invective]. . . . The draft recommends that teachers quote lyrics by British-Palestinian recording artist Shadia Mansour asserting that Israelis [control and manipulate the media].

It’s hard to imagine that a few edits could fix what’s wrong with this supposed model for teaching understanding and critical thinking.

On June 3, an Egyptian policeman crossed the border into Israel and killed three soldiers. Jonathan Schanzer and Natalie Ecanow urge President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to respond by visiting the Jewish state as a show of goodwill:

Such a dramatic gesture is not without precedent: in 1997, a Jordanian soldier opened fire on a group of Israeli schoolgirls visiting the “Isle of Peace,” a parcel of farmland previously under Israeli jurisdiction that Jordan leased back to Israel as part of the Oslo peace process. In a remarkable display of humanity, King Hussein of Jordan, who had only three years earlier signed a peace agreement with Israel, traveled to the Jewish state to mourn with the families of the seven girls who died in the massacre.

That massacre unfolded as a diplomatic cold front descended on Jerusalem and Amman. . . . Yet a week later, Hussein flipped the script. “I feel as if I have lost a child of my own,” Hussein lamented. He told the parents of one of the victims that the tragedy “affects us all as members of one family.”

While security cooperation [between Cairo and Jerusalem] remains strong, the bilateral relationship is still rather frosty outside the military domain. True normalization between the two nations is elusive. A survey in 2021 found that only 8 percent of Egyptians support “business or sports contacts” with Israel. With a visit to Israel, Sisi can move beyond the cold pragmatism that largely defines Egyptian-Israeli relations and recast himself as a world figure ready to embrace his diplomatic partners as human beings. At a personal level, the Egyptian leader can win international acclaim for such a move rather than criticism for his country’s poor human-rights record.