Today, citizens of California have their last chance to comment publicly on the model ethnic-studies curriculum that will soon become mandatory for schools throughout the state. Besotted with the twisted logic of critical race theory, the proposed course guidelines and teaching materials have little to say about the Jews, but what they do say is disturbing. Pamela Paresky and Joel Finkelstein write:

The current draft of the curriculum celebrates figures who have promoted anti-Semitism; it uses racial distinctions to divide people into those who are considered white (and therefore privileged) and those who are non-white (and therefore oppressed); and in the case of Jews, it combines the two, pitting “Jews of color” against Jews who are tarred with “conditional whiteness” and its attendant “racial privilege.”

“White supremacists continue to racialize Jews as non-white,” the curriculum’s “Fact Sheet on Jewish American Diversity” acknowledges. But “many Jews with light skin identify with the idea of white-presenting,” it reads. “Light-skinned Jews . . . experience white privilege,” while “Jews of color like all communities of color face systemic racism.” . . . This [logic] disqualifies most Jews from the solidarity offered to other minority groups.

Wading through the jargon, Finkelstein and Paresky discover the conclusion: that American Jews have, in the curriculum’s words, changed “their position on the racial hierarchy, . . . gaining racial privilege.” Moreover, they write, “Jews are the only group in California’s proposed curriculum for whom the term ‘privilege’ is used” specifically.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.