Even before they set foot on college campuses, countless young Americans have been exposed to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda in their primary and secondary educations. A pre-Kindergarten teacher at a Manhattan public school recently designed a poster for her wards explaining how “ethnic identity” explains the variations in the shape of people’s noses. The teacher, Siriana Abboud, has given the public a view of how this lesson might fit into her overall pedagogical approach, as Francesca Block writes:

Abboud, . . . posts regularly on her Instagram account, which has nearly 7,000 followers, about her education mission statement. . . . In it, she shares “collective action guides” on how to “speak with your child about Palestine” and how to “decolonize your teaching.” . . . On October 9, Abboud wrote: “we stand with those still tearing down border walls,” and “we show solidarity with those still fighting to free their stolen land.” Earlier, she had made her philosophy for educating kids clear: “Our work of decolonizing education begins in preschool. It is very much already a political practice.”

And the problem is more widespread than one deranged teacher:

Take California, where a 10th-grade history course, approved by the Santa Ana Unified School District, includes readings that call Israel an “extremist illegal Jewish settler population” and accuses the country of “ethnic cleansing.” Or the Jefferson Union High School District near San Francisco, which teaches about the “Palestinian dispossession of lands/identity/culture through Zionist settler colonialism.” The root of these lessons stems from California’s new “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum” (ESMC), which passed in 2021 and mandates lessons on the marginalization of black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American peoples,

Meanwhile, more than one million secondary-school students in all 50 states are learning about history and the Middle East from the Brown University Choices Program, which openly accepts funding from Qatar, the wealthy Arab state now harboring leaders of Hamas. A strong pro-Palestinian bias shines through in Brown’s teaching materials. Israel, according to multiple lessons, is a “Zionist enterprise in Palestine,” an “apartheid state,” a “settler colony,” and “a military occupier.”

For Jewish parents looking for alternatives, my colleagues at Tikvah have just begun the Emet Classical Academy.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.