Universities are not the only educational institutions where anti-Israel protesters have disrupted learning and harassed Jewish students. In Chicago last week, hundreds of public high-school students walked out of class to demonstrate, before marching to DePaul University and the University of Chicago to join the anti-Israel encampments there. Worse still, the organizers of the walkout were able to tell participants truthfully that they would not be punished or marked absent by their teachers.

Stanley Kurtz explains that such school policies flow from a “mandate to ‘promote student activism and advocacy,’” part of a new trend in education called “action civics.” Kurtz takes an in-depth look at action civics and anti-Israel protests in Chicago, New York City, and Edina, Minnesota:

New York City’s anti-Israel walkouts by students from over a hundred high schools took place early last November, about a month after October 7. These demonstrations stirred a hornet’s nest of parental complaints, both because a local Community Education Council (an official education advisory board) outright sponsored the walkout and because a mere month after October 7 students chanted slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” and “Say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want Zionists here.” In video obtained by the New York Post, an occasional chant of “F*** the Jews” can be heard as well. Some Jewish students stayed home that day out of fear.

New York’s high-school walkouts were entirely consistent with the city’s action-civics curriculum, which praises events like the national walkouts for gun control in 2018. As in Chicago, . . . action civics seems to bring in its train selective political pressure, rage, and fear from students and parents with disapproved views, and the transformation of students into the political playthings of whichever adults happen to be in charge.

Kurtz concludes:

Student political walkouts as “civics” are a bad idea. Excusing students from school for the sake of protest forces schools to favor some political causes over others. Walkouts also subject a captive audience of minors to political pressures from teachers, peers, and outside groups. And mass walkouts leave students who hold back from popular causes feeling left out or attacked.

While the current Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has never been friendly to Hamas, his government has objected strenuously to the Israeli campaign in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip. Haisam Hassanein explains why:

Cairo has long been playing a double game, holding Hamas terrorists near while simultaneously trying to appear helpful to the United States and Israel. Israel taking control of Rafah threatens Egypt’s ability to exploit the chaos in Gaza, both to generate profits for regime insiders and so Cairo can pose as an indispensable mediator and preserve access to U.S. money and arms.

Egyptian security officials have looked the other way while Hamas and other Palestinian militants dug tunnels on the Egyptian-Gaza border. That gave Cairo the ability to use the situation in Gaza as a tool for regional influence and to ensure Egypt’s role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would not be eclipsed by regional competitors such as Qatar and Turkey.

Some elements close to the Sisi regime have benefited from Hamas control over Gaza and the Rafah crossing. Media reports indicate an Egyptian company run by one of Sisi’s close allies is making hundreds of millions of dollars by taxing Gazans fleeing the current conflict.

Moreover, writes Judith Miller, the Gaza war has been a godsend to the entire Egyptian economy, which was in dire straits last fall. Since October 7, the International Monetary Fund has given the country a much-needed injection of cash, since the U.S. and other Western countries believe it is a necessary intermediary and stabilizing force. Cairo therefore sees the continuation of the war, rather than an Israeli victory, as most desirable. Hassanein concludes:

Adding to its financial incentive, the Sisi regime views the Rafah crossing as a crucial card in preserving Cairo’s regional standing. Holding it increases Egypt’s relevance to countries that want to send aid to the Palestinians and ensures Washington stays quiet about Egypt’s gross human-rights violations so it can maintain a stable flow of U.S. assistance and weaponry. . . . No serious effort to turn the page on Hamas will yield the desired results without cutting this umbilical cord between the Sisi regime and Hamas.