Today, the American Federation of Teachers—the country’s second largest union for educators—begins its annual conference, where it will consider eight resolutions condemning Israel in one way or another, some of which raise accusations of apartheid, genocide, and the newly minted sin of “scholasticide.” These resolutions reflect a general strategy of the anti-Israel movement to turn every public forum into a platform for condemnation of the Jewish state, but also a more specific program of bringing anti-Israel propaganda into the school system, which has already had some success.

To see what this program might look like if implemented more broadly, Mika Hackner turns to Canada, where the Toronto District School Board has already placed combating “anti-Palestinian racism” in its curriculum. Hackner points to term’s more sinister uses, outlined by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA), which pushed for it to be part of the curriculum in the first place:

According to ACLA, anti-Palestinian racism (APR) “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.” This may be done by denying the “Nakba” (the supposed catastrophe of Israel’s creation), “justifying violence against Palestinians,” “defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently anti-Semitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer, or opposed to democratic values,” and denying Palestinian indigeneity to “occupied and historic Palestine.”

For ACLA, “Nakba Denial” includes “claims that there are no such people called Palestinians or no state of Palestine exists; . . . denial that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed (along with accompanying crimes) to create the state of Israel; rejecting the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees including the right of return.”

Under such a framework, teachers will be obligated to ignore the multi-causal factors that led to Arabs leaving Israel before and during 1948. Teachers will be obliged to recognize the “right of return.” . . .

This year alone, the San Diego State University Senate passed a resolution condemning instances of APR, the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations used the term in its press release on the Department of Education investigation into the Berkeley Unified School District, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, through its anti-racism taskforce, held a webinar on “anti-Palestinian racism.”

In a statement released on social media on Monday, the president-elect declared that if the hostages held by Hamas are not released before his inauguration, “there will be all hell to pay” for those who “perpetrated these atrocities against humanity.” But will Hamas take such a threat seriously? And, even if Donald Trump decides to convert his words into actions after taking office, exactly what steps could he take? Ron Ben-Yishai writes:

While Trump lacks direct military options against Hamas—given Israel’s ongoing actions—he holds three powerful levers to pressure the group into showing some flexibility on the hostage deal or to punish it if it resists after his inauguration. The first lever targets Hamas’s finances, focusing on its ability to fund activities after the fighting ends. This extends beyond Gaza to Lebanon and other global hubs where Hamas derives strength. . . . Additionally, Trump could pressure Qatar to cut off its generous funding and donations to the Islamist organization.

The other levers are also financial rather than military: increasing sanctions on Iran to force it to pressure Hamas, and withholding aid for the reconstruction of Gaza until the hostages are released. In Ben-Yishai’s view, “Trump’s statement undoubtedly represents a positive development and could accelerate the process toward a hostage-release agreement.”