Unfortunately, Jews have more to worry about from the American educational system than bigoted school-board officials. Abigail Shrier describes the efforts of teachers to impart anti-Israel fanaticism to their pupils, which she finds to be “no passing fad,” and not limited to progressive private schools:

Much of the anti-Israel vituperation slides into classrooms through a subject called ethnic studies. In 2021, California became the first state to adopt it as a requirement for receiving a high-school diploma. Legislatures of more than a dozen states have already followed suit, incorporating ethnic studies into K–12 curricula.

Especially in the year since the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023, the anti-Israel materials have become pervasive. It’s not surprising that they are found in world-history and current-events lessons. But demonization of Israel is now taught in art, English, math, physics, and social-emotional-learning classes. Anti-Israel activism spreads through online curricula that are password protected, eluding parental oversight. It is pushed by teachers’ unions, furnished by activist organizations, and communicated to children through deception.

A Los Angeles public-school teacher, giving a power-point presentation to his assembled colleagues on in-class indoctrination, asked point-blank: “how do we do all this without getting fired?” He then explained his own methods of deception.

Shrier also documents the corollary to such teaching: the bullying of Jewish students. Take the case of Ella Hassner, who attends a Silicon Valley public high school:

Two girls in Ella’s class began to harass her. . . . The girls said to her: “Your people are terrorists.” The girls created posts on social media that claimed “Israeli babies are not real humans,” and attacked Ella’s family, tagging Ella’s younger brother.

Ella filed a “bullying report” with the school in February. Although the principal had personally witnessed some of the behavior, he and the associate superintendent consulted the school district’s legal counsel and decided “that the complaint would not be investigated by the district,” according to the investigation report.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.