A new report from the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values raises concerns about the rise of anti-Israel activism in teachers’ unions in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel and the subsequent increase of incidents of antisemitism in public K-12 classrooms. 

At their conventions this year, both the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the U.S., and the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest — which together represent 4.7 million members — have made anti-Israel resolutions a central theme of both gatherings. Last month, the NEA signed a joint letter calling on President Joe Biden to halt all military aid to Israel.

David Bernstein, the founder of JILV, told Jewish Insider that his group “saw a radicalization of many public school systems around the country” immediately following Oct. 7. “We started to look into where it was coming from, and over and over again we started to see teachers’ associations involved in these efforts,” Bernstein said. 

The report, titled “How Teachers Unions and Associations are being radicalized,” outlines several examples of “radical actors within teachers unions.” 

At the AFT convention last month, for instance, members voted on a total of seven resolutions regarding Israel, including one against the “weaponization of antisemitism” to defend Israel. “The resolution regarding the war in Gaza uses debunked Hamas figures and blames Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu for prolonging the war for his own interests,” the report states. “The resolution further states the way that Israel is conducting the war is ‘unjust.’ These resolutions were brought forward by local AFT unions.” 

Anti-Israel resolutions from members of a teachers’ union are for the most part symbolic. But what’s alarming, according to the JILV analysis, is the chilling of speech within classrooms, such as “shutting down any discussions or differences of opinion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Bernstein said. The rhetoric alone is enough to concern parents. “We’ve seen WhatsApp groups of Jewish parents emerge all over the U.S,” Bernstein said. “So people are starting to talk to each other about what’s happening in their kids’ schools and are very often horrified, but they don’t always have a plan of action.”

Other parents are loath to get involved, Bernstein added, particularly if they have good relations with their school systems and don’t want to be at odds with the district. “Many of us have a fondness for teachers and teachers’ unions, but we can’t allow that to blind ourselves for this really scary ideological reality,” he said.

As the group dug deeper, “we found that radical education advocacy organizations were  directly involved with teachers’ unions, getting them to do their bidding on radical antisemitic teachers’ training and the like,” Bernstein said, adding that the report is designed to help the Jewish world “understand that reality.” 

“We have to be willing to fight the larger ideological fight and to stand up for what I think we would all consider American, Western and democratic values,” he said.

Mika Hackner, a research associate at JILV and the author of the report, told JI that it is crucial for parents to “have an active role” and awareness about “which unions their teachers belong to, what’s going on in those unions and what is the curriculum being taught by the school.”

“Starting on the ground there needs to be pushback,” she said. 

Some school districts, such as the Berkeley Unified School District, where Jewish students, in the months following the Oct. 7 attacks, endured teacher-promoted walkouts in support of Hamas and student chants of “kill the Jews,” have pushed back, filing Title VI complaints. 

Hackner called the legal complaints “one tool in the tool box.”

“But we also need to figure out how to make a coordinated effort against these movements,” she said. “Otherwise it’s like whack-a-mole, you’ll have one lawsuit but it’ll just repeat.”  

Coordinated efforts, according to Hackner, should involve educating and equipping “a critical mass of teachers to fight against the ideological capture of their associations” as well as offering “alternative resources for classroom use that promote democratic participation, pluralism and critical thinking.” 

Bernstein also called for “advocacy at the local school board level where we flag extremist tendencies.” 

“This is the time when [parents] are going to have to get more active.”