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anti-zionism
NEA Teachers Celebrate Motion to Drop ADL; Israel Lobby Fumes
With the ADL appealing to the NEA’s nine-member executive committee to reconsider the motion, union President Becky Pringle walks a tightrope as the committee studies whether to say yay or nay to the majority of delegates rejecting the ADL.
Jul 16, 2025
National Education Association teachers in support of Palestinian rights are celebrating their breakthrough success at the NEA’s Representative Assembly in Portland this summer. After years of organizing with both one-on-one conversations and state delegation talks, NEA delegates voted to pass a Drop the Anti-Defamation League motion that rejects the ADL as a curriculum and professional development partner.
“We are witnessing a sea change in people’s understanding of who the Palestinians are and what colonialism has done to them,“ said Merrie Najimy, former president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) and Founder of MTA Rank and File for Palestine. “In the past, too many people didn’t see the humanity of Palestinians because Israeli propaganda erased and dehumanized them. We call that anti-Palestinian racism.”
While the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and CODEPINK applauded the motion, the Anti-Defamation League blamed a “pro-Hamas” cabal inside the NEA for rejecting an organization that smears peace activists and slams Muslims and anti-Zionist Jews.
The “pro-Hamas” accusation echoes the verbiage of Project Esther, the Heritage Foundation’s MAGA blueprint for crushing pro-Palestinian voices amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The product of Christian nationalists, Project Esther has earned the ire of the Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace for blasting anti-genocide protesters as members of a fictitious U.S. Hamas Support Network.
“Allowing the ADL to determine what constitutes antisemitism would be like allowing the fossil fuel industry to determine what constitutes climate change.”
In response to the motion’s passage at the NEA Representative Assembly (RA), an enraged ADL sent out a mass email urging its supporters to tell the NEA executive committee to reverse the NEA delegates’ recommendation that teachers not “use, endorse, or publicize” ADL materials, nor “participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”
A national Drop the ADL From Schools campaign has long criticized the ADL’s materials for whitewashing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, where Zionist militias destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages in the Nakba (Arabic word for catastrophe) of 1947-48 when the State of Israel was declared.
The ADL’s mass email made no mention, however, of Palestine, focusing instead on the urgency of providing resources to fight antisemitism. “Don’t let the radical anti-Israel advocates within the NEA marginalize Jewish voices,” read the ADL email.
Whereas Merriam-Webster defines antisemitism as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group” and makes no distinction between the antisemitism that fueled the Holocaust and today’s white supremacist chants “Jews will not replace us,” the ADL’s Echoes and Reflections curriculum, co-developed with the Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashem, includes a unit that defines contemporary antisemitism as “anti-Zionism and opposition to the State of Israel.”
The unit introduces a pro-Israel vocabulary framework—delegitimization, demonization, and double-standards–a 3D test to evaluate whether an incident is antisemitic. Under this rubric, the campus slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is noted 600 times in the ADL’s 2024 audit of antisemitic incidents, according to the magazine Jewish Currents, which conducted a “line by line” examination of the audit. Even the ADL admits that 58% of the incidents cited in its 2024 audit were related to criticism of Israel.
Still, teachers and students who access ADL curriculum—No Place for Hate, Echoes and Reflections, A World of Difference—are encouraged, through links back to the ADL website, to complete a complaint form accusing others of involvement in what the ADL defines as antisemitic incidents.
On the floor of the Representative Assembly, delegate Stephen Siegel of Oregon reminded the delegates that Wikipedia editors determined the ADL is not a reliable source on antisemitism. “Allowing the ADL to determine what constitutes antisemitism would be like allowing the fossil fuel industry to determine what constitutes climate change,” said Siegel.
Backers of the NEA motion object to the ADL’s Zionist framing and stereotyping of all Jews as supporters of Israel.
“The ADL and other Zionist organizations continually try to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism,” said Judy Greenspan, the Oakland Education Association NEA delegate who introduced the motion that emerged from the Educators for Palestine Caucus inside the 3-million-member union. “The NEA will no longer be bullied into supporting this genocidal war,” added Greenspan, a public school teacher and member of Jewish Voice for Peace who was among the 6,000 delegates at the NEA Representative Assembly.
In the days following the RA, photos of delegates who championed the motion were posted on social media, leading to “doxing, harassment, and hate emails,” according to Greenspan.
In contrast, Jason Goldfisher, an NEA Jewish Affairs Caucus delegate, complained on his Facebook page that his Jewish friends did not feel safe following the vote at the NEA convention. “There were tears. Panic attacks. Silent breakdowns,” wrote Goldfisher, who noted the presence of keffiyehs in the assembly room.
“Yes, many of us wore keffiyehs throughout the NEA Representative Assembly,” said Greenspan, “because we wanted to visibly show our support for the Palestinian people who are being brutally murdered by the U.S. and Israel in what can only be called a genocidal holocaust. One of the continuing mantras of the Zionists is that our anti-Zionist activism makes them feel ‘unsafe.’ It is such a false narrative because looking at what is happening in the world objectively, it is the Palestinians who are being brutally massacred by the Israeli government with U.S. bombs and military equipment.”
On the floor of the assembly, a delegate from the “great state of New Jersey” skipped over Israel’s concentration camp in Gaza to “rise in opposition” to the NEA motion. “The ADL defends members of the Jewish community against hate, discrimination, and antisemitism. That support extends to our students and fellow educators who use those resources regularly,” said the delegate whose name was “unclear” in a transcript of the debate.
The ADL, however, did not defend New England teachers who developed a counternarrative to the “land without a people for a people without a land" mythology. Former MTA President Najimy said the ADL launched a smear campaign against the MTA to accuse the union of antisemitism following the MTA’s development of resources on Palestinian history and indigeneity. “So why would we partner with an organization that is actively trying to discredit the teachers’ union?” said Najimy.
In 2024, when the federal census added a new category—Middle East-North Africa—the NEA bestowed formal recognition on a MENA Caucus, which Najimy said helped delegates understand that the union’s commitment to antiracism must include support for equal rights for Palestinians. Israel’s live-streamed genocide also brought new member delegates to the NEA RA, making passage of the motion possible due to widespread outrage, according to Najimy.
The NEA motion rejecting the ADL followed a similar motion passed overwhelmingly last spring by the governing body of United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), which represents 35,000 educators in the country’s second-largest teachers union, right behind New York City. The UTLA motion asked Los Angeles Unified School Board members, administrators, and educators not to adopt or teach ADL curriculum or partner with the ADL for professional development because “the organization conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism to suppress debate.”
In its rationale, the UTLA motion referenced the ADL’s history of surveilling activists (UAW, NAACP, ACLU), suing school districts, and sending a threatening letter to college presidents demanding investigations of the nonviolent Students for Justice in Palestine.
With the ADL appealing to the NEA’s nine-member executive committee to reconsider the motion, union President Becky Pringle walks a tightrope as the committee studies whether to say yay or nay to the majority of delegates rejecting the ADL.
Pringle assured the public that the NEA is committed to combating “all forms of hate and discrimination, including antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bigotry.” In a public statement on the actions taken at this summer’s NEA’s Representative Assembly, Pringle reminded critics that the NEA hosted a panel on antisemitism, honored a Holocaust survivor, and voted to honor Jewish American Heritage Month.
The NEA executive committee will forward its recommendation on the motion to the NEA board, which will then circle back with the Representative Assembly for a final vote, according to Najimy.
In solidarity with Educators for Palestine, CODEPINK urged its supporters to reach out to the NEA executive committee, and Jewish Voice for Peace asked its members to weigh in with a one-click tweet to NEA leadership:
Thank you @NEAToday for voting to cut ties with the ADL. The ADL pretends it’s a civil rights group, but really, it’s a pro-Israel lobbying group that smears Palestinian rights, and it should never be trusted as an educational resource. I urge all educators to #DropTheADL.
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Universities Raze Jewish Students' Gaza Solidarity Sukkahs
"I think it's despicable, cowardly, and highly hypocritical—after all the U.W. administration's efforts to supposedly address antisemitism on campus... just to tear down our sukkah?" said one student.
Oct 22, 2024
Some U.S. universities have torn down solidarity sukkahs that Jewish students opposed to Israel's war on Palestinians have built in recent days to honor the Sukkot holiday and to "protest as the Israeli military continues to invoke the Jewish tradition as fuel for the destruction of Gaza."
Sukkahs are temporary booths erected for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, an eight-day celebration of the fall harvest and the ancient Israelites' escape from slavery in Egypt.
To honor the holiday, students from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other Jewish-led organizations constructed Gaza solidarity sukkahs on campuses including Northwestern University; University of Chicago; Brown University; Columbia University; University of Washington; University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; Yale University; University of North Carolina; University of California, Los Angeles; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rutgers University; University of California, San Diego; and other schools.
"For the past year, we have witnessed the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and even administrators at our university distort our thousands of years-old Jewish tradition to justify genocide," University of Washington student Talia Braester said in a statement.
"We will not allow our tradition to be exploited by those who seek death and destruction," Braester added. "Our ancestors, many of whom endured genocide and ethnic cleansing, taught us never to be bystanders in the face of injustice. We call for an arms embargo and divestment from the Israeli military out of a commitment to life itself."
According to JVP:
In alignment with Jewish tradition, Jewish students intended to spend eight days dwelling in the sukkah—a ritual in remembrance of Jewish ancestors forced to live in temporary structures in the desert while fleeing slavery. This year, students could not separate their observance from the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians are forced to live in temporary shelters due to the Israeli military's mass destruction of homes in Gaza. And this week the world witnessed Israeli forces bomb Al-Aqsa Hospital, burning alive Palestinian patients, including 19-year-old Sha'ban al-Dalou, who was recovering from an operation in his tent with an IV still in his arm. Jewish students across the country are observing Sukkot and hung banners from their sukkahs saying, "Stop Arming Israel" as Israeli forces murder tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health and United Nations agencies, Israel's 382-day assault and siege of the enclave has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, and sickened. Israel's conduct in the war is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case. Meanwhile, thousands more Palestinians have been killed or wounded in the illegally occupied West Bank. Thousands of Lebanese have been killed or maimed by the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Lebanon, according to officials there.
The U.S. supports Israel's war effort with tens of billions of dollars in
military aid and diplomatic backing including vetoes of multiple United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions.
On several of the campuses where sukkahs were built, university administrators destroyed the sacred structures—in some cases, throwing them in dumpsters. Some students said they now face disciplinary action, even though in years past they were allowed to sleep in their sukkahs.
"Many of the sukkahs were adorned with plants and gourds from local farms as a way to honor the harvest," said JVP. "In a callous display, the administrators discarded these as well."
"Many administrators cited draconian policies passed in the wake of the Gaza solidarity encampments that forbid students from camping overnight," the group noted, referring to protests during the last academic year. "The students explained that sleeping in sukkahs is an essential part of this holiday and part of their religious rights, but administrators choose to disregard the students' pleas."
Another University of Washington student, Roza Fernandez, said that "I think it's despicable, cowardly, and highly hypocritical—after all the U.W. administration's efforts to supposedly address antisemitism on campus... just to tear down our sukkah?"
"It shows the truth: Admin does not care about antisemitism and is not afraid to wield it to silence criticism of Zionism and their complicity in genocide," Fernandez added.
JVP media coordinator Liv Kunins-Berkowitz said that "these universities desecrate these students' Jewish practice because their faith is intertwined with their solidarity with the Palestinian people."
"A university has no right to dictate what types of Jewish practice are legitimate," Kunins-Berkowitz added. "Anti-Zionist Judaism is a long-standing and rapidly growing expression of being Jewish."
The U.S. students' campaign of solidarity sukkahs stood in stark contrast with the sukkahs erected by far-right Israeli settlers during this week's "Preparing to Settle Gaza" conference, which was backed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin's ruling Likud party and featured speakers including Cabinet ministers and several members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.
"Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza," one prominent settler and advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians told the audience at the event.
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'Deeply Disturbing' NYU Policy Change Equates Anti-Zionism With Antisemitism
"What the administrators have clearly failed to grasp is that repression cannot kill the student movement," one coalition said, promising "new and more creative forms of resistance."
Aug 26, 2024
After cracking down on anti-genocide campus protests this spring, New York University is under fire this week for its new policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism as Israel continues its U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip.
The Anti-Defamation League—which has also been criticized for conflating the two—defines Zionism as "the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel."
NYU's Nondiscrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy and Procedures for Students (NDAH), updated last week, states in part that "using code words, like 'Zionist,' does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH Policy. For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists."
"For example," the document details, "excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a 'no Zionist' litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., 'Zionists control the media'), demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, or invoking Holocaust imagery or symbols to harass or discriminate."
The policy—seen as a potential model for other universities, as the next academic year begins—was blasted by critics of the Israeli slaughter of over 40,000 Palestinians, which is being investigated as genocide by the International Court of Justice, and the U.S. campus administrations that have invited violent law enforcement oppression of anti-war protests.
NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) said Sunday that it was "alarmed" by the guidance, which "sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people. Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group's understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections."
The "deeply disturbing" development "will legitimize far-right and ethnonationalist ideologies under the guise of protecting students from racial discrimination," the group continued. "This weaponization of the Title VI apparatus openly threatens the university's commitments to academic freedom and to nondiscrimination, and we insist that the administration reconsider these changes for the good of the university community."
The policy change "represents an intensification of NYU's yearlong effort to censor criticism and criminalize protest of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza," NYU FSJP added, noting that "equating criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism has been roundly critiqued by scholars of antisemitism, by Israeli human rights groups, and by our own group."
In a joint Instagram post, NYU FSJP, the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and PYM New York City declared that "NYU ADMINS CHOOSE GENOCIDE."
"Under the guise of 'campus safety' and 'community values,' they informed the student body that speech against Zionism may be deemed antisemitic and a violation of civil rights law," the groups said. "This conflationary logic is not simply an effort to chill pro-Palestine speech on campus, not merely revanchist pushback for the spate of encampments and other actions that NYU students organized last spring, but a deliberate attempt to dissolve student and faculty efforts to protest a genocide that is approaching the one-year mark, with a death toll rising into the six-digit range."
"What the administrators have clearly failed to grasp is that repression cannot kill the student movement," they added. "Every attempt to silence, to punish, to quell, will be met with new and more creative forms of resistance. The students have chosen to stand with Palestine and against the racist, colonial, and expansionist ideology of Zionism. Together we will struggle alongside them, until liberation."
Several organizations are planning a National March on New York City for Gaza, scheduled for noon on Labor Day, September 2.
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