Despite the Holocaust, 'competitive victimhood' is a loser for Jews

California has a new law "aimed at combating antisemitism in schools," reports AP's

Sophie Austin. A new Office of Civil Rights train school employees in how to identify and prevent antisemitism and recommend "policies to address anti-Jewish discrimination in schools." So, nothing much.

The National Education Association sent members a map that labeled all of Israel as "Palestine."

A previous version of the bill required that “instructional materials regarding Jews, Israel, or the Israel-Palestine conflict” be "balanced, accurate, don't promote antisemitism and don't label Israel as a settler colonial state," she reports.

As amended, the law simply calls for all lessons to be “be factually accurate.” That doesn't sound wild and crazy, but it could stifle learning, said a California Teachers Association official. “Teacher discourse on Palestine or the genocide in Gaza will be policed, misrepresented, and reported to the antisemitism coordinator,” Theresa Montaño with the California Faculty Association said in a statement.

In some states, including Missouri, Vermont and Tennessee, legislators have introduced laws on antisemitism at K-12 schools, reports Austin. "Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill earlier this year that would have banned teachers from promoting antisemitism in schools. She said the bill was about attacking teachers, not about combating antisemitism."

Reports of harassment, vandalism and assault at K-12 schools are way up in the last three years, reports the Anti-Defamation League.

I don't think California's new law will do any good, but at least it won't do any harm. I'm very wary of conventional attempts to fight antisemitism. More time on the Holocaust won't work: Teachers will universalize it by bringing in victim groups they find more sympathetic. I'd rather teachers never mentioned Jews for good or evil. (If they must teach ethnic studies, leave us out of it.) Don't combat antisemitism. Don't stoke it. Ignore us. Please.

When my daughter interned at the California Education Department, she encountered a new curriculum that told kids not to bully classmates because of their race or their ethnicity or their religion or their sexuality or because they were disabled or overweight or wore braces or . . . She thought it would be better to tell students not to be bullies, regardless of the pretext. Learning about Walt Whitman wasn't going to get anyone to lay off on the artsy boy. Learning about the origins of algebra wasn't going to help the girl in a hijab.

The Anti-Defamation League's antisemitism curriculum is backfiring, according to a new research study, write Tanner Nau and Frannie Block in The Free Press. Much of the messaging relies on a DEI-style “anti-oppressive framework,” researchers said. After reading ADL messaging, comments were 12 percent more antisemitic.

The ADL "has inadvertently tied Jewish identity to an ideological style of advocacy that the evidence shows is conflict-generating,” said Joel Finkelstein, NCRI’s chief science officer.

An ADL spokesperson said the curriculum has been updated, but conceded that the study’s “general findings” are consistent with ADL’s “own work about the limited efficacy of using a zero-sum mindset or competitive victimhood as arguments against antisemitism.”

“Identity politics are foreign to both authentic Jewish tradition and foreign to the great American democracy experiment,” Akiva Zweig, a rabbi in South Florida, told The Free Press. “We Jews are a people who believe in conscience, choice, responsibility, and the pursuit of justice for all people, not in competing claims of entitlement and victimhood.”

We'll see if the people demanded a ceasefire in Gaza will be happy with the ceasefire. (Hamas is executing "collaborators," but that doesn't count.) Will protestors find another issue? Perhaps nude cycling will replace tent encampments and keffiyeh cosplay.