Pennsylvania School District Pushes Anti-Zionist Talking Points in Honors History Course Curriculum

The Wissahickon School District (WSD) in Ambler, Pennsylvania is presenting as fact an anti-Zionist account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its K-12 students by using it as the basis for courses taken by honors students, The Algemeiner has learned.

“On May 14, 1948, Israel declared itself an independent nation: Based on a [United Nations] Mandate but not supported by other countries in the region; Recognized by the US and much of the non-Arab world; Expelled up to 750,000 Palestinians from their land, an event called ‘al-Nakba,’” says the material, provided by virtual learning platform Edgenuity, which implies that Israel is a settler-colonial state — a false assertion promoted by neo-Nazis and jihadist terror groups.

“Nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe,” is used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Based on documents obtained by The Algemeiner, the material does not seemingly detail the varied reasons for Palestinian Arabs leaving the nascent State of Israel at the time, including that they were encouraged by Arab leaders to flee their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. Nor does it appear to explain that some 850,000 Jews were forced to flee or expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century, especially in the aftermath of Israel’s declaring independence.

“The creation of the State of Israel sparked a series of conflicts between Israel and Arab nations,” says the presentation, which is used for the Honors World Studies B course.

Another module reviewed by The Algemeiner contains a question based on a May 15, 1948, statement from The Arab League — a group of countries which adamantly opposed Jewish immigration to the region in the years leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel and refused to condemn antisemitic violence Arabs perpetrated against Jewish refugees — after Israel declared its independence. The passage denies that Jews faced antisemitic indignities when the land was administered by the Ottoman Empire, a notion that is inconsistent with the historical record, and asserts that “Arab inhabitants” are “the lawful owners of the country.”

Following the passage, students are asked to agree with its contents as a prerequisite for proceeding to the next module. That means selecting as the correct answer the choice which says “the creation of Israel failed to consider Arab interests.”

The course content is an outrage, Steve Rosenberg of the North American Values Institute (NAVI) told The Algemeiner during an interview, stressing that the content’s appearing in a K-12 setting is an example of far-left ideologies creeping into US public schools.

“It manifests itself as antisemitism, but this really represents the illiberal woke DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] taking over public school curriculum,” Rosenberg said. “We all talk about the tunnels that Hama built from Gaza into Israel, and Hezbollah from the north into Israel, but they also built tunnels leading into America — and have done so through our schools.”

NAVI’s stated mission is to ensure K-12 education “remains focused on unity, excellence, and equal opportunity for all students” while combating “divisive ideologies” and championing “North American values” such as freedom and opportunity.

“Through our work at NAVI we have seen that there are more teacher trainings on the pro-Palestinian, or pro-Hamas, side of things and we can’t keep up,” Rosenberg explained. “School administrators and school boards are ignoring this because they either don’t wish to take the fight on, don’t know how to take the fight on, or are part of the problem.”

One parent — who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that she be allowed to speak anonymously because her young child still attends school in the Pennsylvania district — told The Algemeiner that antisemitism in WSD has long been a problem and that its inclusion in the curriculum will lead to more anti-Jewish violence, such as last month when a far-left and anti-Israel activist gunned down two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC as they were leaving a Jewish museum event.

“Since we raised this issue, parents have sent us more and more anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian curricula, and as we saw with the murders right in the middle of Washington DC, it’s clear that people are being radicalized,” the parent said. “I feel that our efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion have conveniently excluded Jews, and that’s coming to a head now because there is now more antisemitism in the world than there is against any other group of people. But the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs have not adapted, nor have any plans to adapt, to this new world in which we live.”

They continued, “I feel isolated. So many people are content putting their heads in the sand and pretending this isn’t happening. All I want is for my children to receive an education free of anyone’s personal political views. Here, we have this very far-left school board. They just don’t get it, and they’ve made no efforts to get it.”

The parent added that the school district holds events which celebrate the cultures of every minority group except Jews. Presiding in part over this alleged erasure of the Jewish community is the new incoming superintendent, Dr. Mwenyewe Dawan, who has served as assistant superintendent for the past few years. Dawan has been accused of fostering antisemitism while maintaining questionable associations, according to NAVI.

“Our research has shown that Dr. Dawan has a very close relationship with Keziah Ridgeway, a teacher who was essentially put in the rubber room after threatening Jewish parents with actual physical threats of gun violence on social media,” Rosenberg said. “She and Dr. Dawan have been classmates and schoolmates, and we know that Dr. Dawan has refused to meet with the Jewish parents she abused.”

Ridgeway, a history and anthropology teacher in Philadelphia who promoted anti-Israel activism in the classroom, was placed on administrative last year for social media posts alluding to violence against certain Jewish parents whose names she allegedly posted on social media. Supporters of Ridgeway argue she was the victim of a smear campaign.

“Our goal is to work with parents and try to help them with answers and with strategy around how to deal with the administration,” Rosenberg said. “There is a very unfavorable school board here, they have no real governance, and because there are no term limits, its officers can be in office for pretty much as long as they want.”

Writing to The Algemeiner, WSD said it has “no comment” about the anti-Zionist course materials and any allegations accusing Dawan of misconduct.

Antisemitism in K-12 schools is receiving increased attention, notably in California, after years of falling under the radar.

In March, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a civil rights complaint which recounted the experience of a 12-year-old Jewish girl who was allegedly assaulted on the grounds of the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino, California — being beaten with a stick, told to “shut your Jewish ass up,” and teased with jokes about Hitler. According to the court filings, one student admitted that the behavior was motivated by the victim’s being Jewish. Despite receiving several complaints about the treatment, a substantial amount of which occurred in the classroom, school officials allegedly declined to punish her tormentors.

“While an increasing number of schools recognize that their Jewish students are being targeted both for their religious beliefs and due to their ancestral connection to Israel, and are taking necessary steps to address both classic and contemporary forms of antisemitism, some shamefully continue to turn a blind eye,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement at the time of the filing.

Additionally new Anti-Defamation League (ADL) research — produced by its Ratings & Assessment Institute and the Center to Combat Antisemitism in Education — shows a surge of antisemitic incidents on K-12 campuses in recent years. As previously mentioned in the organization’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, 1,162 such incidents occurred in 2023 and 860 occurred in 2024. Since 2020, antisemitic outrages at K-12 schools have increased by 434 percent.

As parts of its research, the ADL conducted surveys and focus groups to get a better sense of the problem in K-12 private and independent schools, which are the main focus of the civil rights group’s new initiative because they “operate outside of the direct oversight of public education systems, meaning they typically have greater autonomy in shaping their curricula, policies, and disciplinary procedures, which can lead to inconsistent responses to antisemitism.”

Among surveyed school parents, 25.2 percent said their children had experienced or witnessed antisemitic symbols in school since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the ADL’s recently unveiled findings. Perhaps more striking, 45.3 percent of surveyed parents reported that their children had experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and 31.7 percent said their children had “experienced or witnessed problematic school curricula or classroom content related to Jews or Israel.”

Parents are displeased with schools’ handling of the issue, the ADL said. Focus groups told its experts that schools decline to denounce antisemitism or resort to denying altogether that it is fostering a negative learning environment which causes student discomfort and precipitous declines in academic performance. In a poll, over a third of parents have said their local school’s response “was either somewhat or very inadequate.”

Moreover, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which were purportedly meant to improve race relations, abstain from recognizing antisemitism as a form of hatred meriting a focused response from administrators. The Algemeiner has previously reported that many of those programs also ignore antisemitism because they actively contribute to spreading it. Due to this, schools often lack authority figures who understand antisemitism, its subtle and overt variations, leaving Jewish students with no recourse when they become victims of hate.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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